7 Must-Track Metrics That Will Make You More Money In 2025

Brian Hood (0:00)

This is the 6 Figure Creative Podcast, episode 332

Welcome to the 6 Figure Creative Podcast, where our mission is to help you turn your creative passions into a stable, reliable income. If you're in audio, video, design, photography, or really any other creative field, and you just want to learn from other successful creatives, you're in the right place. In this episode, we're gonna go through the seven must-track metrics that if you actually track these, you'll make more money, surprise. It sounds like a bold claim, but this is something that I get really excited about because I love metrics, I love analytics, I love data, I love all these nerdy things, which is why I have this podcast and why most freelancers don't have a podcast about business because most freelancers don't give a shit about metrics and data and analytics and spreadsheets. But there's a quote, it's an old quote that goes back, I think Peter Drucker said this, what gets measured gets managed. And to put that in human terms that everyone can understand is it is infinitely easier to affect change in something if we are actually tracking it. If you are wanting to actually lose weight, just weigh yourself every day. There's a lot of just mental junk up there that keeps you from doing that. Just like there's a lot of mental junk up there that keep people from tracking their finances because they don't want to know how bad it's going. I can tell you, I can look you straight in the eye, and I can confidently say, if you weigh yourself every day, it's easier to manage your weight. If you track your finances every day, it's easier to save money. Make sure that the money's going where it should. And just like those two things, if you track these seven metrics in your business, it is easier to affect change on these metrics. And if you can positively influence these metrics in your business, it is absolutely impossible not to make more money, and it starts with tracking. Most freelancers just ignore this most basic fundamental thing of tracking metrics. So you end up living your life only seeing what's called lagging indicators. These are the things that are the result of all the leading indicators, the things you actually want to start tracking. So when you look at your bank account, and it's dwindling to zero or below zero, you're in massive debt and going deeper into debt every month, that is actually a result of some of these seven metrics that we're going to talk about today, not being in alignment, not being good. So when you see your bank account dwindling and you wait to the last minute to fix that, it is likely too late because those low numbers in your bank account that you're experiencing right now in your business or in your personal life, it's a direct result of what you did weeks or months or sometimes even a year plus ago in your business. Or in other cases, it's things that you didn't do weeks, months, or even a year plus ago in your business. So this episode, we're going to dive into these seven must track metrics that if you actually track these, and we can start to make influences on these things that we're tracking, we'll work on actually improving these things in the rest of 2024 into 2025, you will make more money. And at a bare minimum, you should be tracking these things on a monthly basis. Again, I'll give you the seven you need to be tracking. But I just looked into my own business, and I was just curious, like, how many metrics do I track? How often do I track them? There are 31 metrics in my business that I track daily. There's also other metrics that my team reports to me on that I don't personally track, but they're responsible for bringing to me. But that's still 31 that I personally track and keep up to date daily. But I didn't start there. Please, God, don't go off and just make a spreadsheet of 31 different data points that you're trying to track. You won't know what to do with all of them. But these are the seven big ones. And these seven big ones are on my daily tracking spreadsheet for my business metrics as well. If you do this, this is going to bring so much clarity in your business. You're gonna see exactly what the weak points are, the parts that you really need to put your focus, time, effort, and energy on to fix, because you can't lie to yourself. These are just numbers. The numbers don't have an opinion. The numbers do not have feelings. The numbers do not care about your feelings. The numbers really don't care about your opinions. The numbers are just telling you how it is. And if you can just accept that and know that they're there to help you, this can be so much better for you over the next year. And one of the coolest parts of this is you can actually start predicting your income. One of the most terrifying things as a freelancer, especially once you step into this full time, you have a family and you have people that rely on you. This can get really terrifying. And the reason that's terrifying is because there's just an inherent lack of predictability in what you're gonna get paid. So if you have a day job, I'm getting paid this much every month, more or less. Maybe there's bonuses involved or something, but generally speaking, I'm getting paid this much. But as a freelancer or any business owner, that predictability is basically gone. Except if you really track your metrics well, you do it diligently, you can start to really project what you're going to earn over the next month, three months, six months, even a year in advance. And just an example, last month, over a month ago, I was $690 off of my projected revenue. I was actually $690 over my projected revenue. So I was 0.6% off of my projected revenue, 0.6%. That's less than 1% for something that I was going to earn 30 days from now. And I'm also on pace for the projected revenue I had for the whole year. And when you can do this, there's this peace of mind. Now it's not just me and my family. I have seven other full-time people and they have kids and they have families that they depend on them for. So I am now responsible for many lives, but I wouldn't have the peace of mind that I have right now and the confidence that I have right now if I didn't track these metrics on a daily basis. Or at the very least, for some of you who are not at the place yet where you have that level of stability and predictability because some of these numbers that we're gonna be tracking are really bad right now, you're gonna at least have what we call the canary in the coal mine. Back in the old days, I think a lot of coal mines are out now. I think the UK actually just phased out of using coal for electricity this year. I read something about that in Morning Brew recently. But anyways, they would bring canaries down to the coal mines, and canaries are really sensitive to carbon monoxide. So they alert the coal miners before carbon monoxide built up to the point where it killed people. They're essentially the early warning system. These seven metrics, if you track them, these are your early warning systems that if something is looking bad, you have time to fix them before they kill your business. So you can start to see why I'm so excited about these seven metrics. And shout out by the way to Josh Maitland. He actually emailed me like yesterday. It was like, hey, dude, have you ever done an episode on metrics? It'd be cool to see like the top six business metrics you should be tracking. And so literally, I was like, what metrics would I track if I were just to sit down and talk through this? And so this episode comes from you, Josh, so thanks for that. I came up with seven, not six, so apologies for not getting the exact number you wanted. But I feel like you'll be happy with at least these seven here. Plus I have a bonus one in here as well. So if you've never listened to this podcast before, hello, I'm Brian. This is the 6 Figure Creative podcast. This is for creative freelancers who offer freelance services, who want to make more money from their freelance services without selling their soul. That's all in this queue. This is the podcast for you. And this is a really good episode for you. I cannot think of a less soul selling way of making more money, because you're not hurting anyone. You're not taking advantage of anyone. You're not taking on projects that you don't want to take on. You're literally just tracking numbers so that you better understand yourself and your business. And there comes a time where if you want to have a business with the revenue goals that you have, and you want to be a big boy or big girl business, you got to do big boy or big girl things in your business. You got to get out of your diapers, right? And if any of you have had day jobs or have worked at big agencies doing creative work, all of these businesses and all of these agencies likely track these seven metrics at a bare minimum. These are all things that every business at a higher level does. And so we can take some of these things. We don't have to track 31 daily metrics, like your podcast host, Brian, who's obsessed about this stuff. You just track these seven on a monthly basis and you will be better off for it. Now, I really recommend updating some of these on a weekly basis. Once you understand the seven we're doing here, you'll have a better grasp on how these will fit in and when it makes sense to update these things. But these are the seven. And I've broken this into two kind of categories. First is client acquisition metrics. This is what we talk about a ton on the podcast, because this is what a lot of freelancers suck at and struggle with. And so I want to talk about these first. And then there is the fulfillment metrics. When you get a client and you're working with a client, what are the metrics we track within our clients and our projects? Two different categories of metrics. Both are very important. First, we're going to go into the client acquisition metrics. I've got four here to talk through with a bonus one and some other caveats and things to talk about how you actually use these metrics, because it's one thing to track things. It's another thing to know how to actually use these metrics to better your business. So the first metric is tracking something we call marketing leads. I'll explain what those are, but this is essentially the seeds of your business. If you think about a garden, these are planting seeds, right? So when you're talking about marketing leads, this is like the earliest sign that you might get a client. You can call these a bunch of different things, but these are people that are low intent. Maybe they downloaded a lead magnet you had. Maybe they signed up for your newsletter if you have one. Maybe they signed up for that first step in your two-step opt-in process that we teach here, where if someone wants to sign up for an inquiry or fill out your pre-call questionnaire or your quote request form or whatever you have, you do a two-step. That's where they fill their name and email in first, and then you capture the lead. That's a marketing lead. And then they put all the details about the project and their needs in the pre-call questionnaire or the quote request form. That's step two. That's something else. That's a sales lead. That's next. But the first one is that step one lead. So the differentiation here is marketing leads are a lot lower quality. You're going to convert a lot less of those to clients. But this is a wonderful asset to have because it builds something called a mailing list, an email list. Many freelancers, the ones that I work with and that I know, this is a very valuable resource that they have. And it's one of our most valuable resources that we have. We have over 50,000 people actively on our email list right now. I think total like 100, 150,000 throughout the lifetime that I've been doing email marketing in my life. Obviously, people unsubscribe or you clean your list over time for people that aren't opening emails anymore. But to be able to access 50,000 people in a moment's notice is a wonderful thing. And those are all what we call marketing leads. And this is what most freelancers suck at. If you're listening, especially for the first time, you likely don't have any sort of lead magnet yet. We have a whole lead generation series to go back to on the podcast. You may not have a two-step quote request process or opt-in process when it comes to inquiry forums, right? Where that first step is capturing the lead. You likely don't have a newsletter or anything that's actually bringing in people to actually sign up for these things. So this is one of the biggest areas for improvement that most freelancers struggle with. And I highly encourage you to go back to our lead generation series. You can get to by going to 6figurecreative.com/325, that's episode 325 We talked to the secret to consistent clients. That was the first part of a, like, I think a four-part lead generation series. So, great place to start if this is a number you know is like a zero, is a goose egg every month. That's the first of these four client acquisition metrics. The second client acquisition metric is sales leads. I kind of hinted at this before, but a sales lead is someone who has directly expressed interest in hiring you. They have said, Brian, how much do you cost? Brian, are you available next month for X, Y, or Z? Brian, can I fill out your quote request form? Brian, can we jump on a call to talk to this project? Whatever sort of, like, process you have for sales, I highly encourage people to follow our process, which is a pre-call questionnaire, following that two-step opt-in process, where you capture the lead first, aka a marketing lead. On the second page, you capture all their information for a full contact form, so an inquiry form. If you have a multi-step form for a lot of questions, or you have a simple form, it's just like, tell me about your project, what are your needs, what dates do you want, these simple things, then they book a call to have a discussion with you. That's the process that we encourage people to follow, and that most of our clients follow in their own businesses. But as soon as someone fills out that inquiry form, or that pre-call questionnaire, or they book a call with you, or even in some cases just DMing you on social media, saying, hey, Brian, how much would it be for this? These are all people that have directly expressed interest in hiring you. Text from a friend even, or text from an old client. These are sales leads, and these are a second big metric to track. If someone has expressed interest in paying you money, a repeat customer, a referral, a complete stranger, whatever they are, they found you through social media, they found you through ads, they found you through content, whatever. If they express direct interest in hiring you, they are now a sales lead, and you update that every month. How many marketing leads did I get? How many sales leads did I get? If marketing leads are seeds that you're planted, these sales leads are plants that have grown from those seeds. And that leads us to the third obvious metric here, which is clients are next. That's the fruit from these trees that we've planted with these seeds in our business, right? So we've got seeds, plants, fruit, the natural progression, same with marketing leads into sales leads into clients. So when you close a client, track how many clients you get each month. Those are three very basic fundamental things is that you need to track every month in order to make more money. And there's a fourth metric here that's as important as the other metrics, because you can get five, 10 new clients a month. But if they're all paying you $10, that's not a very good business. $100 a month. Ooh, 50 to 100 bucks. Ooh, no, that's terrible, right? So what do we need to track? It is a metric that we call our AACV, our Average Annual Client Value. Why do we say this? Not just say, what's our average client worth? There's too many different ways to track that. There's something called LTV, how much is a client worth throughout the lifetime of them? That's almost impossible for freelancers to track accurately with any level of confidence, because how many times does a client come back? They come back one, three, six times. It just gets really complicated, and I don't like trying to teach that to people. But also, especially for project-based freelancers, how much is one project worth? When do they come back to you? Again, they could go back to you six months, eight months, nine months, 16 months. They may come back to you multiple times in a year to do multiple projects. So that's why we track what we call average annual client value. That is, how much is one client worth to us over a 12-month span? And the easiest way to track this metric is to just look at last year's income and divide it by last year's total clients. So if you made $100,000 just for easy round numbers, and you worked with 100 different clients, which is a lot of clients, that means the average annual client value is $1,000. If you work with 10 clients for $100,000, that would be $10,000 average annual client value. You can also look at the same over the last trailing 12 months, where you look at the last 12 months, how much money did I make? The last 12 months, how many clients did I work with? It's a little less accurate that way, but it's still fine. So those are the four client acquisition metrics that we look at. And the reason those are the four most important metrics is because if you look at each of those four steps or those four elements as the fundamental building blocks of a client, you can start to look at how we can affect change in that. And if you look at the conversion rates between each of those steps, we can start to see how we can affect our business. So when we see how many marketing leads turn into a sales lead, how many sales leads turn into a client, what percentage, and we multiply that client base by our average annual client value, you can start to do some fun things. You can start to predict revenue. You can start to say, I know that I got 100 new marketing leads this month, and I know that that's gonna turn into 10 sales leads over the next 30 days, 60 days. And those 10 sales leads are gonna turn into three clients. And those three clients are gonna be worth $5,000 each over the next 12 months. So I know that this month, I generated about $15,000 for the year. That might've meant that I only made 5,000 this month, but I know that this year, I generated $15,000 in new revenue. There's a difference between revenue and cash collected. Revenue is how much did I generate potential revenue for the entire year, and then how much cash did I actually collect for this month. But let me give you some benchmarks to follow here. There is the marketing lead to sales leads conversion rate, and that means if you have a lead magnet, how many of those people that download a lead magnet actually book a sales call with you? What percentage of that do you shoot for? Everyone's business is different, but I've seen as low as 5% in a healthy, workable business, 5% of those, up to 32%.