Dominate Your Data with Donna Dube

In this episode of the Mom Owned and Operated podcast, Rita Suzanne and Donna Dube discuss raising a family, running a business and remembering yourself.

Donna is a certified Director of Operations, who focuses on data & measurement. She works with established online service based entrepreneurs who are ready to go from uncertain guesswork to profitable decisions by leveraging the power of their data without complex spreadsheets or math.  Her motto is to make data way less dull and her clients' businesses way more profitable!

You can find Donna on her website, on Instagram, and on Facebook

Grab Donna's list of 10 Things You Can Measure starting today.

Listen to more interviews by visiting momownedandoperated.com and apply to work with Rita at ritasuzanne.com/apply/

Rita Suzanne
Transform your business into a predictable income machine by crafting an irresistible brand.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Transcript

SPEAKERS

Rita Suzanne, Donna Dube

Rita Suzanne  00:01

Welcome to the Mom Owned and Operated Podcast, the podcast about moms and for moms, where we have candid conversations about running a business, raising a family, and remembering ourselves. I'm your host, Rita Suzanne, a single mom of four, digital strategist and provider of no nonsense business strategies and tactics.

Hi, this is Rita Suzanne. And today I have my guest, Donna on with me, Donna, thank you so much for joining us. I am so excited for you to talk to us all about you, your business and your family.

Donna Dube  00:39

Yes, thank you. I'm so happy to be here, Rita and share. So I'm Donna up in Toronto, Ontario, and my business is productivity plus, and I help service based entrepreneurs know their numbers by leveraging the power of their data. And so we take people from uncertain guesswork to profitable decision making by looking at what the data is showing and the story that the data is showing about their business. So I'm happy to be here, turns on my family, I'm married and have two teenagers, which we have homeschooled from day one, actually. So that's a side project. But now they're in well, the oldest one has now graduated in first year university and the younger one is in grade 10. So moving right along, yes,

Rita Suzanne  01:24

oh my gosh, I always say you guys who homeschool, you are amazing, because it's just not something. I just I just know, I couldn't do it. So I just think that it's great, like adding that other factor on you know, you're a mom, you're running a business, and then homeschooling too. And, you know, in some cases, you know, partner and all of that stuff. It's just got to be so much going on.

Donna Dube  01:52

It is busy. That's true. But I find it just got to keep super, super organized.

Rita Suzanne  01:58

Which is perfect, because that's what you do for your business. And so when we're talking about metrics and numbers, tell us exactly like what type of metrics should be be tracking?

Donna Dube  02:10

Yeah. So to start off, I want to tell your listeners for those who are feeling like data metrics, no, I think I'll hit pause and come back to this episode later. It doesn't have to be scary. Obviously, the data themselves are number points. But I want you to start thinking about those metrics in terms of answering questions. You have questions in your business like which service or product is giving me the best return on investment? How are people finding my website are people converting from this new lead magnet I made or not. And so the data is just answering those questions. And so when you think about it, that way, it becomes less overwhelming and scary. Because I know there's a lot of business owners out there who have creative minds, they're visionaries, and they love the content and the service delivery and not so much looking at but the behind the scenes the operation side. So just know it doesn't have to be as scary as you think it is. And when you start with your metrics, I want you to start small, small meaning don't go into every tool and software that you own, and start looking at every data point that they tell you, because you will quickly become overwhelmed and will turn away and don't want to do it. And so when you start start with like eight to 12 metrics, to begin with, keep it small and manageable so that you know where you're going. And in terms of what those are, you want that to be a holistic view of your business. And so I like to major in three main pillars, one being marketing, because doesn't matter whether you're an online business or brick and mortar business marketing is part of the game. And so looking at some metrics on marketing, side, finances, because we are in business, this isn't a hobby. And so we do have to make sure we're profitable at the end of the day. And then the third is team or operations. So looking at what services and products that provide and what kind of return on investment I'm getting from them or from my team members.

Rita Suzanne  04:07

I love I love all of that. I can't even tell you how many business owners I worked with over the years. And one of the first questions I would ask them is, Are you do you have analytics on your website? Are you tracking any of your numbers? And they absolutely, like nine times out of 10 We're not. And so we would have to go and set those things up for them. And so I think that it is something important and you know, do you suggest that they just keep a spreadsheet or like is there a special tool that you recommend or use? What are you do?

Donna Dube  04:47

Yeah, good question. So you can certainly start with this spreadsheet. I don't advise it because it one doesn't get done very often unless you have someone to delegate it to and to is not very scalable and so on. Every time you'll forget to look at it, that other person may forget to start putting numbers on there. And again, it's not very visual. So if you think about this, would you like to look at a spreadsheet with a bunch of numbers on your account? Or would you like to look at a visual bar graph or pie chart, that can quickly show you the patterns and trends. For most of us who aren't data nerds, like me, we enjoy looking at that visual representation, because it's quickly and easy to be able to see those changes. So as an example, we would map out your revenue versus your expenses month to month. So at the end of the first quarter, you will be able to see in a bar chart this much more revenue, this much from my expenses. And then you can compare that month to month, quarter to quarter year to year. So it's easy to find a pattern and trend there, rather than a bunch of numbers on this spreadsheet. And so I suggest building a visual dashboard that you can then look at. So yes, it's a bit of an investment to build that dashboard and to get your metrics set up in there. But it's one of those gifts that keeps on giving, because the data will automatically update in mayor. And so once it's set up and working, he don't have to do a lot of manual work to keep it going. And you or your team members can quickly log in and see those patterns and trends and then take action.

Rita Suzanne  06:20

So I think that a lot of people, like you mentioned they don't have the Edit, they're not tracking anything. And how often would you say that they need to start looking at their numbers?

Donna Dube  06:33

Yeah. So I suggest to my clients, so once we have that dashboard built, that you look at it at least monthly. If you are pivoting, if you are launching something new, if you are trying something new, then obviously we're going to look at that more often. And so it could be in a launch, you might have you or a team member looking at that daily just to see what's happening, but at least monthly. And what I encourage CEOs to do is to actually put a recurring task in their calendar, to go and look at the dashboard and take some time to take some action based on what those numbers show. Because the truth of the matter is, Rita the numbers are great. But if we don't step back and think and say What's this really mean? And what are we going to do to improve to tweak to change, the numbers don't mean anything on their own, we have to actually take the action, and sort of block off that 30 minutes or so a month and actually go in and look at it, you know, have a discussion with the team member if you have someone in that role with you, and actually take some action on what it's showing,

Rita Suzanne  07:34

I love that I do that. I usually take like the last two or three days off from calls for the month and just block those two. I know like two days, like who needs two days. But what I'm using that for is adding all of my expenses to my accounting software. And I'm looking and analyzing everything. And then also planning for the month ahead, just making sure if something is not converting that, you know, okay, well, maybe we need to switch it up a little bit.

Donna Dube  08:06

Yes, yeah. And you know, really, business owners know this, because anyone who's decided to do like Facebook ads or something, you're not going to start to set up an ad and then ignore it. Right, you're going to have your ads in the ads manager or you yourself in there continuously looking to make sure that it's still performing because it can change on a dime. And so the same with your business, I often use as an analogy, you know, we just had summer. And so if you think about, Okay, we're gonna go on a summer vacation with the family got everything packed in the car ready to go, we turn on our car, the first thing we do is look at our dashboard, do we have a full tank of gas, hopefully, the oil engine light is not on the engine light isn't on, you know, those major things, we don't go under the hood and start looking under there because we're not mechanics. But we use that dashboard to give us a quick sense of, okay, my car's ready to go. And the same one we're driving, you wouldn't drive on the highway or the freeway without knowing your speed and your signal and seeing all those things. But we take it for granted that we're actually looking at those. And so I'd suggest that business owners do the same thing with your business.

Rita Suzanne  09:11

Yeah. So if they decide that they want to try to start to do this on their own, what is the platform that you would recommend that they try to set up? Or that you use that you would recommend?

Donna Dube  09:24

Yes, for sure. So a lot of the marketing you know, metrics that you want to pull from are gonna come from Google Analytics. So first off, like you were saying, make sure that you have Google Analytics setup on your website. And right now make sure you also have their new product, which is GA for it's going to be released while it is released. But we're going to have to be using that for tracking metrics come July of 2023. So just less than a year from now. And so ensure you have that setup. So it is tracking data from now until July because Google Analytics This doesn't work retroactively. So if I set up today, it can only track from today going forward, what happened last week, it doesn't know. So have those two setup. And then from there, you can pull that into something called Google Data Studio. And so that's what allows you to make a visual representation of those numbers. For anyone who's been on the back end of Google Analytics, it's a mess. It's very overwhelming. And most people don't like to look in there to find the data they need. But once you pull that into Google Data Studio, it's much easier than see it visually. So that covers marketing.

Rita Suzanne  10:36

Well, before we move on, what are the things that you're looking for inside of Google Analytics? Because it's so overwhelming? Are we looking at visitors? Are we looking at like, conversions? What What are like, you know, what are we looking at?

Donna Dube  10:50

Yeah, good point. So a couple of marketing metrics that I always like to look at is, for sure, some top level things in terms of number of users, to your website, just overall, how long they're staying on your page. Because if you have a lot of people coming and leaving really quickly, there's something about your messaging, you're attracting certain people, but once they get there, they find they're in the wrong place. So things like that. If you have, you know, 404 errors, you want to be quickly catching those and fixing those links. So those kind of high level stats we want to look at. And then from there, I really concentrate on conversions. Because it's great that a lot of people looked at your social media post or went to your website. But the truth is, we want those people to either book a call with us, you know, download our thing, or buy our product. And so that conversion is what's really important. So we want to know how many people got there. But then from there, how many people actually converted and took the action that we want them to take? Yeah, and so conversions for sure.

Rita Suzanne  11:51

Right? A lot of people don't know, though, you have to actually add those landing pages inside of Google Analytics in order to track conversions, right?

Donna Dube  12:00

Yeah. So what happens is when you set up Google Analytics, if you if your website is all on one domain, so let's say you have my website.com, then you can set up Google Analytics so that it covers all pages that you make on that website. But for a lot of us, a lot of business owners, we're crossing domains. So our website might be on WordPress and my website icon, but then our lead magnet, Amazon lead pages, and our cart is on Thrive cart. And so once we crossed those domains, the Universal Analytics, the analytics we're using now doesn't cross domains very easily. So we have to find another tool to help us with that called Google Tag Manager. Once we move to the to the new Google Analytics, this process is going to be easier because we're going to be able to track person across domains much easier than we can right now.

Rita Suzanne  12:53

Do you still have to set up goals in the new one? Or do you know?

Donna Dube  12:57

Yeah, you do set up goals. It's not the same. They're called events. And so the new one will be tracking based on events. And so yes, you will have to set up those events. And you'll do that through this Google Tag Manager. piece of software as well. So the good part is that it's all Google related, if that's a good thing for you. But it's all free in the sense that there's no extra cost the business owner with hooking those up, of course, there's the other side that Google is obviously looking at our information, right. So some people, you know, choose other routes because of that. But, yes,

Rita Suzanne  13:34

okay, I'm sorry. Now. So after marketing, we would look at our financial stuff.

Donna Dube  13:39

Yes. So in terms of finances, when we want to look at like revenue versus expenses, for most of us, that's going to come out of some software, QuickBooks wave, something like that. And so what we do there is we pull that data into a spreadsheet that then gets displayed in Google Data Studio in a visual way. Okay, so that's where we can get that bar chart from

Rita Suzanne  14:01

Nice. Yeah. And then the next thing is operations. And I guess, conversions are still in there, right? Or like sale?

Donna Dube  14:10

Yes. And so this one will really depend on the software and what the business owner wants to measure. For example, some people may have a membership. And they'd like to know what's the churn rate, like how long do people stay in my membership before they drop off. And so that will depend on what tech tools they're using. So that one's a little bit harder to narrow down. But there are connectors that we can use to connect certain software to the Data Studio so that we can pull all of that data in in one place without you having to go around three different tools to look at the numbers.

Rita Suzanne  14:44

Do you find a lot of business owners don't really know what they should be measuring?

Donna Dube  14:49

100% Yes, yes. They know that they should be measuring some, but they don't know where to start and some dive in and they're like, Oh, well, good. Just gonna measure everything. And again, Don't get quickly overwhelmed and not know where to go and others are like, No, I'm not sure what to do with. So I'm just going to put a pause on that. And do what I what I do know and what I like doing. So yes, it's a, it's a lot of education in the sense of, you know, what really matters, what really affects your bottom line. I can remember working with a client once and she, her target audience was young people who had recently graduated from healthcare fields. And so she was like, I don't know which social media channel. They're on young people on every channel, so we should be on all of them. And she had a social media assistant already and was starting to think, Oh, this isn't enough. Maybe I need to get a second one. And so I challenged her that and I said, Well, I don't think that your target audience is on every social media channel. Let's narrow this down. But I don't know where. So I said, Okay, let's dive into Google Analytics. And let's find out. And so it was really interesting. What we found is that most people were coming to her website from face book. But the people who are actually converting meaning they were, you know, downloading her lead magnets they were getting on webinars and doing you know, taking action. They were coming from Instagram, she was hardly getting any, any feedback from her YouTube channel at the moment from Tik Tok, you know, some of these other ones that we think young people are on. And so you don't know until you go back behind the scenes and look at that data. But it was such a relief to her because she was like, okay, I can focus on Facebook and Instagram, really, as my two target channels, and I worry about the six other ones, do two of them well, rather than, you know, eight of them mediocre.

Rita Suzanne  16:38

Right? Exactly. And I think that that's what a lot of people struggle with. And so it's hard to tell somebody to market and this place when they don't even have the Analytics set up in there to even look like how are our people even finding me. And one thing that we didn't mention was the Google Search Console, which will like tell the fluorophores and all of that stuff, but it tells them like the search words used to find Yes,

Donna Dube  17:05

it's very helpful, because you're pumping out content, you may have a copywriter working with you, you know, trying to put out content. And sometimes you're using words which you think your target audience is going to be using to find you. But sometimes I'm using other words, and so just having that data and knowing Okay, people are searching this, and they're finding me this way, and then you can, you know, adjust your content strategy based on what that showing,

Rita Suzanne  17:31

oh, my gosh, I can't even tell you some of the weird search queries that are coming up under my stuff. But I think that the the biggest message is to make sure that you have the Analytics installed on your on all your platforms, because then someone like Donna can go back and look at them and actually gather that data. If you don't have it on there. Then like you said, we can't go back retroactively and say, Oh, everybody's coming from Instagram, you can tell?

Donna Dube  18:02

No, you cannot tell. That's right. Yeah. So for sure, make sure you have both universal and GA four, hooked up to your website and other tools that you use that you want to pull data from. And then the second piece of that, once, you know that's working and they are satisfied, the second piece is looking at using UTM. And so those are special codes that we add to the end of a URL to help Google know where people came from. And so it's a long thing you may have seen that before, like question mark UTM source equals medium equals. And so having a strategy and and a place for those and what you're doing. So for example, or about that, please. Yeah, so for example, let's say you are putting out an organic social media post, and you're trying to drive traffic to a webinar or challenge that you have coming up. And so you're making an organic post, you're also doing your email list. Maybe you're in a couple of Facebook groups where you're allowed to post that type of thing. Maybe you're getting on podcast, and you're, you know, suggesting to people that they can join you there. You want to know at the end of the day of all the people who came to that webinar challenge, where did they come from? Was my organic social media posts, the one that drove most traffic? Was it my email list? Where was it? And so by using these special codes, you're telling Google, that person came from Facebook, that person came from my email list. And so afterwards, you can go back and see what really worked for you and what didn't. So you can really, really drill down deep, so much so that you could even say on the third email of my sales sequence for product X. This many people clicked button two, if you want to know that. Right?

Rita Suzanne  19:51

You set those up like inside of Google Analytics or like, oh, how do you do that? We're

Donna Dube  19:56

nice. So how you how you set those up? is when you are making the link. So in general, if you're making the Facebook post, you might just link to, you know, my website DICOM. webinar. And so you'd have to put that special code in that in that link so that when they click it, to them, it looks the same. But we're telling Google Analytics, okay, those people came from

Rita Suzanne  20:18

Facebook. Is it a different when you make a different one for each platform? Is that what you do?

Donna Dube  20:23

Oh, yes, of course. Yeah, unfortunately, that's the downside of it, is that yes, you have to make a different one. Because your source where that traffic is coming from is going to be different, whether they came from Facebook, or Instagram or your email, whether it's paid or organic. And then the different campaigns or the different, you know, advertising that you're doing are going to have a different name as well, yes. So I do provide a little bit of strategy and a kind of do it yourself spreadsheet so that it's easier for you or your team to get those UTM links, right, because they are a bit complicated. They're not something we normally would type them in English. And so it's easy to make a mistake, and then the link won't work properly, which we don't want.

Rita Suzanne  21:06

I love that, because I think that, you know, especially during launch periods, it's super important for people don't really see how things are working. And I used to when I would design websites and stuff like that, I used to tell people like how heat maps are super important. And we want to like check out and see how things are working early in the process. And I love that as a strategy as well, because it helps you really, like you said, drill down and go deeper into the data even further. Yes, you know, yes. I think that, you know, for someone like us, we're into into this type of stuff. But, you know, that's why they hire you to help you, you know, through the process.

Donna Dube  21:49

Yes, for sure. And again, it doesn't have to be complicated. What we're seeing now is someone may be thinking, oh, man, I can't do that my plates are already full. But again, you can get someone to help you set that up. Once it's set up, you're looking at the pretty dashboard, you don't have to worry about the behind the scenes of how it's tracking that right. And so just as another example, I had a client recently that I built a launch dashboard for like you were saying so that she and her team could log in and see how the launch was going. And a few days in, she had noticed that the mobile sales were low compared to desktop sales. And she thought, this is 2022, I'm sure people are buying this product of their phones, what's happening. And so we dug in a little bit deeper. And we actually looked at the layout. Well, it turns out, we missed it. When the when the person was putting together the sales page, the mobile view, CTA button, or the call to action button was much lower on the mobile view. And so people were having to scroll before they took action. And so we simply just move that button higher up, and boom, the sales increased from mobile. So it's a simple, simple tweak. But you know, someone would say, Oh, this launch was not a success. I don't think that products any good, but nothing to do with

Rita Suzanne  23:04

the product. Right. And I think that's the important part that just goes to show how important it is to actually look at all the numbers because they do tell a story, even if it's one that you might find to be a little overwhelming initially. But I think once you get to, to get familiarized with that, how it works and how things actually, I guess are converting or you know, working, and even like your financial numbers showing like your sales may be down, okay, like you really need to increase your number of, you know, things that you're selling, and really maybe go harder in a certain area. I think that that's something that a lot of times people are not really paying attention to. They're like, okay, my expenses are covered this month. I'm good, you know?

Donna Dube  23:54

Yes, exactly. And it could be sometimes there's just a misalignment, you know, you as a business owner, make a great product or service, you really enjoy delivering it. But maybe your pricing is off compared to the amount of time and your investment or your team's investment in it. And so just having that and saying okay, I sold this many it took cause my team this much to actually deliver it cost me this much. Is this still a profitable product? And if not, where do I need to tweak? Maybe it's just that I offer too much in terms of, you know, how many times I was available for a coaching call or these types of things? And so sometimes there's that misalignment we can see and then of course, correct

Rita Suzanne  24:36

Yeah, I think and that's something that I didn't used to do either was really track my time, because I was like, it takes me too long to track my own time I get so you know, focused on this thing. And then I'm switching and then I haven't remembered to change tasks but I have been more focused in you know, tracking all of that stuff this year because I think It really helped me to see the misalignments that you're talking about.

Donna Dube  25:05

Yeah, yeah, for sure. And even where we're spending our time, but, you know, maybe is very profitable. And we should do more of that, and less of something else, right? And so and even, you know, we're human beings, we all have time, I'll be wasting time. You know, we're all of us have time on we're scrolling social media, but do we actually know how much we're spending on that type of thing. And so just being aware of it, even if you don't do it every day, even if you did it for three to five days, a couple of times a year, it gives you a good sense of where you actually are spending your time? Yeah,

Rita Suzanne  25:38

well, I'm trying to get my work hours down to like five hours a day. So I'm really paying attention to what's going on making sure that I'm, you know, like, right now I'm at a little bit over six. And so I'm feeling like I'm doing I'm making progress, but I'm trying to get them down. Because, you know, it's like, obviously, I need I need some time off. You know, I think all of us need that balance that we strive so hard to achieve. Yeah, you know, for sure,

Donna Dube  26:07

for sure. And many of us, you know, left corporate or whatever, we started this business, for the freedom for the balance, right. And so no one else is going to keep us in check. But ourselves. And so you're right is 100% important, whatever your goal is, whether it's to work five hours, two hours, three hours, whatever that is, you have to build it in.

Rita Suzanne  26:27

Yeah. And I think that this just goes to reinforce the idea that if you are tracking your numbers, then it's really going to work for you. And, you know, especially once you get the hang of it and really see how to make it work for you. Yeah, for sure. So tell me, I like to ask a couple of other little questions. If your mom came to you, and she was like, excited to start her own business? Would you have any particular advice for her?

Donna Dube  26:58

Ah, good question. So yes, I think my advice would be, look realistically at where you are in your life right now. And where you're going to be in three to five years. And I know, sometimes that might be hard. But if I can think back, for myself, I'm in a very different position now with two teenagers than I was, you know, five years ago, or even 10 years ago when they were little, right. And so not saying don't go ahead and do it if you want to, but be realistic with your time and your treasure, because, obviously, those children are precious, and we don't want to, you know, be working so much that we don't have time for them, because they grow up so fast. So being realistic with what your time is, and where you can go, maybe you can only do a part time thing right now. And that's okay. And as time goes on, and your children get older, and the demands change, you may be able to move more into a full time, you know, in your own business role. But yeah, really looking at your time and, and managing that.

Rita Suzanne  28:02

I think that's super important. Because I recently had a client and her financial goals of what she wanted to make per month, didn't really add up to the amount of time that she was able to work. And so what we did was, you know, I asked her what her goals were, and then we looked at how much time she was able to work during the week and added that up. And then you know, we looked at her service and the pricing on it, and all the things just did not align. And I was like, There's no way that this is going to work. So, you know, we talked about that. And she made some pivots and, and adjustments. And so I think that you know, and she's super happy with the outcome of you know, what's going on. And so I think that that's a really realistic thing to look at, because a lot of moms like myself, when I started, I was working all the time, like 1012 hours a day, and my my sons were little they were like four and six. Yes, yeah. And they were sitting beside me where and I had my laptop on my lap, and they were just sitting beside me just wanted me to be there. And I was physically there, but I wasn't really present with them. Like I really wanted to be because I started my business, I could be home with them. But I had really just created myself a, you know, a little put myself in a box. And so that's what I'm trying to make sure I avoid and help other moms avoid to because it's, you know, like, in hindsight, it really is. It sucks that I did that to them.

Donna Dube  29:39

Well, yeah, and then you feel kind of guilty afterwards. Right. So I just think, you know, really taking some time to think about what your boundaries are going to be. For example for us, when we were homeschooling. We had our homeschool Co Op that we joined and that happened once a week in the afternoon. So you know I had to be realistic that that afternoon. No work is getting And because that was a priority for me to go there with my kids. And I had to be realistic with my clients to say, Okay, you can't reach me from this time to this time, you know, I have other commitments, and just being upfront and honest about that from the get go and blocking your calendar off from the get go, you know, or if you like to have your, your date night, every Wednesday, whatever it is that you, it's important to you make sure that gets on your calendar, and that you're not, you know, overstepping those boundaries. Because if you don't see what your boundaries are up front, people will walk and take what they can get, because they don't know that you have boundaries.

Rita Suzanne  30:36

I think that what I see from a lot of my clients is that it's hard for them to enforce boundaries, right. And, but I, you know, it's like, we will do one that, you know, little baby steps at a time and get them on the way to get their boundaries enforced, you know, so it just takes time. And I think the more you do it, like anything, it gets easier, and, you know, so yeah, just do one thing at a time, turn the notifications off, take the email off your phone or something. But you know, I like to do like, welcome packets that have, you know, the, hey, these are my hours and, you know, say that these are your hours, don't send them an email after hours.

Donna Dube  31:18

Right, exactly. And even if you happen to be working after hours of choice, you know, though, lots of email, clients now will allow you to schedule to send it later, right? And so just be mindful of that and say, okay, you know why it's Friday night? Nothing's going on. I'm not actually going to do this. But my client will get this on Monday.

Rita Suzanne  31:38

Yep. And I think that that works. Because if you break the boundary, then they think that it's okay to you know, and believe me, I've had this happened. I've done it myself. So this, this is it. I'm teaching based on my experience. So okay, Donna. So the next question is, we all you know, give up a little bit of ourselves, when we start a business, and we're raising our families. And so one question I like to ask is really, what are you doing for yourself? Like, how are you remembering Donna? Yeah,

Donna Dube  32:15

good question. This was certainly an area I struggled with for a lot of years. Before I started my business, I was an active person, I enjoyed exercise, I enjoyed walking, I enjoyed lifting weights, all that kind of thing, and I, you know, was able to fit it into my routine fairly well. And then I found once I started my business that kind of drifted off to the side, and I was doing less looking after myself, if you want to call it that way, even though I had my boundaries, I wasn't really building my exercise routine into my week. And so you know, yes, I'd have time on Saturday or Sunday, but that wasn't really cutting what I wanted. And so I really had to take a step back and say, okay, if I'm going to do this, I'm gonna commit to doing this for my own health and my own wellness, then, again, I need to block it off in the calendar, I need to have set times and I need to stick to it and commit to it. So over time, I've been able to do that I just actually, you know, put it in once a week, and then twice a week, and then three times a week as I was going. So that's an area that's been really important to me. I know for other moms, sometimes it's having that quiet time, whether it's meditation, or yoga, or whatever it is, you know, have a journal or that type of thing, but just have that time, whatever you choose is important for your own self care and build it in just like you do for your family's activities. Yeah, I

Rita Suzanne  33:39

think that that's really important. I like you thought that I was going to be in the best shape of my life. When I started my business. I slowly stopped eating, you know, the healthy the smoothies and the good stuff for me and, and exercising regularly, because I was so focused on my clients and, and all of that. So it is so important to you know, do whatever is going to help you to feel better about yourself. So, yeah. So where can people find you online? Donna, where are you at? Yeah,

Donna Dube  34:13

so my website is productivity plus va.ca. And if you go there under Resources, I have a 10 metrics that you can start measuring today resource which may be helpful for your audience's thinking, Okay, I really do want to get started on this but where and so it goes through tam there's actually 12 metrics that I suggest successful business owners take a look at and so that will help to get you started. In terms of you know, where to start measuring and, and go from there.

Rita Suzanne  34:42

I love that. Are you on social at all?

Donna Dube  34:44

I am Yes, I'm usually on Facebook or LinkedIn. Those are kind of my two, my two channels. So yeah, you're welcome to find me there and happy to have a conversation.

Rita Suzanne  34:53

And we will put all those links in the show notes. Thank you so much Donna for being a guest It's been so exciting to chat with you. I love talking about this type of stuff.

Donna Dube  35:05

Well, thank you. I appreciate your time.

Rita Suzanne  35:05

Yes, they can for sure. Yes. Thank you again. You're welcome. And there you have it. I want to encourage you to remember that being a mom who runs her own business is not easy. We all struggle, but just keep moving forward. And don't forget to make time for yourself. As moms we are usually the first thing to go to the bottom of the list. If your business is overwhelming you and you need real solutions, not just some sugar coated suggestions apply to work with me at ritasuzanne.com/apply