Page not found – UseMyStats https://usemystats.com Stop guessing, start knowing! Thu, 13 Apr 2017 00:21:25 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.0.7 https://usemystats.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/cropped-Monkey-Head-FB-32x32.png Page not found – UseMyStats https://usemystats.com 32 32 Stats are like a Good Friend https://usemystats.com/stats-are-like-a-good-friend/ https://usemystats.com/stats-are-like-a-good-friend/#respond Thu, 13 Apr 2017 00:21:25 +0000 https://usemystats.com/?p=1961 Read More]]>

Stats are like a really good friend. Really good friends are honest. They’ll tell you how it is or how it isn’t. They are the ones that will let you know that you’ve been walking around all afternoon with something in your teeth or that maybe those pants are the best choice. And on the flip side, they are the first in line to congratulate you on a job well done or point out something positive.

And while stats can’t give you a hug, they are a little bit passionless (being just numbers and all!), they are honest. They don’t try to impress you and you don’t have to impress them–though it is great when they are going up! They tell you when something is up or down. It’s pretty black and white (or in UseMyStats, black and red). The reasons why the stats go up and down aren’t necessarily that clear cut, but that the numbers went up or down is.

I was talking recently to someone and we were going over setting up a stat. They pointed out that the numbers could be evened out a little to make it look better. If they took a bit from the second month, the first month wouldn’t look so low.

I pointed out that that’s a slippery slope, and that the stat was just being honest. She thought that was a good saying: “the stats were just being honest.” The area being tracked had just started so the low first number was to be expected. And there was no need to impress anyone with the numbers. They didn’t need to fudge them to make them look better. They just needed the numbers so that they could tell what was working and what wasn’t.

With UseMyStats, we’re trying to make your relationship with stats as pleasant as possible so that they can be the best friends possible in helping you manage your business and/or life. We want it to be easy for you to talk with them (put in the values–or better yet, let the system get them for you) and for them to talk back (the graphs and other visuals).

And hopefully that relationship will be so smooth that you don’t have to try to impress each other and can just communicate back and forth to come up with the best plans of action to expand how you want!

And then the stats can be the first ones to congratulate you when you get it right!

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UseMyStats Given Commander’s Award https://usemystats.com/usemystats-given-commanders-award/ https://usemystats.com/usemystats-given-commanders-award/#respond Thu, 06 Apr 2017 04:00:08 +0000 https://usemystats.com/?p=1983 Read More]]>

Commander’s Award

Everyone that works for UseMyStats is active in their community. It’s not a requirement, just something that all of us end up doing as part of our everyday lives and something that we encourage and support as a company. You’ll find us coaching youth soccer, being active in Bikers Against Child Abuse, or helping out at the local soup kitchen. 

So it was a nice honor last month to receive the Commander’s Award from the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve for helping out with the Toys for Tots program last year. We like helping out our community and this was a really nice feather in our collective cap!

And users of UseMyStats can take some credit for this also as you help us do what we do while we help you do what you do!

 

 

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“No Stat is a Constellation” https://usemystats.com/no-stat-is-a-constellation/ Wed, 29 Mar 2017 20:49:18 +0000 https://usemystats.com/?p=1970 Read More]]>

Alright, so that’s a blatant rip off of the whole “no person is an island”, but it’s true. It’s always useful to watch statistics over time. Then you can see if they are going up or down. But it’s often necessary to compare different graphs to really see the full picture.

Let’s take an example. All of a sudden the accountant calls and says that the expenses doubled last month. This might be a very alarming piece of news. But what if he called and said expenses doubled and income tripled last month. Whole different ball game, right?!

Like the saying goes, “statistics can be made to say anything”. But that’s only true if you don’t have all of the data. When you have the full picture, they tell you how things are doing.

So let’s say you get that same phone call from the accountant with the alarming news, but you have UseMyStats set up. You pull up your dashboard (or the new “stat snapshot” page) and right there is your “combo graph” that has both income and expenses on it and you can see that income went way up. Well, your day just went from terrible to not too bad.

And you want to see if you can figure out how to make it better, so you pop open the group graphing page and look at your finance stats and you see that total payroll went up also. That might tell you that the new person you just hired deserves a bonus!

And you want to see what they did that helped since you just hired a new marketing person. So you hop over to the marketing and sales group of graphs and you can see that the number of outgoing marketing was the same and nothing else had changed in terms of outgoing marketing. But the income per client jumped dramatically and number of new clients has increased.

You pop into those two graphs and check out the notes next to the dates where the increase started. And you see that the new marketing person started working next to the receptionist and started talking with each customer after they had finished their service.

You’ll probably have to go talk with that person to find out they were making sure everything went perfectly, letting them know what other services they could get that they didn’t even know about and encouraging them to bring in their friends and take advantage of your referral program. But the five minutes you spent on UseMyStats after that horrendous phone call from the accountant just told you that things are actually going well and you should go talk to your new person and encourage them to keep up the good work.

And since you were getting ready to go on vacation, you make a note to do just that when you get back and continue on your way without the worry!

P.S. Check out these new tools for comparing statistics:

  • There’s the Dashboard mentioned above
  • The new Stat Snapshot page (found under More>>Statistics)
  • The Group Graphing page (found under Graphing>>Graph Whole Group)
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Consultants, Don’t Waste Time! Check the Client Dashboard First. https://usemystats.com/consultants-dont-waste-time-check-the-client-dashboard-first/ https://usemystats.com/consultants-dont-waste-time-check-the-client-dashboard-first/#respond Mon, 27 Mar 2017 04:12:49 +0000 https://usemystats.com/?p=1956 Read More]]> Why else use software to help automate processes if not to save everyone’s time? And we can all agree that a consultant’s time is valuable. Thanks to a response from a consultant on our annual user’s survey, we’ve drastically improved the Client Dashboard.

Consultants can now pull up an overview of their clients’ information to help them know what’s going on with their clients faster. No more switching to a client only to find out they haven’t entered their data. Get a graph of their primary statistic and a “status widget” of a stat group, along with data about when they last entered data. All without a bunch of clicks and bouncing around between client accounts unnecessarily.
 

Hopefully this makes UseMyStats that much easier and faster for you consultants to help manage your clients!

Click here to check out a full description of the new page.

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Am I Tracking the Right Stats? https://usemystats.com/am-i-tracking-the-right-stats/ https://usemystats.com/am-i-tracking-the-right-stats/#respond Mon, 13 Feb 2017 08:43:51 +0000 https://usemystats.com/?p=1928 Read More]]>
This is a very common question. “How do I know what to track? How many stats is too many stats? How many stats is too few?”

It’s sort of a Goldilocks issue. You don’t want to track too many or the important ones get lost in the unimportant. You end up wasting time entering data and reviewing the graphs of stats that don’t matter. On the other hand, you don’t want too few stats, or it’s really hard to have enough data to “steer” things well enough.

So how do you know the number of stats that is “just right”? Unfortunately, I have an answer that people aren’t going to like – you have to try out different variations and combinations. Goldilocks had to test the various bowls of oatmeal, and it’s the same with stats. Experience is the best guide.

But all is not lost! Here are a few guiding principles to help you pick which ones to start with:

  1. What do you produce? If you are a farmer and you sell apples, it makes sense to (and I hope that you do) track how many apples you sell.
  2. From there, break down how you get that product to sell. Sticking with the apples example, you would probably want to track the number of trees planted, the number of apples picked, and the number of apples that were no good (as a negative stat).
  3. Then come at it from the other direction. If you are going to sell your apples, you’ll need some customers to buy them. Some things you can track: How many customers visited you and where your apples are sold? How many sales did you make? What marketing costs were accrued to make those sales?
  4. Then there are the basic behind-the-scenes items to track that make it possible to sell your apples and have customers: how many people were hired to pick apples? How much money came in? How much money went out (expenses)? And so on.
  5. At a minimum, each person should have at least one stat that they can use to watch and control their actions. This allows them to see how they are doing by making them aware.
  6. In most cases, you probably don’t need to go so far as to count the number of rolls of toilet paper used or cups of water people drank while picking apples. If your business is big enough that those things make a difference, this little intro isn’t going to help you too much!

If you are just a one person show, those stats above are probably more than you need at first. Or if you are a major grower of apples, for example, you can take each one of those and break it down even further. Hopefully this gives you a little guidance in keeping the stats relevant.

This is a series of blog posts so I’ll cover this same general topic from another angle soon. I hope that from this one you have a little better grasp on how to keep your stats from becoming overcrowded. When that happens, it can cause you to lose interest and you may not be able to see the important changes because they become lost in the mix.

Feeling inspired? Put together your own group of stats now! Stats help you to start knowing and stop guessing. Try UseMyStats for 30 days for free. No credit card required. Sign up for UseMyStats today.

Questions? Give us a call: (888) 351- STAT (7828).

Want to know if you already have a good handle of where your business is headed? Take our free quiz here to find out!

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It’s not just a slogan… https://usemystats.com/its-not-just-a-slogan/ https://usemystats.com/its-not-just-a-slogan/#respond Tue, 31 Jan 2017 23:15:58 +0000 https://usemystats.com/?p=1935 Read More]]> UseMyStats is non-political, intentionally so. Politics involve so many sides and so many viewpoints that as a business it just doesn’t make sense to take sides.

But we are human. This company was started with a single goal to help people and companies to expand, to succeed and to thrive. This counts for our employees, our customers and everyone else.

And It’s not just a slogan. Every year we’ve taken steps to use some of the income we get from our clients and focus it on helping people. Last year we banded together and sent someone to Greece twice to help with refugee mothers and children, and throughout the year we made regular donations to buy books and toys for children throughout the United States.

And this says nothing of the generous work all of our individual staff have done on their own. They can take credit for that on their own, but I’m proud of each and every one of them for how much they do. Not bad for some geeks in Oregon!

While we are adamantly opposed to recent events from a human rights standpoint, I am proud of the people of the United States, and the tech industry specifically, in their willingness to stand up and help in favor of more communication, more understanding and more compassion in dealing with each other regardless of nationality or religion. It’s inspiring. We can’t let the few ruin the game for the rest!

So in that vein, UseMyStats is putting “its money where its mouth is” and donating to Youth For Human Rights to help spread the word on the UN’s Declaration of Human Rights.

While we might not have the clout of the Google’s and the Facebook’s of the world, every bit helps and we invite everyone to help in any way that you can, whether it be financially to a cause you support, by volunteering or even just setting a good example for our kids and showing them that grown ups can get along despite our differences.

Let’s harness this motion to make it a forward motion and come out stronger and more unified as people, as groups and as mankind.

Jared
Head Honcho of UseMyStats
Human on Planet Earth

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How to Make Entering Stats a Part of Your Business https://usemystats.com/how-to-make-entering-stats-a-part-of-your-business/ https://usemystats.com/how-to-make-entering-stats-a-part-of-your-business/#respond Mon, 30 Jan 2017 09:32:19 +0000 https://usemystats.com/?p=1926 Read More]]>

As a business owner, consultant, manager, or sole proprietor, you may find yourself up against some habits that prove hard to break. (I know I have!) Making a new habit stick seems to be even more difficult. When it comes to entering business statistics, it can be tough to get your employees (and/or yourself) to enter them, and be consistent.

We talk about the importance of business statistics in our “Stop Guessing, Start Knowing with Stats” post, but here we’ll go over a few ways to create a habit of entering stats so you can start putting them to work for you and your business:  

  1. Help your employees (and yourself) see the importance of stats. If they see the direct correlation between their jobs (or your livelihood) to how well the business does, they (and you) can understand the importance of tracking and using stats. Encourage your employees by helping them to see that if the business does better, they’ll do better through job security, bonuses, etc. How you encourage them is up to you, but doing this can create a sense of ownership, which can influence better stat tracking.

  2. Track stats that are useful to you and your business, and have your employees do the same. The stats that affect them directly and are tied to work they do are important for them to be aware of. Capitalize on your employee’s strengths, giving them tasks that they enjoy and feel they do a well. Then have them track the stats that are related and relevant. If you’re not sure where to start, try out some of our Stat Bundles. Then, use the data you track to make informed, objective decisions for the business.

  3. Ingrain the data entering process into everyday life and into the culture of your business. Make it something that is normal (it’s really not abnormal!), and have yourself and your employees set aside time every day/week for entering stats. For new employees, make it a part of the onboarding process, getting the habit formed early on.

    For yourself and seasoned employees, getting the habit to stick may be more complicated. This is where our StatMonkey, Alistair, comes in. With the UseMyStats software, you don’t even have to log in to update your stats. Alistair will email you and remind you that it’s time to update your stats. You can just reply to his email with the updated figures, and he’ll update your stats for you!

I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: With proper use, stats can help you take your business to the next level. Want to try using stats for yourself and your business? Try UseMyStats for 30 days for free! No credit card required. Sign up for UseMyStats today.

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Stop Guessing, Start Knowing with Stats https://usemystats.com/stop-guessing-start-knowing-with-stats/ https://usemystats.com/stop-guessing-start-knowing-with-stats/#respond Mon, 16 Jan 2017 23:36:24 +0000 https://usemystats.com/?p=1905 Read More]]> Start knowing with business stats. Using stats is the smart way to grow your business.

When it comes to business and life in general, “I don’t know” isn’t all that helpful. In most cases, “I don’t know” should be an indicator that there is another step to take, and that usually involves research of some sort. Whether that is asking someone that does know or doing the research yourself, knowing where to go is helpful. So where do you turn for information? This is where statistics comes in!

Stats can help take away some of the uncertainty. Stats provide you with an objective starting point. Stats, which we define as a number tracked over a period of time, can provide you with the information you’ll need to make educated, effective business decisions.  

Say you want to take your business to the next level. You see potential for growth. You don’t know where to focus your energy though. So open up your stats and graphs and go through the last few months’ (or years’) data, looking for trends. Once you’ve identified some high points and low points, talk to your team (or yourself, if you’re a team of one) and see why certain periods were better or worse than others. Take that all into consideration to make informed business decisions.  

Stats can help you to stop guessing about your next steps and start knowing which direction to go (with data to back that knowledge up). Having the momentum and energy to move forward is a large part of the equation, but the direction you’re headed is just as important. Just as you wouldn’t sail a ship without a compass, you shouldn’t manage without statistics.

And it doesn’t have to be hard. Once you’ve decided on the stats to use, you just put in the numbers (or let various systems to do it for you, like our integrations–seriously, check those out!), watch the graphs, and act accordingly.

Don’t keep any stats yet? No worries. We know getting things set up is tedious in the best of circumstances and can be fraught with worry if you aren’t sure what to track. That’s why the UseMyStats team is always working to make stats as painless and useful as possible. One of our efforts to handle this start-up problem is our “stat bundles”.

What are “stat bundles”? I’m glad you asked! We went through a bunch of possible stats and tried to narrow down some common choices. We then put these together into bundles. If you “add a bundle”, we’ll add that whole set of stats to your account in one go. You just click the mouse a few times and we do all of the work. Some of them even come preloaded with integrations (like pulling in website analytics from Google Analytics) so everything will tie together nicely. Moreover, if something goes wrong, you can delete those stats and start over again!

We hope this feature helps save you some time and frustration on setting up new stats, and we welcome any feedback you might have when you use it. I’m sure we’ll add more bundles or make changes to our existing ones as we get suggestions.

Ready to try out some stat bundles for yourself? Try UseMyStats for 30 days for free! No credit card required. Sign up for UseMyStats today.

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I’ve Been Tracking all of These Business Statistics, Now What? https://usemystats.com/what-to-do-with-business-stats/ https://usemystats.com/what-to-do-with-business-stats/#respond Mon, 02 Jan 2017 11:27:01 +0000 https://usemystats.com/?p=1902 Read More]]> What to do with business stats

I know what you’re thinking. We’re a stats company so we’re supposed to say that stats are the “be all, end all”, right? Wrong. Stats are just stats. That’s why we picked the name UseMyStats.  Just “tracking” or “keeping” stats won’t do much for you. You have to use them.

We conducted a survey not too long ago to ask people about business statistics. One of the major things we learned was that a number of people were disenchanted with stats because they didn’t care. Their stats were just numbers; they had nothing to do with what mattered in their businesses, jobs and/or lives. In other words, they weren’t useful tools.

Are you tracking the right stats?

At the end of the day, stats are just numbers. If you’re not tracking something that matters and that you can use, who cares? For example, count how many breaths you take in a minute. Try it. No really, try…we’ll wait.

How high did you get before you gave up?! I made it to about 3! Who cares, right? If you are Michael Phelps, on the other hand, it probably matters how long you can hold your breath for or how fast it takes you to swim a lap. Those are important stats for him and his profession. If he starts having to take more breaths, he knows there’s something to fix, but to me (and most of us), the time it takes to swim a lap doesn’t really change our lives much (if at all). 

The moral of the story: stats are only relevant in certain situations and in certain contexts. What they’re used for is what makes the difference. (In case you missed them, we covered what a stat is in our article, “What is a Stat Anyway?”, and in our video, “What is a Statistic?”. To recap: a stat is simply a number with a unit of time that can be compared to another number to see changes.)

So which ones should you track?

Well, what do you produce? What’s your end goal? We’ll cover this more in an upcoming blog post, but break down what it takes to get your product. If you are a janitor, what are all the building blocks of creating clean and pleasant spaces. If you are a doctor, what are all the pieces to making and keeping people well. And don’t forget the less obvious ones, like the promotional or scheduling actions, that help build up to the final product. There are some really awesome relationships you can see when you do that, that can help make “steering the ship” as easy as following a compass.

So the important stats are the ones that help you reach your goal.  Track those and then use them! Skip the rest. I’m sure you are busy enough without making busy work for yourself.

Still on the fence about stats and how they apply to you? Take our quick 5 question quiz to see if stats are the missing piece for you or give us a call at 888.351.7828.

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What is a Stat, Anyway? https://usemystats.com/what-is-a-stat-anyway/ https://usemystats.com/what-is-a-stat-anyway/#respond Mon, 19 Dec 2016 14:12:13 +0000 https://usemystats.com/?p=1893 Read More]]> What is a Stat, Anyway?

A “stat,” a “metric,” a “KPI.” These are all names for basically the same thing. But what is it?

Statistics are pretty straightforward. A stat is a number tracked over a unit of time. For example, “the number of sales made in a year.” By themselves, stats don’t do anything or change anyone’s life; they simply track data over a specific span of time.

You can use your stats though (hence the name “UseMyStats”), to take control of your business or life. Stats can help steer you in the direction you want to go. Stats are very objective. They don’t have emotions. They don’t worry about offending anyone. If you made less money last month than this month, they will tell you that. There are no excuses made with stats; they simply tell it how it is.

Let’s take for example cars.

They require gas to drive. If your gas tank is empty, your car won’t go. You need something to tell you how much gas is in the tank. Enter the gas gauge, which reports a current stat: “currently, you have X gas”. With that information, you can decide how far you can go and when you’ll need to stop and get more gas. Also important to note is that if your gas starts rapidly decreasing, you know something is wrong that you’d better fix.

Businesses and people are the same way. You produce certain products/provide certain services and get money/support in return. This has to happen in order to continue to exist. Stats help you measure those things so you can actually do the producing, selling, collecting, vacationing (very important!), etc., and not have to worry that you might be missing something. Keep in mind that tracking stats is just half the battle. Once informed, you have to take action.

Stats can help you become more efficient.

Watching your statistics over time with graphs, you can more easily spot trends. You can see, for example, that your sales go up every third Tuesday of the month. Once you identify the trend, you can find the reason (and hopefully replicate it!). You may notice that production has dropped since Sally went on vacation, so you need to make sure she is covered. You may also notice that production didn’t drop when Fred went on vacation, so you can ask yourself, “why am I paying him so much money?!”

To sum it all up, stats are just numbers that you can use to objectively watch your business without having to be physically present every second. They are a tool to help you spot where things had changed, for better or worse. Use your stats to make educated decisions.

If you’d like to hear me gab about this topic, hop on over and check out this video here

 

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