Hello,
I hope you had a lovely Christmas and got a bit of time off of work. Now we are in 2020 and thinking about the year of work ahead; it is always an excellent opportunity to think about how you could do things differently.
Personally, my new year’s resolution is to keep my vanity in check!
Yes, I know, it sounds funny. But we are all vain if we admit it, even in the context of work. Let me explain.
Professional vanity manifests itself in lots of different ways, but one of the most common is vanity metrics.
I am terrible when it comes to this. I am always keeping an eye on how many people subscribe to this newsletter or listen to my podcast. I used to be obsessed with my Klout Score when that was a thing.
I told myself this was because I need to keep work coming in and so my public profile mattered. However, in reality, it was just vanity. After all, the quality of who follows me is far more critical for my earning potential than the quantity.
We tend to fixate on the number of followers, subscribers or visitors, and when we do, it can lead us to focus on the wrong things and ultimately damage our business.
I noticed an example of this recently. When you visit the Salesforce website, they make you register before being able to view a demo of their product. That may sound like a good idea because it will lead to an extensive mailing list. However, many of those people are not that serious about buying Salesforce and so the quality of their list is low.
I once worked with a client who took the same approach. The result was that the sales department spent their time chasing ‘leads’ that had no interest in buying. It ended up costing the company money.
There is no point having a massive mailing list if nobody is reading it. In fact, it just costs your business money. I recently reduced this list by a third, by merely removing everybody who hadn’t opened an email in six months. It was a dent to my ego as my mailing list shrunk, but the result is a more engaged audience and a lower cost for sending these newsletters.
However, our vanity isn’t just limited to vanity metrics.
Those of us who run our businesses can get seduced by the vanity of growth.
We feel like we should be growing our business, adding more employees or increasing our profits. However, more is not always better.
I recently read an excellent book called Company of One, by Paul Jarvis and in it, he argues that often growth means more significant overheads, more pressure and increased hassle.
I spend a lot of time discussing with the business owners I mentor why they started their own business in the first place. It is almost always some variation of making more money, having more time, working with better clients or having more flexibility. Growth is not a requirement for any of those. Yet we often fixate on these, mistaking the means for the end.
We get distracted by all kinds of forms of vanity. I regularly see clients who chase after awards, even though they make little difference to sales or pursue new technologies so that they can say they are working on the latest thing.
So in 2020, I would encourage you to look at the metrics you are chasing after and ask yourself whether they matter. Be sure you are not making assumptions about the benefits those metrics will bring.
- More employees don’t equal more profits.
- More subscribers doesn’t equal more sales.
- More awards don’t mean more business.
- More followers don’t mean more work.
- More traffic doesn’t mean more conversions.
Instead, take a step back and review your key performance indicators. Focus on metrics that positively impact your business, your role and your life. Everything else is just vanity.
Welcome to 2020, and I shall speak to you soon.
Thanks,
Paul
