Becoming an Entrepreneur: How to Find Freedom and Fulfillment as a Business Owner by Jake Desyllas

Author:Jake Desyllas [Desyllas, Jake]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, pdf
Tags: small business, entrepreneurship
Publisher: The Voluntary Life Press
Published: 2014-04-09T04:00:00+00:00

The Value of Tracking

Whereas the importance of projections and goals in business plans can be overrated, business tracking and analysis is absolutely vital. The most valuable asset that you have is your business intelligence. This includes things like your list of business contacts, information you gather about potential sales, your analysis of profitability on each project, and your web analytics. This information is golden. If I wanted to buy your business, I would be more interested in this data than in anything you wrote in your business plan.

When you get going, reality will not unfold according to your plans. So how do you best adjust and course-correct? By tracking reality and by seeing what’s actually going on. This gives you the necessary information to make a conscious decision about how to adapt, what to change, and where to direct your business.

That might sound a bit abstract, so this chapter provides some examples of what you can track to improve your business intelligence. We’ll apply tracking and analysis to sales as a first example, since selling is such a crucial activity. In later chapters, we will apply tracking and analysis to other aspects of running a business.

The more you can track what you’re doing, the more you’re able to be conscious about how your business is evolving. That information itself will guide you into making new decisions and course corrections, reallocating your resources and your time in a way that you know will drive the business forward.

Tracking is where your sense of efficacy in business comes from. My level of enjoyment in running a business relates directly to how transparent the business is to me. If I can understand and track what is happening, I can cope with any setback because I know what impact my actions have.

In contrast, if I am not getting any feedback about how effective my actions are, every task seems harder and more stressful. It’s no fun running in the dark. We need the feedback that comes from measurement.

Tracking gives you the freedom to experiment. I can try things out if I know I will get useful information by tracking the results, so an experiment is never wasted—even if it doesn’t work. If I could never find out whether an experiment worked, why would I put effort into trying it? You need feedback in any trial-and-error process in order to correct the errors.

Building up your business intelligence is about becoming an expert in your venture and all facts related to it. This means building, maintaining and analyzing databases concerning all aspects of your operation. Consider it your job to be an expert in everything to do with your business because that information is the most valuable asset you have.

The relevant information will vary somewhat by industry and individual business. In the rest of this chapter, I’ll provide some examples based on what was important for my own business.

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