Pualena demystifies data collection and analysis in this episode of the RBL Media podcast. She shares how important it is to monitor, collect, and critically analyze data to make informed business decisions to foster growth. She describes data as the oil that fuels the business engine. Along with data analysis, Pua reminds listeners of the importance of setting SMART goals—Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound—while tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) like revenue growth, website traffic, and conversion rates.

To help business owners start tracking their data, Pua recommends different tools for data collection and advises consistently analyzing patterns and trends to optimize strategies. She also stresses the importance of making informed, data-backed decisions, even when looking at your data may seem scary, and reminds listeners that feedback and stats are not personal; they’re just data you can learn from.

Pua also shares practical tips for using tools and platforms already at your disposal. Whether you’re refining your marketing campaigns or analyzing website behavior, this episode offers a straightforward framework for pulling insights and taking impactful action. Listeners will walk away with actionable steps to define their KPIs, set clear goals, and consistently track and analyze data.

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Transcript

Pualena 00:00

Hello and welcome back to the RBL Media podcast. I'm your host, Pua. today we are talking about the only truly, guaranteed way to make good, educated decisions for your business that will drive business growth. And it's, it's not typical for me to make such a strong guarantee, but this really is, and I would say like it's, it's the closest way that we can predict and drive results based on data. Data is something that we, it's a tool. It's like oil for your business engine, and without it, we are literally making blind decisions based on our emotions, based on what we observe of other people's businesses, based on what we read or listen to or are told works by other people. And all of that is valuable, all of that is good, all of that can work. And when you couple that with data, you have a predictable machine that you can then make really good, calculated, intentional decisions to skyrocket your business. I've heard this referred to recently as quantum growth, and I I'm really just excited to dive into this more with our business, and also to just share what I know with you.

Pualena 02:00

I understand that data can be intimidating. It can seem boring. Sometimes we don't want to look at it because we're scared of it. And that's a space that I've been in where it's like, okay, we've had a rough month, and I don't want to look at the bank account. I just don't want to look at it because it, you know, I know it's not good. More often than not, it's not what I think it is. Sometimes it's worse, but often it's better, and it's, oh, yeah, I forgot we got this payment, and that payment, and that's like a horrible place to operate from, if you... Think about it, right? We've talked about this in previous episodes. If you want to understand your health and fitness, you are going to start tracking and logging your food. If you have a personal budget, you're going to start tracking and logging your expenses and your income. The same thing goes with your business data, and there are a lot of different data sets that you could be tracking and logging and analyzing. So I'm just going to give you some recommendations today and a place to start, because I think that can truly be motivating action. And as we are starting the new year, what a great time to start to do this. Now, I will say, give it a couple weeks to a month to like you kind of want to aggregate your data. And if you are signing up for new tracking platforms or just starting this logging process, you want to give yourself just a little bit of like, the good amount of data to make decisions off of. So it's not going to be that instant gratification. Some of these pieces will give you what you need right away, especially if you've been on a platform for a while. You can use, you know, Instagram, the data that it provides can give you some like, graphs and numbers over time, because you've been there, even if you haven't been analyzing the numbers. But anyway, we'll get into it. The other thing that I want you to just wrap your mind around is and we talked about this in our episode with Victoria from Ugly ventures, and we were talking about how motivating these numbers can be, and get excited about that. Same thing, right? If you've been changing your nutrition and increasing your exercise, and you've been managing and analyzing your success, one of your success markers by your weight. And you jump on the scale, and maybe it's not moving the first couple weeks, and then it starts to trend down, which is your goal, that is very motivating, and all of a sudden you're like, huh, the motivation that I feel about the results that I'm seeing is outweighing my craving for cookies, because I know that if I stay the course, I will continue to see the results, right? So that's a very exciting place to be, and that's the goal. That's where we want to get to. That is the energy. That we're excited to leverage, and the momentum that we want to build off of.

Pualena 05:03

And sometimes the numbers won't move, or they will move in the opposite direction that we want them to, and that, please do not let that discourage you and stop you from continuing with this process, because that is also a reality. Same thing happens with fitness. Sometimes you start working out and you never did before. You're gaining a little bit of muscle. Scale goes up before it goes down. So it's just something that we have to wrap our minds around. And I want to say that at the start, so that you're you expect some kind of lull before the results start to come in. And we'll talk more about that.

Pualena 05:41

Okay, so let's talk about, let's just set some, like we'll go over some terminology. And I think some of the most commonly referred to data sets are called KPIs. This stands for key performance indicators, and they are essentially measurable values that show how effectively you're achieving specific business objectives. You can think about them as like, you know, when a nurse comes in and you're you're getting your vitals taken like, KPIs are the vitals of your business. And so the more you can track them, the more you can see what activities make them shift right without, without tracking them. You are truly driving a car with with no dashboard. You're just kind of like, I think I'm going maybe like 20 or 30 miles per hour, when you could know I am going 24 miles per hour right now, and I would like to accelerate to 26 How do you get that specific? You need to understand and track and utilize something like a dashboard to understand exactly where you're at, so that you know where to go and how to turn that dial. Examples of KPIs that you might want to track: revenue growth, website traffic, conversion rates, customer retention, average order value, known as AOV. And some of these are for product based businesses, some of them are for service based businesses. But choose what you want. Go ahead and Google what KPIs should I use for my business? Ask chatgpt. We've got plenty of resources and plenty of tools where you can actually dial this in for your specific business. For online business owners, you might also consider including metrics like email open rates, click through rates, social media engagement. If you do have a product based business, you might look at inventory turnover or units sold per product per month. The key is to choose metrics that align with your goals. Okay, so if your goal is to sell a specific product and a specific number of units of that product in January, you're going to want to look at those, those numbers and figure out what actions can I take based on the data, based on how my business activities cause reactions in my business. What, what dials am I able to turn up and turn down right now? And a very key part of this is setting goals. That is the foundation of your data strategy. So before you start tracking. I know it's like, exciting. You're like, pulling up your spreadsheets. First, you must sit down and set clear, actionable goals. When I say clear, we talked about this in the last episode. We really do want to dial in those SMART goals. Make sure every goal is specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and timely or time bound. It has to be each of these things, especially if you're going to tie data to it. In order to achieve that goal, you have to set time parameters. It must be measurable, right? I want to make more money this year. Cool. That, to me, is like a hope and a dream and a wish. I want to make $100,000 on top of our current revenue this year. Now that is specific, measurable, achievable, depending on your business, relevant and time bound, you have one year to tack on an additional $100,000 to your business, right?

Pualena 09:25

So take some time...

10 - Using Data to Skyrocket your Business Growth in 2025!