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Most solopreneurs think they need to track KPIs. But KPIs are corporate, overwhelming, and don't actually tell you what to do next. Here's what to track instead, and how to make your numbers actually exciting.

In this episode of The Real Truth About Business, Michelle breaks down why traditional KPIs often feel overwhelming and disconnected from real growth, and introduces a more aligned approach: Key Success Factors. Instead of tracking random metrics because you think you “should,” she walks you through how to identify the numbers that actually matter for your version of success. You’ll learn how to measure what moves the needle, spot patterns, and use your data to make smarter CEO decisions without drowning in corporate style reports.

Whether you’re a coach, consultant, OBM, VA, designer, copywriter, or ADHD entrepreneur, this episode will help you stop guessing and start leading your business with clarity backed by facts.

You’ll learn:

1. The difference between KPIs and Key Success Factors and why it matters
2. How to choose the right metrics for your business model and goals
3. What numbers every service based business owner should track
4. How to use month over month and year over year data strategically
5. How tracking the right data helps you forecast, plan, and grow sustainably

This is the real truth about business growth, especially for neurodivergent service providers who crave clarity, structure, and results without falling for every trend online.

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Here's your Next Steps:

1. Take the "Where's the Gap in Your Business Strategy" Quiz
2. Connect with Michelle on LinkedIn, Instagram, Threads or Facebook
3. Visit my website to learn more and apply for the Focused Visionary Accelerator
4. Sign up for my newsletter - Sunday Morning Brew - delivered every Sunday at 6 am

About the Host:

Michelle DeNio is a business strategist and growth advisor for service-based entrepreneurs, especially neurodivergent and ADHD business owners. Creator of the Focused Visionary Accelerator and host of The Real Truth About Business podcast, she helps clients simplify, focus, and grow sustainably. With 15+ years in business operations, she’s known for turning big ideas into simple, profitable action plans.

We're talking data today and tracking numbers, but not in the boring way.

So stay tuned.

Do not.

Do not hit pause.

Do not hit skip.

Okay?

I want to talk about how most business owners are just simply tracking numbers, right?

Spreadsheets, dashboards, monthly reports.

Right?

But yet you still have no idea if your business is actually working or what in your business is actually working.

Because what the frig do I even do with any of these numbers?

And what do they even mean?

Okay, that's the thing, and that's why most people hate it, because data alone doesn't just create.

It doesn't create clarity, right?

Context around the data is what creates the clarity.

And so that's why I'm not a huge fan of KPIs.

And I know a lot of people talk about it.

Maybe you've heard about it, maybe you haven't.

If you haven't, KPI stands for Key Performance Indicators.

Right?

But what I have, all of my clients do is track K S, F, which are key success factors.

And that's what we're talking about today, is the difference in why and how you can set up your.

Your own ksfs.

Okay?

So let's do it.

Stay with me.

All right?

Let's just talk for one second that if you are a KPI tracker and you love KPIs, like, I'm not here to on that.

Like, I think they are great, but they're just a little bit corporate for me, right?

And I just know that most people don't resonate with it, but I do see the importance of it.

So I'm not on here to say that KPIs are not good, right?

KPIs in general are metrics.

They're measurements.

They're data points.

They're telling you what's happening.

Okay?

They're telling you exactly what's happening.

But they don't always tell you what to do next, okay?

And they, I know for many people, they feel super corporate because they are, right?

And when you start looking at KPIs, if you, like, even you can go on Etsy or you can Google, like, KPI templates or KPI reports or something like that, and you can get in there like, freaking overkill.

They're intimidating.

They're crazy because they, like, track all these things and you got to have all these certain numbers and they're very, like, really big numbers.

Like, some of it, like, I don't even understand, right?

And again, it depends on the business that you're in, but it's like, it's just too much.

It's really, it's overkill for what most people need.

And that's why I kind of like, that's why I was like, I really wanted to try and create something when I was working to, to build out the Focus Visionary Accelerator.

Well, actually the Focus Visionary framework, right?

Because everything I do is based on the Focus Visionary framework, whether that's an intensive or the accelerator, whatever.

So anyways, when I was building out the framework itself, I really wanted a step in there, which is now step seven of Track and Measure.

Right.

But I needed to come up with a way that people and business owners could track solopreneurs service providers, Right.

That they could track information but not get overwhelmed by it.

Right.

And so what I created and what I Talk about is KSFS because KPIs to me cause people to freeze, right?

They're just data and they don't have a lot of direction and it can create a lot of confusion.

Right?

And I really wasn't trying to create confusion.

I wanted to create confidence.

I wanted people to be, be able to really see what was happening in their business and be excited about it.

Right?

Because when you really can see exactly what's going on and you can see and measure growth like it is exciting, right?

And so anyways, I came up with KSF Key Success Factors.

And the reason I call them Key Success Factors is because, you know, if you've been here a while, I believe every single person defines success differently, right.

We all have.

Have our own version of success.

And so the things that I want to measure that are leading to my success are going to be completely different than the things that you need to measure because they determine your success.

Right.

I know a couple of people that are living as digital nomads.

And so their key success factors and what they're chasing for success to continue on this digital nomad life is very different for somebody who, like me, is on a path to try and give my husband different options and create more time freedom in my schedule.

Right.

Like, although they're similar, like they're just.

The way we run our businesses is different.

And that's really what this is about too is that everybody runs their business differently.

Like I say, every strategy works, but they're not all going to work for you.

Right?

So again, that's the way I feel about all of these.

Like tracking is that you've got to find a tracking and track the things that are important.

Important to you, right?

So yes, a few, let me give you a few examples.

Revenue and Profit, I think, are two things every single person should be tracking, right?

Like those are key success factors for everybody.

Are you bringing in revenue and how much of that revenue is actually profit?

So whether you, whether you measure it as profit margin, whether you measure it is net income, it doesn't matter, right?

It's revenue and then profit.

Because you want to make sure that you're actually profiting off of your business, right?

Not just being in the negative or bringing in revenue.

All right, These could be actions, right?

Some people need to measure their actions.

I had a client who wanted one of her key success factors was to do XYZ number of reach outs or book XYZ number of coffee chats.

Because that was a key success factor for her because she knew if she booked these chats that she coffee chats, discovery calls, whatever you want to call them.

She knew she booked a number of coffee chats that she would book clients, right.

She knew how to convert in from.

In that re.

In that way, in that respect.

Right.

So again, measuring and tracking coffee chats may not be a success factor for you.

Maybe you don't even do coffee chats.

Maybe they're not something that actually builds success for you.

Right?

So again, that's why it wouldn't be necessarily a KSF for you.

It's not going to be a key success factor.

I think tracking, you know, again, your conversion rate, I think that that's a good key success factor to know, like how, how well are you converting?

But again, if you're doing one to one or maybe everything is referral based for you right now your conversion rate is probably like a 90 to 100%.

If it's all referral based, that's not a key success factor because you don't need to track your conversion rate, right?

Like you know what your conversion rate is because you're converting everybody that's coming your way.

Okay, so again, it's about identifying what matters for you.

It could be lead generation.

How many hot leads?

That's one that I measure is how many warm, warm to hot leads do I have in my pipeline?

How many clients am I do I have in all of, in all of my varying offers?

Right.

How many members do I have in back pocket insights?

How many one to one clients do I have?

How many group members do I have?

Right.

Because I want to see growth in all of those areas.

I track them all separately.

How many sales conversations, discovery calls are you having?

I'm trying to think like for me, I do measure my podcast downloads, not because downloads mean anything.

But I also track my listeners, right?

So there's again, there's very little analytics with podcasts, but I just want to see is my podcast growing?

Right?

Is it getting into more ears and us and down downloads in a sense is a bit.

The more people that are downloading it, the chances are there's more people listening to it.

Right?

But also from that I try to track like how many people are joining my email list from my podcast.

Hint, hint.

If you're not on my email list, what are you waiting for?

The link is in the show notes.

Sunday morning Brew CEO power move of the week.

Okay, like, right, so I track that.

I track my email subscribers, I track my open rate because I don't really care if my email subscribers go up if my open rate goes down, right?

So I would like to track both of them.

And I like to see that as my email subscribers go up, my open rate either maintains at where it's at, which is around 55% or, or increases.

I don't want to see my open rate decrease.

If I see my open rate decrease, then that means my email marketing is not working as well.

People aren't opening my emails, they're not clicking links, et cetera.

So I'm tracking my click through rate as well because I want to see who's clicking links.

And then also I track that to like did they click a link and then did something happen from it?

Right.

This is like advanced again.

But the actual thing that I'm tracking is like email subscribers, open rate, easy to track, right?

You can pull this information very easily from your email provider.

All right, so again, like those are the things that I want, that I view as like key success factors.

Right?

What are the things that are you're doing in your business that are a direct relation to your success?

Okay.

They are not just random numbers.

They are unique to your business model.

They reflect your goals, they align with your capacity, and they support your sustainability in your growth.

Okay, so that's what I really want you to think about.

And then the other key point here is like, how are you actually measuring them from a growth perspective?

A lot of times when we look at all of these numbers, we look at them from a place of month over month growth.

And I'm here for that.

But again, some things take time to grow, right?

Like you're not going to see growth every single month for a lot of people.

Like a lot of people are not going to see these massive growth numbers over like from month to month, obviously.

And so you want to make sure that you're not like decreasing.

But there are also going to be like some months where things drop down because maybe you're leading up, right?

You're leading up to something new.

And so things kind of slow down or plateau and then they, they accelerate in a couple months.

Okay.

Especially like if you were in a sales season and then you move into like a visibility season and you're back into that, like planting seeds versus harvest season, obviously you might see a difference or something.

So month over month can be, it can be helpful, but it can also be a little bit defeating because it can feel like, oh my gosh, things aren't growing, things aren't going where in the right direction.

So what I love to see people do is kind of measure year over year.

So when you look at those periods, like say you're.

You're meas.

Your stuff every Jane.

Like at month end, right?

Which you don't have to.

You can measure from the 15th to the 15th.

It doesn't matter, right.

Whatever your period is that you're.

You're measuring, usually months are just the easiest.

But you're comparing that from January of the year prior, right.

And you were looking for the growth year over year, right?

Because that's, you know, 12 months cycle, you should be seeing that growth and that's really the growth that you want to look at, right.

Month over month is really useful for like spotting short term trends, making some like, small adjustments.

Right?

So like, if you see your open rate significantly decline in a certain month, you might look at it and see like, well, what changed?

Did my tone change?

Did my, Did I change my subject lines?

Whatever, right?

Like you can make a quick decision from that, like we just talked about in the last episode about that CEO mindset, right?

Like these things help you jump into that CEO mode.

Okay.

So like, month over month can be helpful if you're needing to make those small adjustments and you want to like, get ahead of the momentum and maintain the momentum.

Right.

But it can also be, like I said, it can be very emotionally noisy.

Okay.

One slow month does not mean you're failing.

Okay.

And one good month doesn't necessarily mean everything is perfect.

And that's why I don't love the comparison of month over month.

But year over year shows pattern recognition, shows seasonal trends, shows whether or not your decisions are actually working.

Right?

Like, I love to look for the patterns.

One of the questions that I ask my clients every year is like, do you have seasons in your business?

Meaning like slower seasons.

So typically for me for what I've seen July and August in most, most seasons of my or most years I think, except for the COVID years, but those were super inflated and not real data.

July and August are typically very slow, right?

And so I know this and again, because I've watched this pattern and I see this trend over and over, what I usually do is I usually plan to make sure that I've secured something like a long term program because, you know, I do everything long term typically.

But my goal would be to start booking that stuff out in like April, May on a 3, 4, 6 month, 12 month contract type of thing.

So that when the selling season gets a little bit slower in July and August, although I'm seeing a, a different trend in that the past couple years, but when that selling season slows a little bit, I've already got some revenue secured or whatever I want, right?

And like I know that I want to take December off and I saw that like from what I've seen seasonally and pattern wise is like December, the first couple weeks of December, super fricking busy, people are rocking and rolling.

The last two weeks of December super slow, super quiet.

And even usually the first like two weeks of January or the first week of January is like super frigging busy.

And then the rest of the month is kind of slow because people are getting back into routine.

So again, like, that's my point is like being able to see and track and look at these, these patterns and recognize where there's some trends and whether or not your decisions are working okay.

And so I really just want you to think about like, what are your key success factors?

And start small.

It's not to say you got to measure 10, 12 things, right?

Like, look at like, what is your, like, I call it a North Star.

Okay, that's what we, that's what we call it inside the Focus Visionary framework.

But is like, what is your North Star?

What are you trying to achieve?

What is your biggest goal right now?

However you do your goal setting, it doesn't matter, but like taking a look at like, okay, if you want to close, let's say one of your goals is I want to work with 50 clients this year or serve 50 clients, which is a lot, right?

Depending on whether that's one to one or group.

But let's just say it's like to serve 50 clients.

Okay, you want to serve 50 clients.

What are the key success factors that are going to help you do that?

Attending networking events so that you can increase your audience.

Is it doing podcast Guesting, right?

Going on like a podcast tour to increase your authority.

Is it speaking?

Is it social media?

Is it doing a conversion event every single month?

Right.

Like what are those key success factors?

What are the things that you are doing in your business or the things that are going to show whether or not you're working towards and like you're in moving in the right direction to hitting 50 clients, serving 50 clients a year.

Right?

So again that's going to look different.

I would be looking at revenue, I would be looking at pipeline.

Pipeline would be a huge one for me.

How many warm leads do you have?

Is.

I would be looking at the time it takes for somebody to go from like prospect or like they never knew you existed.

Awareness to close, right?

Like what is that lag time?

What is that lead time of somebody like discovering you and then hiring you?

Especially if that's something like.

So the in.

The reason for that I would look at is because you got to know what your Runway is, right?

If you want to serve 50 clients and that's your goal and you see that you've got a two month Runway, well then you know that you've got to, you know what seasons you need to be in.

You know how to plant those seeds and you know, and you can start to plan and forecast for like if I plant this seed and I nurture this lead in about two months.

So if you're, you know, you've got your 50 clients broken down into milestones, you can then backwards, right?

Like there's so much here that I could teach you but it's like so hard to do on a podcast podcast of like how you utilize this data to work backwards.

Okay, this is, this is the work that I do with my clients whether it's inside of the intensive or inside of the Focus Visionary accelerator.

That's why that's a longer term program.

Or even in my one to one, you know, I do have a one to one like private six month container.

I don't talk about it a lot.

It's like private invite only or application basically.

Anyways, like we dive deep into that and really looking at and planning out and utilizing these KSFs so that we can make some decisions, forecast things and really see okay, we're doing really good this time with this.

Or maybe you try a new visibility strategy and you end up with how many new like email subscribers, right?

You're tracking lead magnet, you're tracking opt ins, you're track whatever that is, right?

Like you need to know what those key success factors are.

And, like, honestly, I think it's like, you know, I've just whipped off and named a million, like, different things that you could track.

Because I think it's actually fascinating, the more that you get into it, you'll start to see where you want to start tracking more things.

Because with that information, you can do so much with it.

You can make so many decisions.

You can, like, create things based on the things that you're tracking.

And with that, you'll know that it's, like, guaranteed to work, in a sense, because you're making those decisions from, like, actual fact, right?

Like, fact, black and white.

Like, this is.

This is it, right?

And so that's why I get so excited about this.

So if you.

My point in this whole episode is, like, if you've heard the word KPI and thought that's not for me, I'm not that person.

I'm not that big.

I don't know what that means.

It sounds too corporate.

I want you to really look at, like, okay, that's fine.

But, like, what would it look like for you to have KSFs, right?

What would it look like for you to have key success factors, right?

To give that data meaning, right?

To give all of that hard work that you're putting in all of this effort that you put into being a business owner.

Because we all know it's not easy, right?

We know that this shit is freaking hard, okay?

And the KSFS show you where your hard work is paying off, right?

They show you exactly where all this effort, all this time, all this energy that you're spending and putting out into the world, like, it shows you exactly what's working.

And that is so.

There's so much clarity that comes with that.

There's so much ownership that comes with that, right?

Like, to me, there's just so much power and being able to say, like, wow, look at this.

And like, to see the growth year over year, to see the patterns immediately month over month, right?

To start tracking that stuff.

Like, it really does.

Like, it's actually not overwhelming at all.

It's not overwhelming and it's actually super exciting.

Okay?

So just, you know, really think about that.

And like, if you need help creating some ksfs, like, shoot me a DM or shoot me an email and tell me what your goal is.

And I will.

I can help you also inside of.

I'm pretty sure I will double check this.

I'm.

If there's.

If it's not there, I'll put it in there because I'm going to tell you about it inside of the Sunday Morning Brew Resource Library.

I'm almost positive there's a document in there with KSFs, like, a whole list of things that you could be tracking if you need some, like, inspo.

The information there is still relev of it.

And so definitely, like, if you're struggling with that, like, look at that list and then if you need help, reach out to me.

But I. I'm telling you, like, when you start actually seeing this, like, this information right in front of you in black and white, and you see those numbers and you see that growth.

Like, I have a tracker that I give all my clients that actually, like, calculates the percentage of growth, and there's some fancy dashboards and stuff.

But again, you can.

You can either join FEA or you can just go create your own.

But it's so fun to see it.

And when you.

You really can start to make some really fun, fun, great decisions, and you will see success faster when you start tracking this stuff.

Okay.

All right.

That's all I got for you today.

I love you.

I believe in you, and I will talk to you soon.