Drop the ego. Forget vanity numbers and focus on the real revenue movers.

If you’ve been following my leadership journey for some time, you know I talk about authenticity a lot. It’s easy to assume authenticity is just a buzzword, but not the way we view it. 

Authenticity means: 

• Treating your team as people first, employees second 
• Making your people your #1 client 
• Consistency between the way your industry/community sees you, and the way you operate behind closed doors 
• Caring more about what your customers say, than your industry peers 
• Playing the long game and always keeping it real with people, even if that means ‘losing’ a sale. 

It also means being honest about your metrics and dropping the ego. 

My whole business philosophy is better before bigger, which requires a real look at our numbers and not striving for growth for growth’s sake. 

A big area of focus this year is generating more high-quality appraisals (for my sales team at Nitschke Real Estate). Appraisals are requests for property valuations from potential sellers. 

Approximately 10% of a quality database is considering selling at any time and a good nurture strategy can lead to 80% of them requesting an appraisal. 

I track these 3 numbers weekly to ensure we’re on target. 

But it’s not just about tracking any number of appraisals we get. We’re focused on the quality, not quantity. 

Vanity metrics don’t drive business outcomes. 

Last year, our sales team performed 784 appraisals. This was 150 fewer than 2024, yet we achieved the same revenue. Our goal for this year is to now increase the volume of these high-quality appraisals. 

We’re spending the first few weeks of the year improving our reporting and tracking the origin of all appraisals – with a target of 25-30% from digital channels. 

Moving beyond vanity metrics to measurable outcomes that actually impact the business’s bottom line is something all CEOs should do. It starts with letting go of numbers that stroke the ego, then building a robust sales pipeline (that you track weekly). 

Know what actually moves the needle in your business. Simplify or remove the rest. 

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