 Welcome to the nonprofit show. We are thrilled to have you here. Julie and I have an amazing guest whom I've had the pleasure of getting to know over the last several years, Brandy Lawson. And she is founder, lead strategist at Fiery FX. And I just love that shirt you have on here in the photo. So you're gonna talk to us and rather share five steps to discovering metrics that matter. So stay with us before we jump into this. We wanna remind you who you're looking at or possibly listening to. So Julia Patrick is here, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. I'm Jarrett Ransom, your nonprofit nerd CEO of the Raven Group. And we are honored to have the continued support from our besties. So thank you to Blimering American Nonprofit Academy, Fundraising Academy at National University, Bee Generous, Your Part-Time Controller, Staffing Boutique, Nonprofit Thought Leader, as well as the non-profit nerd. These companies are here again year four for you. So they're here to support you and your mission. They have helped us produce over 700 episodes and you can find all of them on Roku, YouTube, Amazon, Fire TV, Vimeo, as well as podcast. So if you're a podcast listener like I am and I have a feeling Brandy, you're probably a podcast listener. You're just there as well. So what are some of your favorite podcasts, Brandy? Oh, my top favorite one is Armchair Expert. They're really great conversations. I get a lot out of them. Oh, good. We'll have to check that out. And yeah, definitely queue up the non-profit show wherever you stream your podcast. Again, our guest today, none other than Brandy Lawson, the founder and lead strategist at Fiery FX. Welcome, Brandy. Thank you, Jarrett. Thank you, Julia. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here to talk about these five steps to discovering metrics. Maybe people might want to know a little bit about why I'm talking about this. So in my career, I've run my agency for 10 years. Before that, I worked with technology companies, one you might know of, GoDaddy. I did product development for them. So I love data. And data is the way that we stop guessing and stressing about important decisions. So that's why I want to talk about this particular subject today because it was important when I worked in tech and it's been critical as I run my own business and helped others with their marketing and dashboards as well. You know, I love that we're having this conversation. I love that we're having this conversation at this time of the year. And this is something that the non-profit sector really needs to do a better job embracing because we tend to be such emotional empathetic people that a lot of times that drives our decisions. And so to have you help us kind of understand why and how and when and where is a big deal. And you suggest that we start with clear and specific goals with timelines. Yes. Think about that. So you might be going, but wait, I thought we were talking about metrics. Yes, we're talking about metrics. But we have no idea what we want to measure or the data to look at unless we know what we're trying to do. So the first thing we start with is, what are we trying to do? So clear and specific goals, and I don't care if you use the smart goal or there's another one that I like a little bit better called the exact from Carol Wilson, but like use a structure, if that's helpful for you, set clear and specific goals because this is the basis of knowing the metrics that matter. If you don't know what you're trying to do, you cannot measure it. That is true. Yeah. I love it. This is going to be a heavy lift for a lot of organizations. This isn't that easy. And you can start small. Like when we dive into something new, we're like, yeah, we get excited about it. We want to do the whole thing. So there's a concept in product development called minimum viable. We call it minimum viable product. I call it minimum viable metrics, but like even minimum viable goal. Like if you've never done this before and you're like, oh, I don't know, what is the one thing to pick one thing this quarter? What is the one thing this quarter that is important for you to achieve? Maybe there's like seven things. Great. I only want you to pick one for this particular exercise. Think about that one, get a clear, specific goal about that with the timeline and then you can follow the rest of these steps. You don't have to do all the things all at once. Got it. I love that. That helps me frame up this next thing. And I'm really interested to get your advice and your feedback, because you say for each goal, know when it's done. Yes. So the goals kind of get a bad name because we like set these lofty big ambitions that are like, I'm gonna be a keynote speaker, super. How will you know when that's done? Like, if we don't have a finish line, it's really hard to chart our course. It's really hard to know what kind of training. So Bernay Brown had a great way of positioning this. She said, paint it done. So like fill in all the blanks, like when you cross the finish line, what does it look like? So I'm just gonna use the keynote speaker example. So how will I know when I'm a keynote speaker? When I've done three keynote gigs, when I've been paid for three keynotes, like get paint it done, like give me the visual as if you were doing a painting show me all the detail because that helps our brains then get more specific. And the more specific you can be about the finish line, the better you know when you get there. Right. One thing I say, Brandy, and I'm curious if this is the same as know when it's done is what does success look like? Yeah. So is that the same or is that different? I think that they're very related. Knowing when it's done is getting a specific point in time. Sometimes when we talk about what does success look like, we're like, what's the lifestyle? What's the things that happening? Like what's happening with your organization? What does your organization look like? When I'm asking like, when is it done? I want a specific pinpoint, like if you were to take a photograph of your cross of the finish line. This is, but like you could think about the moment that you're crossing the finish line and what happens after the finish line. Like we talk about success as like kind of that whole environment. Me, I want the picture when you cross the finish line to attach to your goal. I love that. Now with that, do you create this list of leading indicators? Is that? Yes. Yeah, so nice segue. So it honestly kind of surprises me how many people are not familiar with the terminology of leading versus lagging indicators. So just very quickly. A leading indicator are the things that you do on the way to getting the result you want. So let's just say there's a fundraising goal. We want to raise a million dollars this year. That is a lagging indicator. You don't actually have control over making people give you money. You can do a lot of things to help facilitate that. Those are your leading indicators. So in order to get to a million dollars of fundraising, what are you gonna do? Okay, we're gonna have three events. We're gonna get 500 people at each of those events. We're gonna like all of the things that you can do in pursuit of that goal, those are your leading indicators. If you're making sales, like how many outbound calls are you making or how you try to look at the things that you have complete control over, that you can take action on in pursuit of the ultimately the end goal, the thing. But most of the time, the thing we want, we don't have complete control over. We can only take actions towards it, right? Is there a certain number of leading indicators we should strive for or is that kind of nebulous? Well, it kind of depends on the goal. Like a big, hairy goal, like we're gonna raise a million dollars this year. Like there's a lot of components to that. If we break it down into, okay, we know we need three events. Okay, for each event, like what are the things we're doing? So breaking down the leading indicators, there's no like specific number we're looking for. We're just really trying to define the things that are in our control and that we want to be tracking so that we can chart success towards doing all the things in our control to get to the end result we want. Right. It is super nerdy and I love it. Well, you know, it's such an interesting thing because if you don't understand, if you just have that goal, you set yourself up for disappointment. You need to understand the journey and what you need to be doing so you can be working on it every day. And we talk about those things that indicate our achievements and so, so important. But I gotta ask you this, how are you tracking that and how do you determine that? Because it seems to me a lot of times we write a goal down, it goes in a book, it goes on a piece of paper and then we revisit it at the end of the year and then we're like, oh, damn. Right, exactly. So this backs that concept of minimum viable. So we can get crazy with the cheese whiz on all of the tracking. Like I, analytics and all, yes, yes, we can do all that. The most simple way to start is a score card. So figuring out, I do this for sales in my organization. So every week, my objective is to have 10 outreaches and two sales calls. And I track that in a Google sheet and a score card. But what that allows me to see is the tricky thing about leading and lagging indicators is that we can do a lot of work, but it's kind of like weight loss. Like you're gonna go to the gym one and you're like, well, what happened? Why am I not still? Like you can see how the consistency adds up. So score cards, a simple spreadsheet, it does not have to be fancy. Just what are your leading indicators are and track them with consistency so that you can one, all of our brains are very powerful but they're a little feeble and human. So that when we can reinforce for ourselves what's actually working because when you get that next big donor you can look back and go, oh, right, we did all of these things in pursuit of that but we wouldn't know if we weren't tracking them. You are speaking my love language and I just shared this similar concept, same concept to an organization as we talk about fundraising and donor portfolios and moves management because I too, Brandy, believe in the power of consistency and you do it, you stay with it, you keep going to the gym, you keep eating healthy, you keep making these outbound calls, you keep meeting with your donors, you keep inviting them to coffee, you will hit that million dollars. Like it is pretty much 99%, I would say guarantee, I know there's things that happen, right? There's things like, I don't know, an economic recession. Pandemic? Yeah, pandemic, who knows? Things that can absolutely come into play, but I love this and I don't see that happening often enough within nonprofits. Well, with anyone, so also let's just recognize our human tendencies here. Consistency is hard. When it feels like a big lift we're probably not gonna get it done. So that's why like start small, don't go out and try to run a marathon, like maybe take a walk around the block. So like take the small step because then you can build on it. And there is no shame in a small step. One metric that you're tracking is more data than you've had. And it will give you more information so that you can, then you're excited about adding the second thing. Yeah, I love that. And I think you're right about, we get so enamored by these big issues, big goals and we look around and we're like, oh my God, everybody's doing these big things. And then to take that small step, I love, love, love the idea of walking around the block versus running the marathon. That really puts it into play. But what happens when you have like maybe a board or you have leadership or you have a funder that doesn't share this view and they're pushing, pushing, pushing for these like bigger things that just are so tough to achieve? Well, yeah, sometimes we have to connect the dots for people about what it takes to track things. So it's not a zero additional effort to track things. So when we, so we come in, I can come in and help your organization write down all the goals, define all the finish lines, see all the metrics and then put the tracking in. But this is like 10 to $20,000 to implement that whole thing. And then each person has to take time and effort out of their day to be putting stuff in the scorecard. There are a lot of automated things we can do, but that's next level. We can't automate things we don't know about yet. We can't automate things that haven't been defined. So it does take time and effort to do this. Chipping away at it, like adding five minutes a week feels reasonable, it's not gonna overwhelm anybody, we're not gonna add to burnout. And then we get some more data to make smarter decisions. So when people come along and be like, can't we just wave the magic wand? You then just kind of have to pull back the curtain and show them Oz and be like, listen, here's what's happening. Here's what we can do. If you would like this big thing, let me know when you're ready to donate that money. I love that. I also wonder, and this is just, as you've been talking us through this process, if you have a group that's never done this before, what's this like learning curve? Like how do you do these things and make this a best practice? Do you have any suggestions for us on that? Well, first I think just recognize this is a skill. Like riding a bike, the first time you try to get on it, you're gonna fumble, you're gonna have to put some extra effort, there's gonna have to be dedicated time, and then you're gonna build the skill. Or like going to the gym for the, I went to two workout classes this week, I can tell you my muscles are like, I'm sorry, what are you doing? That's two more than me, Brandy. I know you do. But it takes dedicated time and effort to start building the skill. Don't expect to be good at it the second you get on that bike. You're gonna have to pedal. I also talked about like, I've got a podcast, I have a podcast series about working with experts. Sometimes having the training wheels or the mom and dad behind the bike to hold you for that first couple of times helps you get started. So it can be helpful to have somebody who knows the system come in and give you a little bump start or just allow yourself the wobblies. Allow yourself the wobblies in the beginning. But put the time on either in the existing meetings to come back to this. And this is actually gonna be our fifth step here. But when we decide this is a priority, we need to put it in our regular routine. Like whatever that is, if it's a monthly staff meeting, if it's a weekly check-in, if whatever it is, we allow five minutes for it to check in with it or chip away at it. But consistency is our most powerful tool in building a skill. I love that. Well, let's talk about that because you use the word surface this data to the organization with regularity. And I love that you use the word surface. I think that's a fascinating word to use. Why did you choose that word? Well, because the mechanism for visibility doesn't matter. That just the fact that it gets visible consistently. And so there's many ways to do this. So dashboards, we help our clients with dashboards all the time because that is a way that it just gets visible. But those dashboards then have to be surfaced in the regular meetings or the interfacing or there has to be a time where people are interfacing with this data. In my organization, we have a weekly review and we call them rocks. There are big things that we're doing for every quarter. Our rocks are in our weekly review. We see them and talk about them every single week. So I use surface because there's gonna be a mechanism that works for you, whatever that is, get it in the mechanism so that people can see this with consistency and be able to understand what's happening and take action. That makes sense. I love that. And I think that sometimes it's really tough to come back to those rocks. That it's easier to, especially in the nonprofit sector, to look at what's the immediate fire. And while we do need to deal with that, these bigger things, they just go further and further behind. And then all we're doing is crisis management. You know, it's funny you said that, Julia. There was a nonprofit Facebook forum that I was on and someone asked like, if you were to design a coffee mug for nonprofits, what would it say? And someone literally put everything is crisis. And that tends to be kind of like the ethos, you know? And I do feel that maybe that's the excuse of why many of us don't track this, but Brandy, I love that you're saying, you know, five minutes a day, we can start with that. That is equivalent to walking around the block as we prepare for our marathon training, you know? Just this five minutes a day, having that accountability. And I'm curious if you could talk to the accountability stand of it. Like, are we doing that in our teams? Is the accountability that we surface this with the board? Like, how do you address that? Well, I think, again, it depends on what organization and what kind of accountability we want. So for me, I keep track of my outreach scorecard. And every week when I do the weekly review, which is shared with the team, I have to do it as part of the weekly review. So I have built a mechanism that forces me to do it. Because you know what? Otherwise, oh, look, fun things. Like, I'm gonna go find something else to do. But as I've continued to do it, and then I've used it to look back and like look at, so in our private sector of the revenue versus my outreach, and I can connect the dots, it becomes a valuable tool that I am motivated to use. So our motivations can change. So you may need to have more structured accountability in the beginning. So maybe it is that every month we're gonna surface it to the board, so we do it. But then our motivation will change when we start to see that we can stop, you can't Google the answers to the strategic questions in your organization. But you can start to build data that's going to help you see and inform your decision-making so that you're smarter with the dollar, so that you know the steps to make, so that you've tracked the things and figured out what matters to be able to make those decisions and choose more wisely. And you don't just jump into it. You take tiny baby steps, choose the things that are going to help force your hand if you need to, and build the structures, because I don't have any willpower. Yeah. And especially if I've been dealing with a lot of fires, like my energy reserves are topped, but I have built structures and frameworks that keep me moving towards what I want, and it makes it a lot lighter lift. So let me ask you this, because I'm so fascinated by your approach and your sensibility. I think it's very realistic in, again, breaking it down. What is the best time of year to do this? Because so often I think just as a society, we get all like ramped and amped up about the new year and new way, and is this just something that is, we should be doing it when everyone else is doing it, or can you give us some guidelines on that? I think if, for nonprofits, I know that the Q4 is like the time where we're like scrambling for all of the pennies that are gonna fall down because nobody wants to give them to the government. Cool. So maybe not Q4. If Q1 is a small respite, then great. If Q1 is when you're starting to plant, I know a couple of organizations are starting to plant their biggest event of the year, and I can't even think about anything until March, then do it in March. There's no right time, again, like when's the best time to plant a tree 20 years ago or today. And allow yourself baby steps. I think this is also kind of where we get wrapped around the axle and we never start doing the things we think are gonna be great, is that it has to be perfect or I can't do it at all. So allowing the wobblies, allowing the baby steps, because seriously, when I started my scorecard, I was like, eh, I don't know what to do. But then I understood that it would be really useful for me, and the first quarter I could look back and go, oh, oh, oh, like I got all this information and like, oh, I can see where this is coming from and oh, I can then make this repeatable because I know what happens to get me here. Then I was like, then further motivated to be like, what else could I track? So that first go at it, that first right on the bike is scary and hard and like just acknowledging and allowing it can sometimes get us past that. Yeah. Go ahead, Julia. Well, what I hear you saying is really start with one thing and work it so you work the plan. And we don't have a lot of time left, but could you share with us the type of scorecard that you're using? I know the scorecard coming out of, you know, Harvard MBA school in the 70s is that old fashioned one, but what is working for you and what are you seeing is a more modern way of looking at this? So simple is best. And that's why we started with having a goal because we could track a million things and they mean nothing. But if I start with the goal and I figure out what my leading indicators are, then I can say, all right, what is the one thing I want to be sure that I am doing every day, every week, every month, whatever it is. And then like literally here's the date, here's the thing I'm doing, here's the number, don't make it complicated. Simple is totally fine. Yeah, I love it. I like that. And I was gonna add, you know, I think the motivation, what you just expressed, Brandi was like in the first 90 days, it might've been kind of challenging to stick to. Oh, 100% challenging. Right, and then you start seeing the data it builds into Q2, Q3, and I would think by Q3 or four, you're like, I can't wait to track this because it's gonna show me, you know, it's gonna show me the picture, it's gonna paint it itself for me. So I think that motivation, when that happens, that's what I love seeing that shift. Yes, and like riding a bike, like you're gonna skin your knee, you're gonna fall down. Like there's gonna be stuff that happens as you're building this skill. And for me, it's like way easier on my brain to go, oh, it's a skill, which means I might not be good yet, but I can keep doing it and I'll get better. Because if I'm like, it's a talent and I don't have it, then it gives me all the excuses. But no, all of these are things that are just skills. All you need is practice. I love that you said that because that completely changes my perspective. It really does. It's an interesting thing, skill versus talent. Yes, all these things are just skills. Yep, all these things are just skills. Yeah, I never thought of it that way. Well, I love this topic because as we move into a brand new year, I know many of us are looking at like, where are we going? What are some of the things that we wanna focus on? So Brandy, you share so much insight. I wanna make sure we pull up your contact information. But I also am curious, you mentioned your own podcast. So talk to us about that. I'm curious where people could listen. Yes, it's called Leverage Your Spark. It's on all of the podcast outlets. When you've got three seasons out, each season kind of has its own theme. Season two is specifically about working with experts because bless clients, bless experts. Here's how you can show up for each other and get the most out of a relationship. And so that I really went in. This last season was about marketing operations where I really talk about the technology and how it helps feel the marketing. Season four is coming at the end of January. So I'm digging into more metrics and data because I just think it's really powerful. Yeah. And it's where we need to be. It's where we need to be. And our funders are asking for this, our partners. I mean, it's just our donors. This is really where we are moving as a sector. And we're one of the last sectors to really understand it. So I'm just thrilled that you could come and share this time with us. Again, Brandy Lawson, founder, lead strategist with Fiery FX, check out FieryFX.com. Great website, beautifully done. And it really lets you understand kind of like what the work that you're doing. You have a wonderful post on there about your journey and how you started looking at things differently with business and life when you started measuring things differently. So, yeah, FieryFX.com. Check them out. Wow, Jared, another great episode, huh? I know. I want to take the credit. Like, I'm like, I booked her. It's really so good. And really, I'm so grateful for you, Brandy. And truly this entire year, because of the consistency we've done here at the show, we're seeing just like, you know, amazing guests, amazing insight, amazing perspective. So, Brandy, what you brought to the table today is amazing. So thank you for what you did. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. It's been amazing. Again, I'm Julia Patrick, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy, been joined by the nonprofit nerd herself, Jared Ransom. She's actually my nonprofit nerd. She can be yours too, but I claim her first. And again, we want to thank all of our presenting sponsors from Blue Morang American Nonprofit Academy, your part-time controller, Be Generous, Funding Academy at National University, Staffing Boutique, Nonprofit Thought Leader, and the nonprofit nerd. These are the folks that are with us day in and day out as we move well past our 700th episode and onto our, into our fourth year of broadcasting. So we want to say thank you for everyone. We also want to end this episode as we end every episode to stay well, so you can do well. We'll see you back here tomorrow, everyone. Brandy, thank you so much.