Do you actually know what’s going on in your business? Do you know what your sales for the last quarter were and how they compare with the same period last year? Which products performed best and which ones showed little movement? What your LTCV is? Are your cost management practices effective? In this article, I discuss knowing your business, loving your business and the benefits of being in reality with what’s happening in your business. 

Have you ever thought about the ways in which you love something or someone? Being kind or caring, being considerate of someone’s needs and spending time with them are all ways of showing them you love them. 

Another way to love someone or something is by giving it attention. While there are many ways of giving your business attention, it may surprise you to learn that one of the best ways to do so is by looking at your metrics. When you look at what your metrics are telling you, you are getting to know your business better. You are actually improving your relationship with your business. 

In a healthy relationship giving someone the right kind of attention makes the difference… Similarly in your business, looking at the RIGHT METRICS in the RIGHT WAY at the RIGHT TIME can help you attain key insights to take your business to the next level. 

When you look closely at your metrics and KPI’s you begin to see how your business is actually performing. You can see which areas are performing well, where you can improve and where there may be problems or issues.

There are half a dozen different areas of your business that you can measure and examine to know your business better. You could look at revenue and financial metrics or overarching corporate metrics like a mission metric. You could also look at sales and marketing metrics, H.R. metrics, customer satisfaction or fulfillment metrics. 

When you are looking at the right KPIs and the right metrics you are paying attention to your business. Bringing attention to your business is applying love to your business!

Ghosting… are you guilty of this?

Unfortunately, there can sometimes be an avoidance of metrics because it brings up negative emotions or stress. I had a client whose service provider sold him an e-commerce solution that required intensive integration with his accounting application. He took the leap, made the investment and pays a hefty fee every month to keep the contract in place. 

He was not sure whether or not the platform performed as promised and could not bring himself to examine the impact his decision had on his business. We sat down together to look at the stats and he was thrilled to find that the cost was worth it. The new platform offered a better user experience and as a result user engagement and sales had improved. 

This client was avoiding looking at the impact of his decision because there was some fear in facing the reality that he may have made the wrong decision but also because he didn’t know how to get in under the hood to actually see what was going on. 

I encourage my clients to raise their love quotient. When you raise your love quotient through self-love and self-care you become more open to accepting the emotions that come up around your business. When you love yourself, you feel greater safety in your own body. When you feel greater safety in your own body, you feel safer to face, experience and feel through negative emotions such as anxiety, fear or self-doubt that can come up when looking into certain aspects of your business. 

High LQ leaders are equipped to deal with the emotions that often come up around business. When you are in reality with your business through having understood the metrics and you find that challenging feelings come up, you are better equipped to feel through those emotions and to ensure that they are not negatively impacting your judgment around critical issues and challenges.  

When you actually use metrics inside of your company, it’s one of the greatest ways that you can infuse your business with love and that’s because you’re giving your business attention in the right way. 

You are creating a healthy relationship with your business and you are able to make better decisions. By being in reality with what’s actually happening you are feeding your gut with healthy metrics. As smart business leaders, we make decisions from our gut, so we want to make sure we are feeding our gut with a healthy diet of metrics as opposed to a starvation diet of no metrics or intuition alone. 

To summarize, there are two elements of love that come into play in business. First, the more deeply you have loved yourself, the safer you feel in your own body which impacts your ability to feel through and be present with negative emotions and second; the more that you are in reality with your business through giving it attention, the more insight you gain about your business. This positively impacts the decisions you make and the actions you take.