Chance the Rapper has become one of my favorite recording artists over the past 7+ years.

As owning your music catalog has become increasingly important, Chance began his career independently – absent of outside labels or management.

Chance’s career started with an album called 10 Day which he created during a 10 day suspension from high school in 2012. With a introspective and unique delivery, listeners hear someone who openly shares insecurities, challenges and doubts with a mix tape style delivery that continues to keep you on your toes for each new song.

Chance has never signed on to a record label and has been able to drop his music for free to listeners – relying on touring, streaming royalties and uniquely branded partnerships (Kit Kat, the White Sox, and 3M) for income.

Recently, though, Chance was announced as the headliner for the Minnesota State Fair. As the days approached his performance, his brother, who manages his work, received confirmation that the fair had only sold 3,333 tickets for a 14,000-person venue.

In a world where crowd size has become more important than ever, the natural reaction to only selling 24% of your tickets is to call in sick. No one wants to be the guy with empty seats.

Chance looked at it differently and wrote a new song about it.

What Matters & Why

It’s easy for so many of us to look at the same metrics everyone else is to decide if our work or our life is worthy. It’s easy to look around and size up our own ‘crowd size’ metric to decide if we should play or not.

Or we could look for the metrics that matter most to us.

We can chose to define our own metrics.

Make Your Own Metrics & Mastering Your Impact

Each day, year, month, and moment brings us an opportunity. An opportunity to be honest, refocus and keep our eyes on our own paper.

The statement of comparison being the thief of joy has so much truth to it.

Can we learn from observing others? Absolutely.

But we shouldn’t let it define us.

How do we go about leading businesses more focused on our unique purpose?

Identifying Impact Metrics

If we go to the root of what we do, it’s important to highlight key points that indicate our impact.

1.Start with How Our Clients Define Success
The chances are that your clients could care less about your AUM. They do care about how you help them and how well you understand them.

2. Identify Unique Market Metrics

If you serve a niche, lean into it with the metrics that you focus on. If you serve doctors, consider the factors around their lives that can ultimately speak to your impact (e.g, helping them with paying off college debt or getting it written off).

Work with small business owners and see how you can help them extend the value you provide to the people who work for them and get focused on how many jobs you are influencing through financially solid leaders who now have confidence to lead well and invest with clarity.

3. Identify Your Adoption Metrics

Real change comes through adoption of new practices and behaviors. If you look at all the things you can do for your clients, start to identify how many of your clients have adopted all of them. If this makes your clients lives better, consider this as a north start for how your team works to serve the rest of your clients.

What are the metrics that matter to you?

What are the metrics that matter to those who love you?