Dashboards that are Actually Useful with Layne Booth

In This Episode

• [02:06] – Stephan welcomes Layne Booth to share her ABCs of KPIs framework for identifying impactful metrics to track in businesses.
• [03:44] – Stephan and Layne discuss identifying key metrics for small businesses to track and visualize their growth.
• [09:09] – Layne discusses the importance of metrics in business, highlighting the need for data-driven decisions and the potential for metrics to help achieve non-negotiables.
• [16:45] – Stephan and Layne talk about leading and lagging indicators and provide examples to gauge marketing efforts and make adjustments.
• [24:28] – Layne and Stephan explain the metrics and optimization strategies that podcasters can apply, including how to analyze episodes’ performance and reverse engineering podcast success.
• [29:47] – Stephan and Layne discuss tracking marketing efforts, with Layne elaborating on key distinctions in meeting potential clients at events.
• [33:18] – Layne describes dashboards and their difference from built-in metrics from software. She recommends dashboards you can use.
• [38:19] – Layne talks about the typical business intelligence dashboard software that big enterprises might be using.

Jump to Links and Resources

Layne, it’s so great to have you on the show.

Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to dive in today.

Yeah, so first of all, how did you get so focused on dashboards? That is a pretty interesting specialization that has a story with it.

Absolutely. I was an engineer by trade. And so, my first decade in the corporate space was all about working at a big manufacturing company. So we had over 300 machines that were busy running every single day. And data in that volume and capacity was very, very important. So, to know when machines went down, when pieces were breaking, and how efficient our team members who were working on the floor were,

We had data coming out of our ears every single day to make the product better, less expensive, and higher quality. And so that really was my trial by fire in learning how important numbers are to keep a business running smoothly and more profitably. After spending time there, I started to raise my family, and then I noticed, “Hey, you know what? Small businesses need support like this as well.” 

If they want to become bigger businesses along the way, they will need some of this core infrastructure as well. So, by starting to talk to the small business world, I found that you don’t have to look at 40,000 rows of data like I might have done in my manufacturing days. But how can we condense things to maybe 15 to 20 key metrics so that business owners are very clear? What were the few things they actually needed to do to start growing and scaling their business with a lot more confidence?

So where does identifying those metrics fit in versus having some sort of dashboard system visual display they can refer back to? Because there are tools like Looker Studio, formerly Google Data Studio, which has a bunch of templates out there. People have made their templates available for free and not too expensive, but then it seems like the most important thing is actually to identify those metrics.

Absolutely. So, stuff in your business will be entirely different from mine, and even if there are other maybe SEO companies or agencies out there, one is still very different from the other. There are different values and different team members associated with them. We found that over time, having a dashboard that is really customized to you, your team, how you think, and your greater vision long term helps simplify what needs to be on the dashboard in the first place. Oftentimes, it’s not necessarily the tech that trips people up. Yes, you could put this in Looker Studio, Grow, or Cyfe. There’s a lot, and there are endless more dashboard software companies coming to market day by day as well. 

But at the end of the day, most challenges happen on the front end of, “What should I even put on a dashboard in the first place?” And so that’s why we’ve actually developed a three-part framework to identify what needs to go on the dashboard because the tech can be solved in a couple of different ways. At the end of the day, I’m tech-agnostic. We do have our favorites, but the “what” that goes on tends to be the area that most people struggle with.

Let’s go through your framework.

You don’t have to look at 40,000 rows of data to start growing and scaling your business with a lot more confidence.

Awesome. We like to keep things simple around here. We’re firm believers that simplicity scales and complexity fails. What can we do to really look at and simplify things in the business? The great thing about business these days is that we run on software that captures lots and lots of data. So, oftentimes, the information is already there. We just don’t know how to use it, or it’s just not been utilized to its full potential. 

We have developed an ABC framework called the ABCs of KPIs. When you have these three pieces in place, that’s what really leans towards simplifying so you can make those more data-driven decisions. Part one is all about analyzing and auditing. What’s so great is that here we are in 2024, and there’s a lot of reflection oftentimes happening on what happened last year. I was speaking to another group or mastermind, where the thought was, “Oh, I’ve got to start analyzing all the new stuff.” When you already have a full 12 months of history, most times, you can lean back on and see, “Well, what’s already working or what’s already not working that I can just amplify right now?” 

You don’t necessarily need to reinvent the wheel. Oftentimes, you can just look at, “Well, if I were to truly analyze what was happening on my social media, on my website, in my CRM, or my delivery systems,” there’s plenty of data to go ahead and find what’s truly moving your business forward in this 80-20 capacity—the Pareto Principle.

20% of what you did last year drove 80% of your revenue and sales. Now, that does vary a percentage point or two over time, but by and large, that remains true across industries and different types of businesses as well.

A fun fact about the 80-20 rule. I learned this from Perry Marshall. I interviewed him on the show a while back. He said that the 80-20 rule is actually fractal, meaning there’s an 80-20 of the 80-20 and an 80-20 of the 80-20 of the 80-20. So, doing the math, that’s like 5% would generate 56% of the value. There’s even another layer and another layer after that. You can really hone in on that very small percentage that drives an extraordinarily large in comparison to the value of your business.

In business, every entity is unique, with its own values and team dynamics.

Do you find similar things when you’re also looking at the SEO side of businesses? For example, 20% of the effort comes from driving 80% of the results you’re seeing.

Well, certainly, there are the biggest needle movers that I think are underrepresented in an SEO project, but I don’t know if it equals out the 80-20 rule or if it’s more like a 90-10 rule or what, but I certainly do focus on the big needle movers. I learned from one of Tony Robbins’ seminars that there’s being outcome-focused and there’s being activity, so I tend to be outcome-focused rather than ticking off all the boxes of all the minor activities that are part of an SEO project typically, but I do not really going to do much for the business and its bottom line.

I find it fascinating that even every year, as your business grows, this concept, whether 80-20 or 90-10, still comes back around. So, everything that you may have deleted from what you were going to do this year, you’ve made space to try new things, or you found another layer of 80-20 that you can go back and refine. To your point, there are layers and layers that can continue to support that.

It really comes back to just analyzing and looking back on what has truly happened in the past so that you can use that past to have a better predictor model of your future. So, part A is all about to analyze. 

The next piece of our ABCs—we find that when you aren’t looking at this next step effectively, you can still end up looking at all the things like, “Wow, I just audited or analyzed all this data. I need to put all of it on a dashboard. I must assign every bit of it to a team member. Let’s clog their time with all these checkboxes to do.” Instead, when you focus on B, the bottom line is, “Does this hit your revenue goals? Does this hit your profitability goals? Does this help you achieve those non-negotiables for your business or perhaps for your personal life?”

What is the bottom line concept? Is this number going to help you see, “Hey, I’m driving towards the right things?” As I mentioned earlier, you could look at lots of things in your business, but not everything is going to drive the needle; not everything is going to be tied to your bottom line. That is one of the key ways to reduce and remove anything you might have thought was important to go on the dashboard in the first place.

As we move through the last piece, when you have C, clarity and confidence as a CEO in the business, if the data isn’t improving clarity, then it’s not helpful. And so this is permission right now; if you’ve been getting a spreadsheet from a team member for weeks on end, and you have this number on there, and it’s just not helping you make any decisions, please consider removing it.

Again, coming back to the process of simplicity scales, complexity fails, so how can you continue to ensure that what’s in front of you is helping you make data-driven decisions tied to your overarching goals?

The great thing about modern business is that it runs on software that captures vast amounts of data, and the information you need is already there. It just hasn’t been utilized to its full potential.

What would be an example of a metric that is just informational versus one that is more action-oriented, let’s say, for marketing?

This is an interesting one. I can share with you that it has two sides of the coin. Let’s talk about social media, something that a lot of people are using these days to create content and connections and increase engagement, hopefully leading to sales. If I talk to a newer entrepreneur or someone heavily referral-based, comments on a LinkedIn article or post may not be in their 80-20. It may not be something that’s really going to drive sales. 

However, at the same time, if I’m talking to an influencer whose sole purpose is to drive traffic to their website, that’s how they make money. Then, we can see that engagement on that post directly leads to more lands on your blog post, generating more revenue. 

We can tie back directly to, “Hey, there’s a value per comment or per engagement on this post over time.” Sometimes, it can be identified directly, like this particular post drove a certain amount of dollar revenue. And sometimes you can look at that overarching as well, like, “Hey, over the last 90 days, when we get this type of engagement, we see this type of revenue come through as well.” I feel like this is a really good example of how it could be important for one business but maybe not so important for another.

That reminds me of a past client who had a lot of negative commentary on their YouTube channel, Yelp, and various other platforms—a lot of that was unaddressed; most of it was. I didn’t have a dedicated community manager going in and addressing the customer complaints. A metric that is only informational, not valuable, is the number of comments posted to their videos in the last week or month on YouTube. A more action-oriented one would be unaddressed customer complaints posted to their YouTube videos in the previous week or month.

Exactly, it’s a great example. It ties back to what is generating the revenue and sales for the business, what is generating that may be more philanthropic or nonprofit and things like that. Is it still leading to your overarching goals for the year? And that cuts through so much of the clutter that could otherwise show up.

What would be an example of a metric or two for a nonprofit?

We’ve had this interesting conversation with folks. So you think nonprofits like, “Oh, they’re not interested in money.” That’s not the case at all. They’re very interested in donors. They’re very interested in getting donations coming through. When hosting events, what do their registrations or signups look like?

If you’ve been getting spreadsheets from a team member for weeks, and the data doesn’t help you make informed decisions, consider removing the spreadsheets.

They’re also looking at how many typically have team members constantly looking and researching who might be good partners for increasing donations. So those are the partnerships, the number of outreaches. That’s a really good leading indicator. One thing that might be good to clarify as well, Stephan, is that one of the pieces that trips people up sometimes is they get stuck on the dollars. Dollars are great; we want those things coming through for businesses and nonprofits. But that’s something that tends to happen at the end. That’s something that happens after your team has done all the work. It’s something that after you’ve spent all the money on marketing and other pieces. It’s considered a lagging indicator. Something that happens after the effort has been exerted.

Instead, we find that those who are scaling and growing their businesses can lean into the leading indicators. “How many outreaches did Susan do last week? How many calls got booked? How many registrations did we have for that event?” Those early leading indicators are not only better, but they happen more frequently so that you can track them more easily.

It’s something that your team often feels like they actually have some control over. If I go to Susan and say, “Hey, your job is to increase revenue by $100,000 this month.” She’s like, “Alright, I hope I can do that. Let me know how I can help.” But if you say, “Hey, I need 100 people registering for this webinar that we’re doing every single Friday for the month.” That feels a lot more specific and attainable to her role. Then, that’s what ignites the team to take charge and start being a key leader for business growth as well.

Yeah, and there are different levels of leading and lagging indicators. In SEO, that would be the way toward the tail end of lagging, which would be SEO-generated revenue. Something that would be more leading but still a lagging indicator is the number of keywords that the website is ranking for.

However, a leading indicator indicates that they are heading in a positive direction, eventually leading to increased rankings and revenue. If you could give an example, let’s say, an agency business of leading and lagging indicators because you have clients and do projects for them. You have an agency, right? This is something that you have intimate familiarity with.

I’ll give a great example. We run live events and training oftentimes as our marketing of choice to onboard clients. One of the things that we do when we’re running these events is we will have free training coming in, so we are inviting people to register.

Hopefully, then, they attend, book sales call with us, and become clients. That’s our four-part mini funnel that’s happening to acquire clients. A lagging indicator is the number of clients. That’s what’s going to happen at the end of this campaign. But on the flip side, there are a couple of leading indicators to your point. A leading indicator could be how many calls our team gets booked.

A leading indicator could also be what our attendance looks like—percentage and quantity. Another leading indicator, even before that, would be how many people are registering. A leading indicator before that is how many people are opening the emails. How many people are landing on the landing page? If you’re wondering what a leading or lagging indicator is, if you think about it, what’s the end result you want? Like, do you want another client every week? Do you want another ten clients every week or 100 by the end of the month? 

If you think about what end goal you want, what has to happen before they become a client? “Well, they have a conversation with us.” How do they have a conversation? “First, they get a proposal.” And then how do they get the proposal? “Well, first, they opt for the lead magnet.” So, if you reverse engineer, get granular with every single step that has happened before. Basically, you’re at the beginning, where they’ve never heard of you, and they found out about you somewhere somehow. 

That’s one of the earliest indicators you can get to so that you have several metrics that you can look at because—I’m not sure if you’ve seen the same thing on the SEO agency side of things—oftentimes, the whole business isn’t broke. There’s enough traction and systems in place, so you don’t need to throw out the baby with the bath water. 

You can actually find the slice that’s underperforming. Like, “Wow, we have great conversions, but no one opens emails afterward. I wonder if something’s wrong with us, or if we are getting marked as spam, or what’s happening to where no one’s opening up the reminder emails?” 

There is plenty of existing data to discover what’s truly moving your business forward in a 80-20 capacity.

You may have great attendance at your webinar or training, but no one’s booking calls. “Okay, am I teaching too much? What’s that gap I need to change so I don’t need to create a whole new campaign? I just need to fix what I’m talking about in the training so that it becomes more encouraging for people to book calls at the end.” 

Right. An example of an SEO that would be a leading indicator is if I notice that the client hasn’t posted to their blog or article area for three years; that could be a leading indicator. We will track how many SEO-focused blog posts are published or at least drafted each time. Then, tracking the keywords and the number of sales or leads coming in from SEO are the lagging indicators that connect with the leading indicator.

Yeah, it’s so powerful. At the beginning of the year, you want to set these big, hairy, audacious goals, right? But in the week, if all you’re thinking about is that big number you’re trying to hit, it can become overwhelming because it feels like there are so many things you could be doing. But when you can reverse engineer and backtrack into what are those early indicators, it becomes very clear that “Oh, well, if I just focused on registrations or if I just focused on writing one blog post this week, that is the critical launch point for me getting to my end result by December 31st.” Then again, we’re adding simplicity. We’re bringing clarity to what it will take to achieve your goals.

Good stuff. Let’s get a couple more examples for our listeners who might be a different kind of business than an agency. They may not even be doing SEO right now. And we’ll move on to some of the more techie stuff, like the platforms and templates, to help get them going. What would a podcaster and/or a coach want to track leading and lagging indicators in their dashboard?

Yes, so of the podcasters that we’ve worked with in the past, again, being really clear on what your funnel is, but for this particular client that we had worked with, downloads are kind of one of the only direct indicators you can get from the platforms themselves oftentimes. Some people will listen to it streaming in other places, but downloads are a really good indicator of the popularity of how frequently your guests tune in each week. One of the other key things that I feel most podcasters do, but I would love to call it out, is having one link your podcast listeners go to. So it may be your website slash podcast, but having a landing spot where you can see, like, “Hey, that’s podcast traffic.” It’s probably helpful on the SEO side of things as well, but being able to see where those people are coming from and then you can update that page with whatever the latest tools or tips or templates or things like you’ve had over time or the replays and stuff becomes really helpful to track what your podcast listeners are doing versus you might have talked about like, “Oh, follow me on Instagram and also go do this and also go do that.” No, the more you can just lead them to one spot, the better tracking you’ll have to be able to see that through.

Early leading indicators are not only great tools for tracking, but they also frequently occur so that you can easily track them.

Yeah. The better compliance you’ll have in terms of doing the thing that you’re asking them for a few if you give them three or four different calls to action, the more overwhelming it is, and you’re overloading their system. Many YouTubers say, “Like this video, subscribe, ring the notification bell, and watch the video.” Like, “Wait a second. Let me pause the video and make a list.” Nobody’s going to do that. That’s overwhelming.

And like, “How many different clicks do I have to do right now?” One other thing too, especially if you’re using a podcast, I’ll say like as a coach, like this person was doing, also ensuring that there’s even creating a link if you are onboarding clients from a sales call, then can you have a sales call specifically that only your podcast listeners get to as well. So that’s one way we’ve been able to reduce the noise so that we can see what those listeners are doing. And yes, sometimes people will come through the cracks, but you’ll be amazed at how much clarity you have for what’s happening with your podcasts when you have a super tight funnel like that.

Yeah. Let’s say particular metrics such as downloads are really trying to connect the dots as far as how this drives engagement, business value, etc.—for example, tracking overall downloads per time, whether week or month, is something that most podcasters would do or have access to. It’s part of tools like Libsyn or whatever hosting platform they use. If they look at the highest-performing episodes in terms of downloads, that’ll give them indicators that they’re able to take more action instead of just knowing, “Oh, July was a really good month for us. I wonder why.” How about looking at what, out of the last 52 interviews, really stood out and then trying to reverse-engineer what made that particular episode so compelling? Was there an unusual behavior that the guest had, like promoting the episode to their email list, and it was a separate email not just to mention in their newsletter? Maybe they had a very compelling case study or offer, or maybe they’re just really famous and get Googled and YouTube searched a lot. That sort of stuff is way more actionable.

Absolutely. It’s a great point there, Stephan. Like the podcasters that we’ve seen as well, it lives in oftentimes. The most common view is to look at the list of your past podcast episodes, and it will tell you some information. But when you can flip that and look at it graphically so that, “Wow, I can see week after week the increase in downloads or decrease in downloads,” or I can summarize them and say, “July was great, but why was August so bad? Oh yeah, I only posted one instead of four that month.” That’s a fairly clear example of how impactful your weekly consistency is on how many downloads you’re receiving. Another interesting thing is the type. Sometimes, podcasters might do like live coaching calls. Those might get more traction than just a teaching-style episode. Or sometimes everyone loves to have their recap or replays, like, “Hey, we’re bringing back the best of 2022,” or those sorts of things. You’ll see a dramatic dip in that repurposed content because people always crave the new and the fresh. Not to say that that’s not for every podcaster out there, but for the ones we’ve worked with, we tend to see that drop when it’s repurposed content instead of fresh and new.

It makes sense. So, somebody who isn’t necessarily podcasting, but they’re a coach, and they do strategy sessions or free first-session sales calls. What are some metrics for them?

I love making sure you’re very clear on your sales pipeline at that point in time. If you know that having calls with people is one step before they become clients, what are some ways that have worked well for you in the past to get more calls booked? Was it when you did a podcast with a particular colleague? Was it when you maybe did a facilitated training inside someone else’s mastermind? Those warm connections are what easily generate more booked sales calls. At the same time, if you’re also playing with more social media—organic or Facebook ads, get really clear on what clients have actually come from those initial points. Did it come from the warm connections? Did it come from social media? Did it come from Facebook ads? Because of what I see in the coaching space, let me know if you see this, too; we ended up just adding on. It was like, “Oh, that worked for somebody. Let me add that to my business.” We ended up with this big bowl of spaghetti; not sure what’s making the money. So, taking the time to come back and say, “Alright, where’s the money coming in right now?” So I’ve got these sales calls, and it can be as simple as adding, how did you hear about me? Check the box on the sales call booking itself. So they can know if they came from a podcast, heard me speak somewhere, or saw me on a Facebook ad. You can get a sense of where these people are coming from.

The more you lead your audience to one spot, the better you can track.

That reminds me of an episode recently where I interviewed Tom Kelly, who had coached me for a while and one of the things he had me do, which was brilliant, was a marketing weapons tracking spreadsheet. This was years ago, and it was really valuable to see where these clients came from, how much revenue was associated with each client, and where it originated. It seems so simple.

But when you see that in a summary form, like, “Okay, these are the conferences, seminars and masterminds that generated six or seven figures for me. And these are ones that I feel good about, and I enjoy but have generated nothing.” That’s pretty telling.

Absolutely, and until you actually look at it from a data perspective, you can feel warm and cozy with your intuition of like, “Oh well, I think people might have gone there, or maybe I planted the seed, and maybe in a year or two from now people will become clients.” While that may be true, you also have right in front of you if you just went to more conferences like this or maybe you went to the conference and the VIP session. That could be an immediate boost to revenue versus a long endeavor to see clients come through. 

Yeah, that’s a great point. When you think about the cost of going to an event, whether a conference or a mastermind or whatever, if you pay the VIP price, does that generate a disproportionately large return? That’s a very different question. Does the event pay for itself? So I’ve found that going VIP to an event has led to some really big accounts that I would not have met because we met in the VIP lounge or we met in the first few rows of the event, and if I had sat further back in the general admission section, I probably wouldn’t have met that person. These are key distinctions.

One thing too, as well, that I was just going to note, especially for coaches, when you’re considering where you want to play, how you want to win in this game we call business, then how long is it taking clients to say yes to working with you as well? So often, you’re getting people into your CRM, and they’re landing on your calendar. How long from that first point of contact until they book an appointment with you, or how long until they become a client? 

Some of the interesting data is coming through right now. A couple of years ago, it was a two-month window where people were learning about you and becoming clients on average. But what we’ve seen, I don’t know if you’ve seen this as well, but in the last two years or so, it’s extended that window. So it’s longer, four to six months in the coaching space, for people to build that trust factor with you into becoming clients. What is interesting to also track is whether that window is the same for your social media traffic versus conferences, or those sorts of things will fast-track what’s happening there, too.

Good stuff. Let’s move on to the software and the libraries of templates you like the most and why and which ones you suggest our listener pass on.

First of all, I did want to address that software is getting savvy to the fact that people want more visualization of their data. You see this on Instagram insights and YouTube analytics on the back end, where they create data visualization. QuickBooks even is coming up with trying to have a dashboard on the front end of their software. 

Software is getting savvy to the fact that people want this. But they’re also not dashboard companies. They are specific tools to help you do your accounting or increase engagement. While that’s nice, it’s often not always exactly what you want, and it also doesn’t necessarily talk to each other. It might be really important to know how your email campaign is landing revenue from HubSpot to QuickBooks. But they’re not talking to each other. So, with dashboards, one of the key benefits is that you get to layer that data or bring it in from all of the different software you’re using. You’re not isolated, and you’re not having to hop into 12 different applications on Monday morning to figure out what is happening in your business. 

One of the reasons I love dashboards is that at a glance, we can see the ten, twelve, or fifteen metrics that are important for knowing how the business is doing today, “Do I need to jump in, or can I just let our systems and processes do their thing?” That’s a key distinction between the built-in dashboards of software these days and dashboard software meant to layer in all that information.

What’s cool is there are a lot of options out there. A free one is Looker Studio, formerly Google Data Studio. The user interface is a little bit challenging. I think it’s something that they’re still working on. It’s not super intuitive and can require a decent amount of zaps. So, use Zapier to integrate into software that’s not pre-built.

Google Data Studio does a really good job with things like YouTube, which they’re connected with, part of the parent company, with Google Analytics. They even do a really good job with Pinterest. Some of those are pre-built and really robust. But pulling in Facebook ads and your CRM and QuickBooks is not as enjoyable to put together.

There are new things like DataBox coming out. You’ve got Hyros, which is a bit more expensive for bringing data together and is very robust. And then, where we’ve landed for small business, we’re currently using Klipfolio.

That’s the sweet spot for the multi-six, multi-seven figure businesses out there because it’s cost-effective and integrates directly with many online software used today. If you’re using Asana, HubSpot, Facebook ads, QuickBooks, LinkedIn, and YouTube, all of these things are pre-built, so it’s very easy to pull this information into one place. 

That’s the key tool we’re using these days, and just continue. What’s great, too, is that they’ve been around for a long time, and we’re part of their back-end partner team as things are coming out or requesting new things. We’ve got a really great partnership with them, too.

Awesome. Do they have template libraries? I’m just looking at their site, and they have a gallery of dashboards. Do you have to start from scratch, or can you just get one of those pre-made templates to start you off?

Software is getting savvy to the fact that people want more visualization of their data. There are specific software tools to help you with your accounting or to increase engagement.

I know I mentioned at the beginning, like at the end of the day, I truly believe custom dashboards will serve you better than a full-on template for your whole business. One of the great things Klipfolio does is have a segment called PowerMetrics, which is pre-built based on the platform. Let’s say you want to hook up Google Analytics. You can say, “Hey, I want to integrate Google Analytics with my dashboard,” and then it will pre-populate all of the point-and-click options you might want to import. You may want to see traffic by month, or you want to see sources of traffic or people coming from social media or email or organic. Or you may want to see goal completion. You can basically point and click which ones you want to add, and it will automatically add those for you.

It’s the same thing with QuickBooks. You may have P & L data that you want to have front and center. The Power Metric piece of their software also makes it easy to bring in pre-built metrics, and then it’s fairly easy to edit from there. That’s a really good starting point, but if you want to add one or two things, you have a great spot to do that.

I got it. Now, some big, more enterprise-level tools are out there, like Tableau and so forth. What would be a typical business intelligence dashboard software that a big enterprise might use?

That’s where I came from, too. As I said, I spent a decade in corporate manufacturing and supply chain. So we were using software like Tableau or even Power BI or Domo. This is typically not for the CEO. This is for a team member to do a deep dive and regular analysis, which bubbles up some key metrics.

It’s typically meant to be a very robust drill-down feature so that your team can analyze what’s going on and get into the weeds of things versus the dashboards we were talking about, which are more of an executive summary. Also, to prevent drill downs from happening because often, I don’t know if you’ve experienced this as well, but those meetings can go off on tangents if too much information is brought to the table. 

So those tools like Tableau, and like I said, they are more enterprise-based. This is for people also utilizing the Microsoft suite; perhaps those features will tie in nicely with Tableau and Power BI in their businesses.

Speaking of Microsoft, there’s, I think, a lesser-known tool from them that is completely free called Microsoft Clarity. Are you familiar with this tool? It’s for user testing and user experience analysis. You can see anonymized session recordings showing user behavior on your site where they are getting stuck. Where are the what are called rage clicks? Where they’re clicking on something that’s not supposed to be clicked on and doesn’t take them anywhere. You can see this information, and it’s free, like Google Analytics, which is free. You can add that as an overlay and not have to stop using Google Analytics. You just use Microsoft Clarity on top of that. That could give you some actionable insights fed into whatever dashboard software you’re using to give you insights into what to do next to improve the user experience.

I am not. Very cool. I’m going to have to look into that one.

I know we’re about out of time here. If you could give our listener or viewer some actionable next steps, they don’t have to necessarily book a strategy call with you or whatever, but if they could maybe get some sort of free download, free tool, some video to watch, something that would help them to move this is forward if they’re interested in actually getting some great dashboards in their business.

Custom dashboards will serve you better than full-on templates for your entire business.

Absolutely. I highly suggest grabbing our 12 Metrics Checklist. You can grab that over at 12metrics.com. It will give you a checklist, but I’m also going to have these mini videos that go with each of those 12 metrics so that you can really understand why this is important and how you could use and implement it. It gets a handful of metrics started that are most likely to help you make this year one of your best yet.

Awesome. And then to work with you, where do they go for that?

If you are interested in just having a white glove service to get this dashboard up and running, we would love to talk to you about our boutique dashboard-building services. You can check us out at theprojectbooth.com. We’ve got some great info and a place to book a call with us if that sounds like the next best step for you.

Awesome. Well, thank you, Layne. This was fabulous. You do great work. We know each other through one of the masterminds that we’re both in, JVMM, Joint Venture Mastermind. This is an interview I’ve wanted to have us do for at least a few months, so thank you for coming.

Yes, it’s always a pleasure chatting with you, Stephan. Thanks so much for having me.

Thank you. And then thank you, listener. Go out there, make it a great week, do something amazing. We’ll catch up with you in the next episode. I’m your host, Stephan Spencer, signing off.

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Your Checklist of Actions to Take

Tailor my dashboard to my specific business needs, team structure, and long-term vision. Avoid generic templates and focus on what truly matters to my unique situation.

Implement the A in ABCs of KPIs Framework: Analyze and audit. Leverage my existing data to identify what already works or doesn’t work in my business. 

Practice the B in ABCs of KPIs Framework: Bottom line alignment. Ensure that my metrics directly align with revenue, profitability, and other non-negotiable goals for my business.

Prioritize C in ABCs of KPIs Framework: Clarity and confidence. If data doesn’t improve clarity or assist in making data-driven decisions, remove it from my dashboard to maintain my focus.

Designate leading indicators for early insights into my business performance and allow for course corrections. Lagging indicators are important, but should be viewed in the context of leading indicators to drive actionable insights for me.

Reverse engineer my goals in business. Break down my big, audacious goals into smaller, attainable steps. 

Define clear funnels for my business, whether through acquiring clients, driving podcast engagement, or converting leads. 

Direct my audience to a single landing page or link for tracking purposes. This centralized approach simplifies tracking and provides clearer insights into my audience’s behavior.

Continuously review and refine my dashboard metrics based on my evolving business needs, goals, and performance trends. 

Choose dashboard software that emphasizes clear visualization of data. This allows me to quickly grasp key metrics and trends.

Download Layne Booth’s 12 Metrics Checklist, which is available at 12metrics.com. Visit theprojectbooth.com to learn more about Layne’s white-glove dashboard-building services.

About Layne Booth

Layne Booth is the CEO and Dashboard Expert of The Project Booth, a business growth agency that uses proven metrics and data to help businesses grow faster and with more clarity. With strategically planning and visual dashboards, business owners can reclaim their time to focus on their business, make data-driven decisions, and increase their income.