Measuring the magic

You can’t know exactly which ones will sprout and when. And then, you can’t know what the yield will be. (Image by Dorothe)

I went to an awful lot of trouble this fall to attend a conference in Bangkok.

It took a few hours and a couple thousand dollars to get everything booked. I had to block off several days during which I was unable to do anything for clients. I logged 30 hours of travel each way. I suffered from terrible jet lag.

And then, Covid.

But my experience in attending this conference can’t be quantified by those logistical challenges. It was well worth the time, expense, and hassle.

I gained new colleagues and made new friends. I strengthened existing relationships. And I emerged with a concept for a new business.

The impact of that conference is something that I will feel for years — not the jet lag or the Covid, but the connections and insights. They are simply invaluable.

Of course, if I wanted to, I could point to the numbers and say that attending the conference was a net loss. The things that are easy to measure — money and time — tell that story readily.

That’s why it’s so important to recognize that a lot of what matters most can’t be easily measured. The metrics we can put on a spreadsheet do not give us the whole picture. If we make decisions on the basis of the numbers only, we may be missing out.

When I started on TikTok, I had a skeptical colleague. Why would I be making videos when I could be reaching out to everyone in my network in order to make sales?

I didn’t have a great answer for him, but what I noticed quickly was this: I was meeting people on TikTok. I was actively expanding my network.

He thought I was getting distracted by views, likes, and followers and neglecting the important thing: revenue. But that’s not exactly what was happening. The views meant that people were watching my videos, and I was getting to know those people. The sales would come.

I didn’t have perfect confidence in my plan. It faltered when someone said I was spending too much time responding to comments, and again when someone (on TikTok) said that I needed to be including calls to action in every video. But I stayed the course, and by my second month, people were booking calls with me. On the very last day of the second month, I made my first sale from TikTok. And then another, and another, and another.

Revenue is definitive — my formerly skeptical colleague, now convinced, switched to being an accountability partner: “How many videos did you post this week?”

However, I found the subtler signs along the way to be more significant than the sales. A comment from a viewer, saying that my video was helpful. A direct message starting a conversation. A new subscriber to my blog. A creator I respected, following me back. These are the things that helped me to stick with the hard work in order to get to the first sale. They were clues that people were responding to what I was doing and helped me to keep it up.

There were times where I got distracted by what was easy to measure, but I tried to channel that energy into making videos and investing in relationships. How do you measure the value of an individual video or an individual relationship? You can’t, and you shouldn’t. I trusted the process.

It has taken me years — decades, really — to get to the point where I could trust the process. Where I could keep showing up despite having, apparently, little to show for my hard work. Where I could continue to be generous without worrying about what I was getting back. It paid off. I can hardly believe it.

We each get to calibrate our actions to the results we want. We each get to manage the amount of risk that we’re willing to take on that something might not work. If we train ourselves to see beyond the numbers, though, we might see more success than was visible initially.

We can’t really measure the magic. But if we know what to look for, we can experience it, cultivate it, and build on it. The numbers may come along after all.