January 14, 2025 • 11 mins
In this episode of Beyond Margins, Susan dives into the heart of goal-setting, breaking free from default metrics and focusing on what truly matters to your business and life. She shares her own approach to prioritizing calm as a core business metric and gives a behind-the-scenes look at how she set and tracked a single impactful goal in 2024—taking 12 weeks off to rest (spoiler: she surpassed it).
Susan explores:
- Why default metrics like revenue targets may not align with your values.
- How to set meaningful goals rooted in your priorities.
- A practical framework for choosing Calm KPIs that guide your decisions.
- Why setting fewer goals—or none at all—can work for demand-avoidant or overcapacity business owners.
Stay tuned for the rest of the series, where Susan will share insights from other business owners about their Calm KPIs, including an upcoming live workshop to develop a custom KPI for one business.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
- The pitfalls of measuring default metrics that don't serve your goals.
- How Susan structures her business to prioritize rest and calm.
- Tips for evaluating and tracking your progress towards intentional goals.
- Real-world examples of unconventional metrics driving success in calmer businesses.
Support the Show:
Love Beyond Margins? Support the podcast by leaving a rating and review wherever you listen. Your feedback helps others discover the show and empowers us to continue sharing valuable insights.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Susan Boles (00:12):
Are you measuring what matters to you, or are you
measuring some BS metric becausethat's what you're supposed to
do? I'm Susan Bowles, and thisis Beyond Margins, the show
where we deconstruct how toengineer a commerce business.
Now it's that time of year againwhen we are all setting goals
around what we want toaccomplish this year. We're
(00:35):
making a list of all the thingsand projects that we wanna do,
but so often we set goalsarbitrarily without actually
paying attention to whether ornot it's something that's really
important to us, withoutthinking about what actions we
need to take to accomplish thatgoal, or what resources and
support we might need. I mean,do you actually care if you hit
(00:59):
a certain revenue target or growby 10%, or is your goal actually
to make enough to becomfortable, to provide good
lives for your team and yourfamily, Or do you actually not
care at all about revenue andyou just care about doing good
work?
Or your business is fine and youwanna focus on your hobbies. No
(01:19):
matter what your focus is, yourgoals need to be informed by
your values and your priorities.And, also, just throwing this
out there, you can run abusiness just fine without
setting goals at all. I know.Kind of blasphemy coming from
someone who's pretty much madetheir career on data.
But setting goals, it only worksif they work for you. And if
(01:41):
you're demand avoidant or aperfectionist or overcapacity,
setting specific goals might notwork for you. Maybe you pick a
word or a theme of the year, oryou just decide on some specific
metrics that you'll payattention to. That's often my
approach. Now I'm always sayingto make calm your new KPI.
(02:03):
But what does that mean? Whatdoes that look like when we're
talking about setting goals orsetting priorities? That's what
we'll be talking about in thisnext series. How do you go about
making calm your new KPI? Well,if we're setting goals, we
should also be deciding howwe're actually going to evaluate
the performance of that goallater on.
(02:26):
How do you decide if you met agoal? How do you decide if an
investment is a success? One wayto do this is to create metrics,
sometimes called KPIs or keyperformance metrics, or maybe
you've heard them called OKRs,which are objectives and key
results. Either way, thesemetrics help us measure our
(02:46):
performance against our goalsand our priorities. So some
common KPIs are things likecustomer lifetime value, net
promoter score, ARR, MRR, orjust general financial
benchmarks, like net profit,overall revenue, etcetera.
But those are the default. Wemeasure those things because
(03:07):
some middle aged white dude in ablue suit or a gray hoodie
decided that that's what we weresupposed to measure to have a
successful business. So we alldid. But they might or might not
matter to your business and toyour accomplishment of the goals
you actually care about. There'sthis common saying in business,
(03:28):
what gets measured gets managed.
And I do somewhat agree withthat. When you track a specific
metric, you have a lot morevisibility of whatever that
metric is. So the data is inyour brain when you're making a
decision about that. Also, themetrics we decide to measure,
they do say something about whatwe value. At least,
(03:49):
theoretically, they're supposedto.
But that quote is actually amisquote. It's shortened, and
the guy that's credited for it,Peter Drucker, never actually
said that or thought that. Iactually prefer the
interpretation from SimonCulkin, and I think it's way
more accurate. He said what getsmeasured gets managed, even when
(04:10):
it's pointless to measure andmanage it, and even if it harms
the purpose of the organizationto do so. But I think that's
true for most business owners.
We're either measuring all ofthe things or measuring
absolutely nothing. Measuringtoo many things means you're not
really paying attention to anyof them, and measuring nothing
(04:31):
leaves you without any good datato make decisions from. Or to
evaluate whether or not you'reactually making progress towards
the objectives you care about.So the real key is just to set a
few metrics that help you trackyour progress towards the goals
that really matter to you andthat make a difference to your
business. We're gonna take aquick break to hear from our
sponsors but when we come back,I'll walk you through what this
(04:53):
looks like in my own business.
So in my business, to absolutelyno one's surprise, my biggest
priority is having a calmbusiness. That's my number one
objective. And I'm constantlyworking on making my business
calmer, whether that meansbuilding new systems to support
my work and make it easier todeliver or prioritizing rest.
(05:16):
But having calm as my main goalmeans that it also needs to be a
major consideration when I'msetting my goals and when I
decide what to measure to trackmy progress towards things
feeling calmer. When it comes tosetting goals, I actually don't
set many in my business.
I tend to think and work more inprojects and sprints than in
(05:38):
arbitrary time targets likeyears or months. Regardless of
what goals I do or don't set,though, I always have some
metrics or KPIs that I'mmeasuring. They're just not
always the same. My approachtends to be that I have a few
standard KPIs that I alwaystrack, things like net profit,
my cash balance, and the revenuein my sales pipeline. They're
(06:00):
mostly financial because I am aCFO after all.
And then I have a few focus KPIsthat do change pretty regularly.
These are more specific to thegoals or priorities I have at
the moment or certainexperiments that I'm running. So
this is my approach to what getsmeasured and managed. By only
(06:20):
tracking 1 or 2 of these thingsat a time, they do get my focus
and they do get managed and theydon't get lost in a sea of
metrics. So what does this looklike in practice for me?
Well, let's look at my 2024goal. So in 2024, I wanted to
focus on resting. I'm stillrecovering from burnout and I
knew that in order to do my bestwork, I also had to do my best
(06:44):
rest. So the way I wanted tomove towards a calmer business
in 2024 was to prioritizeresting. So I set an annual goal
to take 12 weeks off from work.
And that was actually the onlyspecific goal that I set for
2024. So once I decided on thatas the goal, I took a few
(07:04):
actions. 1st, I wanted to makesure that I had the resources to
meet this goal. And for this,the most important resource was
time. In order to rest for 12weeks, I had to create that 12
weeks of space.
So I went through my calendar atthe beginning of the year, and I
blocked off all 12 weeks. Iplanned out when they would
actually happen to make surethat I had that time resource
(07:27):
set aside for this goal. Then Icreated a goal tracker inside my
project management systembecause I'm a huge geek and
everything has to live there. Iabsolutely could have done this
with a piece of paper and makinga tick mark, but either way, I
needed to have a way to track myprogress towards that goal. And
then every time I took a weekoff, I updated that progress
(07:49):
tracker.
And I also touched base on myprogress every time I did a
monthly review throughout theyear. Having that tracker and
consistently touching base withhow I was progressing towards
that goal meant that it remindedme that it was a priority, which
made it easier for me toactually protect that time. And
if I did have to bail on a breakweek because some circumstance
(08:11):
came up, you know, you can'tpredict what's gonna happen at
the beginning of the yearcompletely, I made sure that I
added a new week to the schedulelater on in the year to maintain
having at least 12 weeks blockedoff. Setting a goal that
mattered to me, even if it was agoal that didn't matter to
anybody else, and then makingsure that I had a way to
evaluate my progress towardsthat goal, that's what kept me
(08:34):
on track. Ultimately, I ended uptaking 13 weeks off in 2024, and
I set a new goal for 16 weeks in2025 even though that goal in
2025 will look a little bitdifferent.
That's just one example from mybusiness, though. When you set
out to make Calm your new KPI,that will probably look
(08:54):
different in every business thatyou look at. Even though calm is
a priority for pretty much allthe businesses I work with, what
they choose to measure to getthem there varies because their
priorities are different thanmine. The season of business and
of life they're in are differentthan mine. So their goals and
the metrics they use to getthere will be different.
(09:16):
But over the next few episodesin this series, my goal is to
give you a bunch of examples andideas from other business owners
like you. We'll talk about whatand how they measure, and we'll
give you some ideas about howyou might think about measuring
things in your own business,even if it's something you think
can't possibly be measured.Every business owner I'll talk
(09:38):
to has calm KPIs that theymeasure, that relate to their
specific business, theirpriorities, their goals. And
they're measuring some stuffthat's pretty unconventional and
helps them build calmerbusinesses. I'm even going to
live workshop with 1 businessowner to help her develop her
Calm KPI.
(09:58):
So if you set some goals alreadythis year, go have a look at
them. Make sure that theyreflect your actual priorities
and not some arbitrary defaultmetric. And make sure you know
how you'll measure and evaluateyour success. And if you need
some ideas on how to do that,stay tuned. In our next episode,
I'll be geeking out with KendallCherry, who is a ghostwriter,
(10:21):
about her fresh content inkedCalm KPI and her system to help
her publish content hands free.
And, no, she's not using AI todo it. Until next time, stay
calm. Big thanks to everyone whosupports Beyond Margins. If you
(10:42):
are a listener, a sponsor, or apartner of any kind, I really
couldn't do this show withoutyou. You can support this show
by leaving a rating and areview.
It really does help newlisteners hit play with more
confidence. You can support oursponsors by using the link in
your show notes, and all of thishelps me keep this independent
podcast going and growing. Sothank you so much for that, and
(11:04):
thank you for listening.
Are you measuring what matters to you, or are you
measuring some BS metric becausethat's what you're supposed to
do? I'm Susan Bowles, and thisis Beyond Margins, the show
where we deconstruct how toengineer a commerce business.
Now it's that time of year againwhen we are all setting goals
around what we want toaccomplish this year. We're
(00:35):
making a list of all the thingsand projects that we wanna do,
but so often we set goalsarbitrarily without actually
paying attention to whether ornot it's something that's really
important to us, withoutthinking about what actions we
need to take to accomplish thatgoal, or what resources and
support we might need. I mean,do you actually care if you hit
(00:59):
a certain revenue target or growby 10%, or is your goal actually
to make enough to becomfortable, to provide good
lives for your team and yourfamily, Or do you actually not
care at all about revenue andyou just care about doing good
work?
Or your business is fine and youwanna focus on your hobbies. No
(01:19):
matter what your focus is, yourgoals need to be informed by
your values and your priorities.And, also, just throwing this
out there, you can run abusiness just fine without
setting goals at all. I know.Kind of blasphemy coming from
someone who's pretty much madetheir career on data.
But setting goals, it only worksif they work for you. And if
(01:41):
you're demand avoidant or aperfectionist or overcapacity,
setting specific goals might notwork for you. Maybe you pick a
word or a theme of the year, oryou just decide on some specific
metrics that you'll payattention to. That's often my
approach. Now I'm always sayingto make calm your new KPI.
(02:03):
But what does that mean? Whatdoes that look like when we're
talking about setting goals orsetting priorities? That's what
we'll be talking about in thisnext series. How do you go about
making calm your new KPI? Well,if we're setting goals, we
should also be deciding howwe're actually going to evaluate
the performance of that goallater on.
(02:26):
How do you decide if you met agoal? How do you decide if an
investment is a success? One wayto do this is to create metrics,
sometimes called KPIs or keyperformance metrics, or maybe
you've heard them called OKRs,which are objectives and key
results. Either way, thesemetrics help us measure our
(02:46):
performance against our goalsand our priorities. So some
common KPIs are things likecustomer lifetime value, net
promoter score, ARR, MRR, orjust general financial
benchmarks, like net profit,overall revenue, etcetera.
But those are the default. Wemeasure those things because
(03:07):
some middle aged white dude in ablue suit or a gray hoodie
decided that that's what we weresupposed to measure to have a
successful business. So we alldid. But they might or might not
matter to your business and toyour accomplishment of the goals
you actually care about. There'sthis common saying in business,
(03:28):
what gets measured gets managed.
And I do somewhat agree withthat. When you track a specific
metric, you have a lot morevisibility of whatever that
metric is. So the data is inyour brain when you're making a
decision about that. Also, themetrics we decide to measure,
they do say something about whatwe value. At least,
(03:49):
theoretically, they're supposedto.
But that quote is actually amisquote. It's shortened, and
the guy that's credited for it,Peter Drucker, never actually
said that or thought that. Iactually prefer the
interpretation from SimonCulkin, and I think it's way
more accurate. He said what getsmeasured gets managed, even when
(04:10):
it's pointless to measure andmanage it, and even if it harms
the purpose of the organizationto do so. But I think that's
true for most business owners.
We're either measuring all ofthe things or measuring
absolutely nothing. Measuringtoo many things means you're not
really paying attention to anyof them, and measuring nothing
(04:31):
leaves you without any good datato make decisions from. Or to
evaluate whether or not you'reactually making progress towards
the objectives you care about.So the real key is just to set a
few metrics that help you trackyour progress towards the goals
that really matter to you andthat make a difference to your
business. We're gonna take aquick break to hear from our
sponsors but when we come back,I'll walk you through what this
(04:53):
looks like in my own business.
So in my business, to absolutelyno one's surprise, my biggest
priority is having a calmbusiness. That's my number one
objective. And I'm constantlyworking on making my business
calmer, whether that meansbuilding new systems to support
my work and make it easier todeliver or prioritizing rest.
(05:16):
But having calm as my main goalmeans that it also needs to be a
major consideration when I'msetting my goals and when I
decide what to measure to trackmy progress towards things
feeling calmer. When it comes tosetting goals, I actually don't
set many in my business.
I tend to think and work more inprojects and sprints than in
(05:38):
arbitrary time targets likeyears or months. Regardless of
what goals I do or don't set,though, I always have some
metrics or KPIs that I'mmeasuring. They're just not
always the same. My approachtends to be that I have a few
standard KPIs that I alwaystrack, things like net profit,
my cash balance, and the revenuein my sales pipeline. They're
(06:00):
mostly financial because I am aCFO after all.
And then I have a few focus KPIsthat do change pretty regularly.
These are more specific to thegoals or priorities I have at
the moment or certainexperiments that I'm running. So
this is my approach to what getsmeasured and managed. By only
(06:20):
tracking 1 or 2 of these thingsat a time, they do get my focus
and they do get managed and theydon't get lost in a sea of
metrics. So what does this looklike in practice for me?
Well, let's look at my 2024goal. So in 2024, I wanted to
focus on resting. I'm stillrecovering from burnout and I
knew that in order to do my bestwork, I also had to do my best
(06:44):
rest. So the way I wanted tomove towards a calmer business
in 2024 was to prioritizeresting. So I set an annual goal
to take 12 weeks off from work.
And that was actually the onlyspecific goal that I set for
2024. So once I decided on thatas the goal, I took a few
(07:04):
actions. 1st, I wanted to makesure that I had the resources to
meet this goal. And for this,the most important resource was
time. In order to rest for 12weeks, I had to create that 12
weeks of space.
So I went through my calendar atthe beginning of the year, and I
blocked off all 12 weeks. Iplanned out when they would
actually happen to make surethat I had that time resource
(07:27):
set aside for this goal. Then Icreated a goal tracker inside my
project management systembecause I'm a huge geek and
everything has to live there. Iabsolutely could have done this
with a piece of paper and makinga tick mark, but either way, I
needed to have a way to track myprogress towards that goal. And
then every time I took a weekoff, I updated that progress
(07:49):
tracker.
And I also touched base on myprogress every time I did a
monthly review throughout theyear. Having that tracker and
consistently touching base withhow I was progressing towards
that goal meant that it remindedme that it was a priority, which
made it easier for me toactually protect that time. And
if I did have to bail on a breakweek because some circumstance
(08:11):
came up, you know, you can'tpredict what's gonna happen at
the beginning of the yearcompletely, I made sure that I
added a new week to the schedulelater on in the year to maintain
having at least 12 weeks blockedoff. Setting a goal that
mattered to me, even if it was agoal that didn't matter to
anybody else, and then makingsure that I had a way to
evaluate my progress towardsthat goal, that's what kept me
(08:34):
on track. Ultimately, I ended uptaking 13 weeks off in 2024, and
I set a new goal for 16 weeks in2025 even though that goal in
2025 will look a little bitdifferent.
That's just one example from mybusiness, though. When you set
out to make Calm your new KPI,that will probably look
(08:54):
different in every business thatyou look at. Even though calm is
a priority for pretty much allthe businesses I work with, what
they choose to measure to getthem there varies because their
priorities are different thanmine. The season of business and
of life they're in are differentthan mine. So their goals and
the metrics they use to getthere will be different.
(09:16):
But over the next few episodesin this series, my goal is to
give you a bunch of examples andideas from other business owners
like you. We'll talk about whatand how they measure, and we'll
give you some ideas about howyou might think about measuring
things in your own business,even if it's something you think
can't possibly be measured.Every business owner I'll talk
(09:38):
to has calm KPIs that theymeasure, that relate to their
specific business, theirpriorities, their goals. And
they're measuring some stuffthat's pretty unconventional and
helps them build calmerbusinesses. I'm even going to
live workshop with 1 businessowner to help her develop her
Calm KPI.
(09:58):
So if you set some goals alreadythis year, go have a look at
them. Make sure that theyreflect your actual priorities
and not some arbitrary defaultmetric. And make sure you know
how you'll measure and evaluateyour success. And if you need
some ideas on how to do that,stay tuned. In our next episode,
I'll be geeking out with KendallCherry, who is a ghostwriter,
(10:21):
about her fresh content inkedCalm KPI and her system to help
her publish content hands free.
And, no, she's not using AI todo it. Until next time, stay
calm. Big thanks to everyone whosupports Beyond Margins. If you
(10:42):
are a listener, a sponsor, or apartner of any kind, I really
couldn't do this show withoutyou. You can support this show
by leaving a rating and areview.
It really does help newlisteners hit play with more
confidence. You can support oursponsors by using the link in
your show notes, and all of thishelps me keep this independent
podcast going and growing. Sothank you so much for that, and
(11:04):
thank you for listening.
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