This is Mark Stowers with Increase My Small Business and I would like to talk a little bit about what a metric is. I use a metric as a way to track, on a daily or weekly basis, what my business is doing.  You should keep a close eye on your metric because ultimately it will help you decide whether or not you’re going to have small business success. Some business planning tips I have are to stray away from tracking financials, start by looking for something that is easy to gather information on, making it easy to track, and of course this information should be accurate. A good idea would be to make sure all the people involved at your business are aware of this metric you have decided upon. This will help everyone stay on task. Though you do not want to track financials using a metric, keeping them in mind is still a good idea. The metric that you do decide upon should not be financially detrimental to your business. Here are two great examples that further explain what a metric is:

1. I have a friend who has had small business success. He owns a company on the eastern side of Wisconsin. His company poured iron into all different forms. His metric was pouring a certain amount of tonnage on a daily basis. By establishing a specific metric he was confident that after a certain level of tonnage was poured he was making money.
2. I have set a metric for the in-home care business that I won. Currently, myself and all of the employees are tracking the number of hours on a weekly basis that our business provides to customers. I made my employees aware of this metric from the start and watched the numbers very carefully. I have come to find out this was a great metric for my in-home care business, it was both easy to track and financially smart.

Again, using a metric can be very beneficial to help you track what your business is doing. Start by picking out a metric that you are comfortable with and go with it!

Thanks for reading. This is Mark Stowers with Increase My Small Business. Also, be sure to join us at smallbusinesscopilot.com and Podomatic for Increase My Small Business and Small Business Copilot.