Laura Kåmark
Hey everyone. Welcome to the Be Bold, Make Waves podcast, a show bringing you inspiring stories of women who are growing and scaling their business. I’m your host, Laura Kåmark, a website and tech integration specialist who works with online business owners who love their work and not their website. Join me as we have incredible conversations about business mindset, productivity, and, of course, the website and tech behind the business. Let’s go ahead and dive in to this week’s episode. Hello, and welcome to this week’s show. For those of you who don’t already know me, I’m Laura Kåmark, a website and tech automation specialist who works with women who love their work, but not their website. I am so excited to introduce you to my guest today. Cassandra LeRoy. Cassandra is a Dashboard Designer, and data consultant who helps coaches consultants and course creators turn their metrics into momentum. So they can ditch the overwhelm and embrace a sustainable growth system using data backed decisions to scale to six and seven figures. Cassandra, I am so excited to have you on the show today, I just love geeking out over all this stuff. Can you tell our listeners just a little bit more about kind of your background story?

Cassandra LeRoy
Sure, thank you for having me, I am so ready to geek out too. Um, so my background is I grew up actually with a lot of entrepreneurs. But I didn’t know what I wanted that to look like for me. Because I you want to, you know, be like your family growing up and seeing them running businesses. But no one as a little kid thinks, oh, I’m going to be a consultant when I grow up. So I never knew how that was going to look for me or like what business I would own. So I found my way into project management, large events, planning for trade shows, conventions. And I always use the data that was my best tool for clients. That’s where we got the most clarity, we saw the most value. And then COVID happened. And live events stopped overnight, literally. And so I saw that as my moment if I’m ever going to start a business. So it’s going to be now. And the funny thing is, is I thought I was going to do a complete one ad I thought I was going to do Facebook ads strategy and marketing and try all these new things. And as I started working with clients, they realized my strengths, and I found myself again doing project management, and again, having conversations about the data. And so eventually I gave in and I said you know what, if this is where I’m needed, if this is the value that the clients are really enjoying, let’s dive in full force. And so now I am a dashboard, designer and data consultant.

Laura Kåmark
Oh my gosh, I love that story. I felt it feels very similar to my story. My parents growing up, they had their own business. They were entrepreneurs. They had like a brick and mortar business. And then I was doing some I was on I was a project lead when I was in corporate. And then I kept like, I want to be a web designer. And then I kept ending up in these project management roles when I was doing my own business. And I’m like, wait a minute. I’m really good at that. But I really liked building websites.

Cassandra LeRoy
Yeah, it’s such a full circle moment how you get drawn back in sometimes?

Laura Kåmark
Absolutely. So can you explain to our audience a little bit like what exactly is a dashboard?

Cassandra LeRoy
Sure. So there’s a fun statistic that says 65% of people are actually visual learners, and 30% or more are auditory learners. So right there, you know that over 90% of the population actually needs to have some visual cue, or they need to talk things through with someone in order to fully comprehend the situation and the story. And it’s the true. It’s the same thing with data with metrics. A lot of people know what they are, they track them, that’s great. But they have trouble really understanding the story behind them. And that’s what the dashboards that I designed do, it really takes their goals, their vision, and puts it into a visual story that they can understand and make decisions really easily for their business. Oh,

Laura Kåmark
that’s so much because like, I mean, okay, let me I tried to track so many things. And I know even me, like I’m horrible about always going and checking my Google Analytics and actually like finding out what the results are from all this data that I’m collecting. But actually being able to put that into like a cohesive story can feel a little, it can be daunting.

Cassandra LeRoy
It’s a lot. It’s overwhelming. Even for me, sometimes you have to stop and be like, Okay, what am I trying to accomplish? What are my goals and focus back in and that’s what I love about the numbers is when you really learn to read the story behind it when you’re a detective And you pull out those insights, it tells you so much about your business. It gives you a roadmap to how to grow your business and where your business needs attention. And so it is worth having the time to have a data system. And I think you kind of touched on it a little bit. A lot of people may have spreadsheets like you do, they may even have dashboards, but they don’t have a data system. They don’t have, like the specific timing to go back in and review those insights to really get the full benefits.

Laura Kåmark
Absolutely. I know, like, I will tell clients like I will set Google Analytics up for you all day long. But I’m not gonna sit here and try to explain to you how to use it because I can barely figure out how to like, pick my way around and fully understand what’s happening in there. Because there’s so much information and it’s a lot. Yeah, it is a lot.

Cassandra LeRoy
It’s a lot when you already have a lot on your plate, right? Like, at the end of the long day, that’s the last thing you want to do is like, Oh, let me curl up, you know, instead of a nice book in it, and a glass of wine, let me dive into some Google Analytics, like Said no one ever

Laura Kåmark
told, that was me. That was totally me. The other night, I was watching a presentation from the simply profitable designer summit that I had spoke at just a couple of weeks ago. And there was one on local SEO and Google Analytics and all these things. So I’m like, I have my cheese, I have my wine, digging into my husband, because he has a physical location business. And I’m just sticking in like looking at some listings. I’m like, Honey, you’re posting on Instagram. I’m like, you’ve gotten one person from Instagram in like the last six months, like you probably should, your efforts somewhere else? Because that’s not where people are coming to your website from people are coming from Google searches. That’s how they find him. Laura,

Cassandra LeRoy
that’s exactly it. Oh, my gosh, I’m so glad you said that example, because so many people are in that same situation. And it’s like driving a car blindfolded. Like you would never do that. It’s dangerous. Why would you ever do that to your business? Yeah, that’s such a great example. Because your husband is not alone. I’ve heard several people be in that same situation.

Laura Kåmark
What are some of the important like, metrics matrices to have set up? Like, we know, I know, we need Google Analytics, like as business owners, what stuff? Do we need to be setting up on the back end to track?

Cassandra LeRoy
So I think this is the not fun answer where I have to say, Well, it depends because everyone’s goals are different. And truly, I think your dashboard, the metrics that you’re tracking, need to be specific to you and your goals, you need to, like I said, the driving kind of metaphor, the first thing you do when you get in and use a GPS is you need to put in the correct destination, right, or else you are in, you’re not going to end up in the right place, you’re gonna have to be backtracking. And it takes three times as long to get there. And so if you can get really specific on your vision and goals, then we can backtrack and find the right metrics to track for your business. And the good news about that is then you’re not having to track everything. You’re tracking the few key areas and the right things where you can focus your time and effort. And then it, there’s not the struggle there. You know, it shouldn’t be so difficult, it can be easy when you’re tracking the right metrics. So there are lots of metrics to track sales marketing, the important thing is, is to not pay attention to vanity metrics. I don’t care how many likes how many comments, they’re not paying your bills, you really need to focus on the leading metrics that help you look forward in your business. And so I actually have a tool available on my website that’ll help you determine those leading metrics. I’m happy to talk with people to help dive into that. But that’s the important thing is to really define your goals. And then you can work backwards to find the right metrics for your business that are leading metrics.

Laura Kåmark
I’m gonna go look at this tool you have on your after our call, what would you say something that I find a lot of there’s a conversation I’ve been having a lot lately with some of my other like colleagues, and friends in the online space, talking about the importance of validating offers, and how clients can understand what it means to validate an offer, and the importance of validating things before you start kind of like throwing a bunch of money behind something. Can we talk a little bit about the validation process and using the data to validate offers?

Cassandra LeRoy
Yeah. I love the idea of validating because on the flip side when you don’t, and I’ve seen this happen to clients where they spend a lot of time and effort and products or services, and then we come in we scrubbed the data and we will find Find out, they are spending 80% of their time on the products and services that make 10% of the profit. And it’s kind of heartbreaking when you think of like all that hard time, effort, late nights, you know, working on things at 2am, only to create 10% of your profit. And so validating as you go is one wonderful. There is a bit of try fail adjust factor there, sometimes you just have to test it. And so that’s where it’s really helpful to have someone who is a third party point of view like myself, who can go through that journey with you and have an outsider’s perspective and say, Hey, yes, let’s move forward and try this or say no, according to the numbers, we really need to dial it back. We’re looking to make sure that we’re making the right decisions. But at no point do we want to put your business in jeopardy. And so someone like myself can come along in that journey and and help you make sure that at no point you’re putting Jeopardy at no point you’re leaking revenue and profit, trying to develop products and validate them along the way. So it’s a little different for everyone. Like I said, every business is unique and different that way. And the trifield adjusts, but you have to know your good, better best scenarios when you do validation like that. So take some time to run the numbers. At what point? Do I really need to pull the plug because it jeopardizes my business? What are my good goals where I think it’s great to move forward? We can keep adjusting things and what is my best scenario, everything is tracking, we’re getting great responses from people, let’s move forward full till put more resources more budget behind this. Know those benchmarks, which makes it really easy in the moment to make those judgment calls. When you’re in the emotions about it. You know, when you’re creating a new project, there’s a lot of emotions involved. And so having those numbers those benchmarks help you make a better decision in the moment.

Laura Kåmark
Oh my gosh, I love that so much. Because yeah, we are so close and like so we feel it when we create something that’s like that’s our baby, you know, we Yes, the birth these ideas into the world and share it. And it can be so hard when we are so close to it to see things that an outsider can so often easily see.

Cassandra LeRoy
Yeah, and I get that a lot where numbers are simple numbers are very honest, aren’t going to sugarcoat things, they’re definitely going to reveal some things you may not like. But they can also be a permission slip, they can also be a really good things to encourage you to keep going. So I don’t want to feel like oh, I have to check my numbers is always a bad thing. It can be the green light to something and validating and moving forward. So it’s exciting. But yes, it is always good to balance the messy human emotions. With maybe the data that helps you clear through the fog a little bit.

Laura Kåmark
Do you find that a lot of your clients that you work with are kind of maybe have a fear of those of the numbers of looking at the data.

Cassandra LeRoy
Do so I kind of have two different tracks, either someone is actually pretty good with the data, but they just don’t have time they are overwhelmed. They have lots of plates spinning. And then there’s the other track where yes, it is just something maybe from not being good at math class or, you know, something happened along the way, where they now have this fear, this inhibition where they think that they’re not a numbers person, they think that they can’t get a handle on them. But it’s always really exciting to see the light bulb go off, especially when we make dashboards to see non math people realize, oh, my gosh, I can do this. This makes sense. And so it’s kind of like an example of if I took the word stop off of a stop sign it still showed you the sign. Would you know what it means? Yes. Right. And it’s because you have that visual. So maybe you’re not presenting the information in a way that just makes sense for your brain. So I do tend to work with a lot of creatives, a lot of neurodivergent CEOs and business owners, because they just need a different way to present the information. It’s the same thing like checking the weather. So you could have a table full of numbers or you can have a graphic that says a little sun with like 80 degrees and a little moon with like a cloud and you know what’s going to be cold that night all because of the way it was visually represented. And I think that’s a huge part people miss out on and it really helps dial back their fear and give them confidence when they just have the right visualization tool for their data.

Laura Kåmark
I love that so much. I think it’s so important because we do we all learn and process in different ways. I know for me, I’m finding more and more that I’m just such a like verbal processor. Oh, I’m not much of a journaler. I have a really hard time journaling things. I mean, mastermind right now. And there’s a prompt each week, and I will literally I’ll write it out in my head, I’ll respond to it in my head. But I won’t go and just type out the response. So I never get to it. But I’m like, Man, if I could just like boxer this answer. Video, it’s so much easier for me to process using just my words, which is probably why I also have the podcasts is so much easier for me than like creating a blog post. Because it’s just, that’s how I process things is by verbalizing it out.

Cassandra LeRoy
I love that. So are you the type where you tend to do voice to text or leave yourself little voice notes.

Laura Kåmark
I stressed Siri and I are not friends. We don’t get along, don’t speak the same language. She’s just, I don’t know, if I’m just a little too old school and I just can’t figure her out.

Cassandra LeRoy
I don’t like her and I don’t use oh my gosh, that’s so funny.

Laura Kåmark
I would love to use voice to text my husband has started using a lot more. And it drives me nuts because I can’t figure out like if I’m supposed to say period, or comma, or if she’ll figure it out. She kind of bothers me because she’ll get it wrong. And I’m like, I don’t remember what that word should be because it’s not a recording of it. So I’ve tried also using the Google Talk to tech or talk to type. Okay, but it again, it doesn’t always get my recording, like what I’m saying, right? So instead I’ll just do a loom video and either pull the transcript from there or upload it to otter AI to pull the transcript for things so that I can pull the text from it that way because I’m I’m struggling with talk to type technology.

Cassandra LeRoy
I love that I discovered the voice record app on my iPhone. And now I have to like start putting them in folders. I have so many it’s just so convenient like you to talk it through. And then allow yourself that time to process it back. I’m the same way. Yeah,

Laura Kåmark
I do. I have a lot of Voxer chats with my little masterminds I’m in. And that helps me so much. i The one thing I’m horrible about though, is going back and like storing the things I want to remember for later and trying to go through the thread is a little intense, because it gets out of hand pretty quickly with all the back and forth that we do. But I definitely find like even just on our Monday checking box that we do where it’s like, Okay, so what’s on everyone’s like goal is to accomplish this week, and that it’s easier for me just to talk it out on the fly than to try to write it down. I mean, I will write it down later. But that’s Yeah, I’m definitely a verbal processor, I’m discovering. And then I’m also very visual where I need to, like see things and touch it. So like, my husband, I always say has a technological black cloud that follows him around. And so he sometimes struggles with like stuff on the computer. And he’s like, Well just tell me what to do. I’m like, I can’t tell you I just I have to show you I have to touch it and walk through because I don’t always remember the words for where to click and what to do. I have to visually see it to walk.

Cassandra LeRoy
Or it’s almost like muscle memory. You get into that rhythm. And you’re like, no, this doesn’t feel right. It wasn’t over here. It was over here. Yeah,

Laura Kåmark
it is muscle memory. That’s exactly what it is how Yeah, absolutely. I love that. Yeah. So I think it’s important to just touch on that though. I mean, we all do learn in so many different ways. And it’s so important that as we’re doing our businesses and helping support clients that we find ways to connect with them and help them in with all the different ways that they can process. I mean, I know I do like a lot of live videos for my clients.

Cassandra LeRoy
Yeah, and that’s perfect. Um, so there’s another step that says people make over 35,000 decisions a day. Like, just it’s just phenomenal trying to think that number through on how many decisions you make a day. So like decision fatigue is real. It’s totally real. And by the end of the day, like sometimes you just want to read like a story book like a kindergartner, like, just show me the pictures, my brain can’t process any more information. You don’t have the energy, the time like the bandwidth to handle that. And so being able to visualize something, if it can help your brain understand it, then don’t fight your brain. You were made to work a specific way. Let’s work with those strengths, not against them.

Laura Kåmark
I love that. Yeah. And I love that you’re creating a way to connect with your clients, meeting them where they’re at, and finding ways to for them. Oh, I love that so much. So how can we talk a little bit about how you like got a little bit deeper into this whole idea of transitioning from project management to like the Death data consulting.

Cassandra LeRoy
Yeah, so like I mentioned, I was doing project management, and then slowly started taking over some more operational things. And next thing you know, I’m kind of getting into online business manager territory. And because I had that trust with clients, I was able to notice certain trends, I’m picking up on certain behaviors that I would pick up before with trade shows. I was so used to making data back decisions beforehand, in corporate where I didn’t even second guess it. That’s where I needed to look for clues, right, if something was going on, was checking the data. And so it was second nature to me to play detective, and dig in and find the data and bring that to the table for the clients. So it was a really natural progression. Um, I didn’t realize how helpful it was outside of trade shows until you have those conversations with clients. And you see that aha moment, and you see that light bulb above their head go, oh, that’s what’s going on. Oh, I forgot we did it that way last time. That’s why those numbers aren’t the same this time. So seeing how quickly it changed their perspective, it removed the self doubt, they left the meeting with their shoulders, you know, back and their chin high, and they had more confidence, they knew what action to take. We knew how to have conversations with the team. It provided so much clarity, it was like my own light bulb going off is like, wow, I need to lean into this meeting more of this and having conversations. That’s so much.

Laura Kåmark
Would you say that there’s any like specific systems or programs that you recommend? I love talking all the tech things. So I’m very curious, what’s, what’s some of your favorite systems and programs. So I do

Cassandra LeRoy
have a few. But I will put this caveat, these are my favorite, it doesn’t mean they’re necessarily right for everyone, you can absolutely have an effective dashboard and just do it in Google Sheets, do it in Excel. If it’s not broken, you don’t have to fix it as long as it has the right tools and metrics for what you need to track. I of course am a bit of a DIY er and so I do like playing with more bells and whistles sometimes. And so I really like a mix between Google Data Studio and clip folio, they both have enough capabilities where you can get pretty creative, you can add some other maybe artistic elements that make the dashboard a little more fun, a little more interactive. And really help you slice and dice the data a little bit better get really granular on what you’re looking to uncover when it comes to analytics. There is a learning curve, I will say that I think it’s so much fun, I’ve spent a lot of time with them. But it is a learning curve. Not everyone has the time to spend, you know, two weeks, let alone a few months learning an in depth program like them. But again, to have the right visualizations to grow your business and sustainably scale to six and seven figures. You can do some really fun things in clip folio and Google Data Studio.

Laura Kåmark
I wonder if Google Google Data Studio is what I’m using. I have a dashboard that I set up after a quick course that was like a really nice short little snippet course that just walked me through how to set up a dashboard using it’s connected to I think analytics and Search Console. But I don’t know that I can find it anymore. I had I created it. But and then it kind of like disappeared into the Google world.

Cassandra LeRoy
Right. And now we’re moving to GE for analytics. So you may have to check up on that make sure it’s set up to the right analytics. PSA announcement for people make sure that they have their Google Analytics set up before July 1.

Laura Kåmark
Yeah, that’s something I know I was offering a special last year to clients to if they wanted some help in moving setting up GA for and getting all that connected over. Because that’s important. It’s really important. Yeah. And so just so our audience knows what what’s happening there is Google Analytics is Universal Analytics is going away. And there’s a new system that Google is putting out that is tracking and just sort of tracking things a little different. They are now I believe going to be pushing the connection or not the connection but the creation of it. It sounds like but that’s still not connecting it to your website. So there is still a manual piece that has to happen to make sure everything was updated properly.

Cassandra LeRoy
Exactly. And so if you do have a dashboard like the one you probably have, you may have to reconnect it. But just like before, with Google universal, there’s so much good data there, you set it up once, and it brings in so much good data to dive into. So it’s worth it.

Laura Kåmark
Talking back about like the data, what would you say is like one of the biggest mistakes you see people making with their data?

Cassandra LeRoy
There are a few. I think the biggest one is, like I mentioned before, they just don’t have a data system, they think a data is a spreadsheet, they fill it in, and they’re done. Or maybe they have a dashboard, they look at it once when they need something, and then they haven’t looked at it in six months. It’s like collecting digital dust. And that’s really not where you get the benefit out of it. It really needs to be a system that you do recurring, whether weekly or monthly. But it’s those incremental changes, like a dashboard is not going to, you know, make you $100,000 overnight, right? We want to create a culture in your business that uses data backed decisions. So over time, you see those little changes add up, you see that 1%, you know, increase in revenue add up over time, and those changes over time, can really transform a business, right? Oh, gosh, I I may get this wrong. What’s the quote that they say people always overestimate what they can do in a day, or underestimate what they can do in a year.

Laura Kåmark
Something like that, right? It sounds

Cassandra LeRoy
something like that, where I think having a data system is really bad, it’s playing the long game. And so if you’re not in there consistently, if you’re not making a habit of it, you’re really not getting the results or the full benefits of even tracking it. So at that point, you’re kind of creating your own headache, you’re wasting your own time and resources to fill in this spreadsheet that you don’t look at anyway. So yes, it we have to start adjusting our mindset that it is a data system, and that we need to develop a data culture in our business. I love that a data culture. Yeah. And the exciting thing about a data culture is I work with a lot of business owners who they have small teams too. So when it’s a culture in your business, it’s not just you, it’s your whole team. And so now you have a team of people who know the metrics that are tracking how their roles fit into the goal for your company, what everyone’s trying to accomplish. And so you no longer have a VA who’s maybe just a test taker, you have someone who is proactive, they’re taking ownership of areas in your business, they themselves are making data backed decisions and moving you know, your business forward and helping you grow. And that’s really powerful. When you it’s not just you alone, it’s your whole team using data back decisions.

Laura Kåmark
So if someone is like, Okay, I am not tracking my things. And what what do I need to be doing to just kind of like get myself started and get off to the right, the right start?

Cassandra LeRoy
Yeah. And it’s okay. Everyone has to start somewhere. So step one is to like, Okay, we’re gonna let go of the kilts, we’re gonna, we’re gonna let that go and just take step one. And we’re going to make sure that like I said before, the step one is really like the goals and your vision, you have to have the right destination for your GPS. So make sure that you have very clear goals for your business that your team knows the goal where everyone’s trying to achieve. And then starting from there, working backwards, like we said, to find your your leading metrics, and then we’re going to start tracking those. And just to be clear what I mean by like leading metrics versus lagging metrics, we touched on it a little bit earlier. But think of it this way, if you are trying to get more sales, you want to track sales, and that’s great. But that’s already happened. It’s after the fact, right? You can’t change it runs, it’s already happened. That’s like looking in your rear view mirror. If you do that, you’re going to crash, right? If you look in your rearview mirror the whole time while you’re driving, you’re going to miss things. And so you need to track a metric that is a leading indicator. And so for this example, for sales, it would be something like sales calls. If you have more sales calls, you’re gonna get more sales. And so something as simple as that is making sure that you are tracking the leading metrics If your goal is a great start. So I would start there, maybe track 122 leading metrics for each of your goals. And you shouldn’t have more than three or four goals. So that means that’s no more than 10 things to track on a weekly and monthly basis. That’s doable, right? Whether it’s you or your team, if you were looking at less than 10 things, and taking a few minutes each week to really dive in and look at the progress look at those trends. You can accomplish so much without feeling overwhelmed.

Laura Kåmark
Oh, I love that. And I love that example. So I would love to know if my goal was to grow my email list. What would be a? What would be the like, lead goal to be believed metric to be tracking for that?

Cassandra LeRoy
Yeah. So for an email list, that’s kind of the goal, what are the three key things that typically need to happen in your specific funnel working backwards in order to gain a new subscriber. And so typically, I would walk clients through that exercise and have them kind of work backwards in your funnel, what are those three things that happen? Before someone lands on your email list,

Laura Kåmark
they need to first land on the website, if it’s if we’re going further back than that they need to hear about the freebie either in a Facebook group on a podcast or at a summit. So then working back further than that would be being more visible. And speaking at more summits, getting on more podcasts and like, telling people about the thing, so posting about it on social and in Facebook groups.

Cassandra LeRoy
Perfect. So what I would do at that point is we would kind of make a note of those things. So now we’re looking at traffic numbers to your website, we are looking at crossover traffic from events, right. You may track those over, you know, different UTM codes. So you may have that specific information coming in from Google Analytics, and all your different traffic sources. I know you do social media too. So you have people landing on your socials for traffic. And then we also have conversion rates, how each of those are converting people over to your website. Once they’re on your website, are they filling out a form to get on your list? Yes. Okay. So once they fill out that form, or you know, they sign up for the lead magnet, we’re going to have those numbers as well. And then the fun part comes in where we look at all the numbers and we see, okay, the bulk of the traffic is coming from here. Maybe it’s LinkedIn, and you didn’t realize it was LinkedIn. So now we can focus on LinkedIn, because that’s your most powerful lead source. And let’s put resources there, let’s track that number. Or we can look at your conversion rate. And now you can say, Oh, this is a great conversion rate. But we think we can do better. Let’s tweak a little things on the website. Let’s talk to Laura about this awesome website and ever make some changes. And then we can start trying and testing and improving your conversion rates. And so each step along the way, you’re kind of building on top of each other, which ultimately adds up into big results for new email subscribers.

Laura Kåmark
Oh, I love that. I love how you just worked that back in that example, that was fun. Oh, that made me think of something and it just left my brain. So we’re tracking, we’re gonna go back and we’re going to track like where the leads are coming from? Oh, I know how long, how long should I be tracking this for to kind of get some good data.

Cassandra LeRoy
So to get some good data, it depends on your business. So some people just starting out, they’re not going to have a lot of data and I get that. But starting earlier is better than you know not you know, the best day to plant a tree was yesterday. And if not, then the next best day is today. So the more data you have, the better decisions you can make. The longer you have, the better trends you’re going to notice the more insights you can pull. So starting to track now starting to set your goals and track the right metrics for those goals are is really going to be everyone’s best option. I really start to see trends at like the three to six month mark. Okay. Usually, a lot of people tend to do at least bi annual launches or they have events or something usually happens. So at that point, we maybe have a launch or two or maybe a couple of speaking engagements when we start to see a series of events and can take the average not just to stand alone because there’s always outliers, right? I’m getting into super nerdy tech that I love and people are eyes are probably glazing over. But when you have a few events that you can pull on not just one, I think you’d have really good data to start pulling insights and tweaking and, and pulling the right levers in your business to see some

Laura Kåmark
growth. I love that I have a client that we recently set up kind of a new little sales funnel for her. So I’m excited. I keep telling him like I just can’t wait for like, we just need some time now and get some eyeballs on it to what’s the traffic comes in, we can just start seeing how it’s converting, I’m really excited to like, start digging into that more. I’m like, I have to just sit on my hands for a while while we just you know, give it time. Because it takes time to gather that information. I just keep telling her I’m like, Just keep going out and talking about it. Because the biggest thing you need right now is to drive traffic to the offer.

Cassandra LeRoy
Yeah, absolutely. It is a marathon, not a sprint. So you really do have to be patient with this. And of course, a full year is even better, because then you capture your full sales cycle for your business. And then you start to see seasonal trends, then you start to see annual trends. And so year over year, if you could have a couple of years of data, that’s really powerful, because then you’re not relying on quote unquote standard industry trends. Someone on Instagram said my open rate should be this now you know, the right numbers for your business. And what your business tends to perform at, which is much better information than someone’s you know, quote unquote, universal standard.

Laura Kåmark
Yeah, industry standards, it’s so hard. Like, there’s so many numbers out there that we’re constantly like, thrown at us for all the things. It’s a lot.

Cassandra LeRoy
And they’re constantly changing, too, right? Technology changes. And so how you calculate things changes a little bit. And so if you know how your business historically performs, that’s always going to be the best data to go by.

Laura Kåmark
Oh, I love that. I think that’s such good advice, right? There is just like really knowing your historical data. So you know, because that’s, you need to know where you’re falling. That was something I was talking with a colleague the other day about, I got up on one of my soap boxes, I get on those a lot in my boxer chats. And I was saying to her, you know, it’s so hard, because so often we it’s like I do it all the time to comparing ourselves to others in the online space. And then like, really, we have to compare ourselves to where we were a year ago, where we were two years ago, to really look at how far our businesses have come. Because that’s that’s the important thing to look at not looking at where we are in comparison to our peers.

Cassandra LeRoy
Oh, my gosh, I think every business owner just gave you a round of applause on that one. That is so hard. It’s such a mental game. As a business owner, we all struggle with that. And so I think we, myself included here, we all need that reminder of the competition. It’s not even a competition. But it’s you have to give yourself a fair comparison, like you said, with your previous self. And stop the unfair comparisons with all of your peers. That’s, that’s exhausting.

Laura Kåmark
It’s exhausting to stop doing that. Oh, my gosh, this has been so much fun. I do have one final question that I asked everyone who comes on the show. And that is what is one piece of advice you would give someone when they’re first starting out that would help them be bolder, be louder and make waves in their business? Oh, I love

Cassandra LeRoy
that question. For someone just starting out, I would say it is critical to find your community. It was a huge factor for me for accountability for encouragement. There’s just so much you don’t know. And like we said, it’s such a mental game starting out as a business owner that you really do need that support. And I was so fortunate to find not just one a few great communities that they got me through those hard days, they were there to lift me up. And then on my best days, they were my megaphone, they reshard it and help amplify my voice and be bold. And so I am really grateful to them. And I think for anyone starting out, finding that community that you can connect with is a huge game changer for your business.

Laura Kåmark
I could not agree more. And I think that’s such an incredible advice. I know for me, when I started my online business, it was not I was like thrown into it because I got laid off from my super secure, quote unquote, corporate job when I was pregnant with my first child and I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t prepared to I wasn’t I didn’t really have much of a business. I had this little side hustle. I was trying to figure out, you know, that wasn’t something I was doing a little bit on the side there was definitely not traffic or any sort of data to track at that point. It was just I was still figuring it all out and it that was in 2015 and it took me until about 2021 to actually like, find my supportive community of like, these are my people, and are now it was 2020 actually sorry, in 2020, when everything was going on, and I had found a program that I joined, and that was where I found my people. And then those are the people that now have continued to come with me on my journey that I’m on Voxer chat with, and just help, you know, pull the matches out of my hand when I’m ready to burden the business dad run and give me you know, lift me up what I’m feeling like, in over my head and all the things and help help to support and guide me on this journey. So I think that’s so important to find that community, for sure.

Cassandra LeRoy
Yeah, I didn’t expect that to be such a hard transition from corporate where I think we tend to marginalize our contributions a lot. We’re, we’re told to be team players. And so we downplay it. And then all of a sudden, you’re in a business where you have to do the complete opposite. You’re the only one talking about your business. And so you have to be bold and say it with a loud voice. And that can be a really hard habit to create coming out of corporate. That was a little surprising. But I, I agree finding that right community was huge. As much

Laura Kåmark
as Sandra, can you tell our listeners where they can come find you where they can get that download from you and just all the amazingness that you are they can come hang out with you online?

Cassandra LeRoy
Of course. So I’m mainly on LinkedIn, they can find me at my profile Cassandra Roy, and they can find me on my website, which is Mulberryandmainvs.com. And that is where they will find that resource as well.

Laura Kåmark
Wonderful. I will link all that up in the show notes. Thank you so much for coming on today. This was such a fun conversation.

Cassandra LeRoy
Thank you so much for having me. I had the best time.

Laura Kåmark
Thanks so much for listening to this week’s episode. Be sure to check out the show notes at laurakamark.com/podcast. And if you’re ready to turn your website into a marketing machine, get more sales, save time and simplify the back into your business. Grab my free resource power integrations for your website. Head on over to Laurakamark.com/power. If you enjoyed today’s episode, make sure to subscribe. And also, I’ll just love you forever if you leave me a review. It helps get this podcast in front of other people that it can help inspire. Thanks so much for listening. I’ll see you next week. Bye now!