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⚡️ Today’s level up ⚡️

Today’s edition explores the trap of vanity metrics and the negative impact that can have on producing revenue. I’ll break down two specific examples to illustrate a better path forward.

Let’s go!

Read time: <5 minutes

If you missed last week, read it here.

Revenue Generators Need To Be Value Creators (And Value Creators Are Revenue Generators)

Too many professionals are chasing vanity metrics.

And it’s holding back their business. Revenue generators are value creators…and value creators are revenue generators.

Let’s look at two examples of this in action.

Think more impact and less vanity activity

1) Enterprise Account Executive in SaaS

I have a coaching client I’ve been working with for about 18 months.

A limiting factor for him was his confidence.

And a main source of stress and anxiety was his company’s activity leaderboard.

We worked through this by gamifying his calendar and staying focused on more high-value activities vs the vanity metrics his company used to (poorly) measure sales performance.

We used “MAP” as his North Star:

(M) Mindset: Upgraded his thinking. Defined what really is important for his accounts and him. He scored his actions and prioritized his calendar based on activities that made a real impact in deeply elevating himself with his executive prospects and clients.

(A) Actions: Improved how he operated. Designed his schedule around the most important activities and removed all other distractions (like internal meetings, which he could scan the recording at a later time). He plotted these high-value activities on his calendar, leaving little time for the “fluff” activity that management pushes.

(P) Progress: Measured his performance. Understood that the only scoreboard that mattered was his own. He started every week with his high-value activities in purple (things that don’t get measured in his CRM, like prepping for important meetings, syncing with colleagues for account planning, and setting aside time for thoughtful follow-up). Then, the “game” was to turn everything from purple to green by the end of the week.

Here’s his latest weekly update to me:

“I am having ‘fun’ executing my process: greening out my HVAs, pulling tasks from other parts of the calendar, shortening allotted times. Getting sh*t done is becoming a game – literally, my screen is my gaming console, and I am dragging and dropping most of the day! The result is I have a lot of opps generated (from the fewest activities on the team), and all the (revenue) numbers are trending well.”

→ KEY TAKEAWAY: Expanding pipeline, lowering arbitrary activity tracked in the company CRM, and closing more revenue than anyone else on his team.

2) Content Creator on LinkedIn

I recently spoke with a popular creator on LinkedIn.

His follower count is strong (over 100K) and he’s growing at a fast clip.

He grew really fast over the past year following advice from other influential creators, mostly by repurposing Twitter threads and curating popular self-development topics.

I asked some targeted questions that have him rethinking his model:

– Does this content align with your ideal customer?

– How much is your revenue per follower?

– Is it growing, staying the same, or getting lower over time?

He was so focused on growth that he was building an audience that wasn’t the right fit for what he wanted to sell.

The advice he had been given was once he had a big enough audience on social media, “he could charge whatever he wanted for his coaching services.”

But posting popular trends and cool images was just getting him a bunch of new followers in far-flung countries who could not afford his coaching or courses.

He had been distracted by impressions, likes, and fast follower growth, while being distracted by “podding” with other creators to boost engagement.

These vanity metrics did not translate to revenue.

By working so hard to get other influencers to like his content and boost views, he didn’t have any meaningful insights into whether his posts resonated with his target audience.

It was a chase for dopamine, not a business that drove revenue to free up his time to create more products and services that delivered value.

→ KEY TAKEAWAY: Don’t be lulled into growth for growth’s sake if your intention is to monetize your content. Design it around your ideal customer, and revenue per follower should sustain or grow, never lower over time. That’s a sign your content is not reaching the right customers if it does.

Hope this was helpful. See you next week!

BTW, I like to experiment with different formats for this newsletter. Short and crisp (like this one) or lengthy and detailed. Which do you prefer?

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