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Epic Success with Dr Shannon Irvine
The 7 Numbers Every Business Owner Should Check Every Week (Don't read this)
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Foreign. Welcome to the Epic Success Podcast. I AM your host, Dr. Shannon Ervin. On the Epic Success Podcast, we unpack the neuroscience of success and really help you become a hardwired CEO and also hardwire your business to scale. All right, this is what we're doing here on the Epic Success Podcast. So glad you're here. The seven Numbers Every Business Owner Should Check Every Single Week if you're only checking your bank account and to see how your business is doing as a CEO, you're flying blind. I did this for years. I logged into my bank account app, looked at my balance. Maybe I peaked at QuickBooks to feel either relieved or panicked, but I still had no idea what to fix this week. And financials. They tell you what already happened. They don't tell you about what is about to happen or where. Your business quietly still depends on you. So in this video I'm going to give you seven simple weekly numbers you can check in about 10 minutes that tell you if demand is healthy, if sales is actually working, are customers winning, and is the business starting to run without you? If we haven't met, I'm Dr. Shannon Ervin. I've been a business owner for over 25 years. I'm the author of the best selling book the 67 Day Year and I help established business owners and CEOs build self scaling companies that can grow without them being the backup brain for everything. If you are somewhere between half a million and 3 million with a real team and most of your decisions still come from how does this feel right now? Instead of a clear weekly dashboard, this is where we start. Seven numbers, one page, 10 minutes. Let's start with metric number one. So metric number one is qualified demand. Metric number one is not followers, not views or likes. It's how many people took the first meaningful step toward working with you this week. This matters so much because most owners look at traffic or impressions and have no idea if that's turning into a real pipeline. We want the first measurable step that usually shows up before someone becomes a client for you. That might be webinar registrations that meet your filters or applications for a call or discovery call requests or qualified opt ins for your main lean magnet. It's the first place where someone stops being out there on the Internet and starts being a real possibility. I see this constantly. A business owner will say our content is doing great. It's crushing. Our ads look strong but revenue still feels unpredictable. And when we zoom in, they're tracking a lot of noise and almost no real number. Once we define a clear first step. We measure it weekly. Two things happen. They see the weeks where demand is quietly dipping before it shows up in the bank account. That's huge, y'. All. And the team finally knows what top of funnel success actually means, not vanity numbers. So I want you to steal this system. Ask when I look at my best clients, what was the first thing they did that I can measure? Pick one of those as your top of funnel metric. Count how many qualified people did that last week. Some examples may be qualified webinar registrants or application forms submitted for criteria or forms for service or inquiries for quotes that fit our minimum level. And from here you're going to want to make it a system so whoever owns marketing or growth will own this. The rhythm is updated every Monday before your leadership meeting. And a simple target. We need at least X per week to support our revenue goals. And the weekly question you're going to ask is if this number is red, what are we fixing this week to fix demand? If the number is flat, your future revenue is flat. Even if this month still looks fine, this is your earliest pulse. Check that the business isn't slowly starving. So that's vital. So metrics two and three are sales motion metrics. So nothing really happens until an offer is made, Right? So the next two numbers live in sales. Offers made this week via call, email, sales page, new clients, new booked revenue this week. Those are vital. So why this matters so much is most teams stare at revenue and conversion rates. They forget a simple real truth. You cannot close what you've never offered. If you only optimize conversion, you can end up with pretty numbers and not enough sales. If you only push volume, you can end up spamming people and destroying trust. Tracking offers made plus new clients side by side balances both. I've watched sales team proudly report a 70% close rate while the owner is quietly missing their revenue targets every month. When we finally tracked how many calls actually were held and how many real offers were actually made and how many of those became clients, they weren't bad closers. They weren't making enough offers. Revenue went up the moment we raised the standard on offers made and kept an eye on quality. Metric number two is offers made. So calls held where you present a clear yes or no decision or proposals sent or concrete invitations to enroll. Not nice chats metrics. And then number three is new clients or new booked revenue. The count of new clients started. So for higher ticket, you can also track new booked revenue for the week. And from here I want you to really make it a system. The owner of the sales lead or you, if you're still the primary closer. The rhythm here is a Report those two weekly numbers and make the math visible. Offers to clients, simple conversion rate, even if it's bumpy. Right? The weekly question we're going to ask is do we have enough activity problem, not enough offers, or do we have an effectiveness problem? Offers not turning into clients. So if offers are low, you have a sales activity issue. If offers are high but clients are low, you have an offer or sales process issue. You fix those very differently. This pair of numbers tells you which game you're actually playing, right? So it's vital that you track these two numbers. All right? The next two numbers, let's live in delivery. Client wins captured this week. So client wins captured. Clients loss captured. Why this matters is because your entire business runs on one thing. Clients believing they'll actually get the outcome you promised and seeing evidence that others have client wins are proof that your offer delivers. Client losses are proof there's a leak in the bucket. And most businesses under track both of these. One of the simplest unlock moments is this. We make the team report. How many client wins did we capture this week? Did anyone leave? Why in one sentence? Two things happen. Fast. Marketing and sales give better stories and better numbers. Delivery starts seeing patterns in why people stay and why they go. The product gets better and the story gets stronger. So I want you to steal this system. Metric number four, client wins and stories captured. So steal the system. Testimonials, screenshots, short stories. If we hit X result net promoter score spikes, count them weekly, even if the number is small at first. And then metric number five, clients lost. That's churn. Right. So for projects, count clients who finished and did not renew or refer for reoccurring, count cancels or churn percentage. And then of course, you know, I'm going to tell you to make it a system. Assign one owner for proof, collecting the wins. Assign one owner for retention every week. How many wins did we capture and which offers captured them and who's left and what early warning signals did we miss? Use this data to improve both the offer and while you talk about it, if wins and proof are going up and churn is going down, you are stacking value. If not, no amount of more leads is going to save you for very long. Tough love, I know, but I got to share it with you because I've been on both sides. So metric number six honestly is going to get a little uncomfortable. How many hours did you personally spend in day to day operations last week? Ouch, right? Why this matters is you don't just want a bigger business. You want a business that that doesn't need you. For every fire, every exception and every client decision, if your weekly operator hours never change, the business is just building a bigger cage or jail around you. This metric right here forces truth. And it forced it for me too. I've sat with businesses doing a million, 2 million, even 5 million and still working 60 to 80 hours a week. They'll say things like, but I have a team now. And then when we look at the calendar, sales calls, they're still on. Client calls, they're still on. Internal meetings, they still run them. Slacks and emails, they still answer first. Once we start measuring operator hours every week, we can finally ask what has to change in the team so or the system so that this number goes down without revenue going down. That's how you start becoming a real CEO owner, not just the busiest employee. Okay, I love you, but I had to say it. Okay, so pick one of these and track it. Honestly, either option A, total hours last week spent in delivery, client calls, internal problem solving and admin, or option B, number of decisions last week that only you could make. Don't overcomplicate it. Start with your best estimate and just improve over time. And of course, make it a system. Update it every Friday or every Monday. Give yourself a realistic target for the next quarter. An example might be under 20 operator hours by Q4 when it's red. Treat it like any other metric. Which role needs an owner? Which system needs to be installed and fixed? Which decision needs to be moved off your plate? It's an important metric. This number doesn't move by accident. It moves when you make different hiring, delegation and systems decisions on purpose for scale. Now, our final metric, metric number seven, the last metric is very simple. How much cash could you safely pull out of the business right now without putting payroll or basic operations at risk? Now this matters so much because the top line, it can lie. And profit can lie too. You can have profitable months on paper and still be stressed and behind on cash. Cash is the final score of how well everything else is working. So I've talked with owners who were technically profitable, growing and completely miserable. They felt trapped because cash was always tight. They couldn't pay themselves consistently. They were afraid to invest in help. And when we started tracking cash above our minimum buffer every week, it changed how they thought. They stopped making big decisions off of vibes and feeling and they started making them off a single clear number. Can we actually afford this? So steal this system. Decide your minimum buffer for many businesses, two to three months of operating expenses each week. I want you to calculate total cash on hand minus your buffer and then make it a system. Finance owner updates it weekly or bi weekly. High profit sharing or owner draws into this number, not just paper profit and use it as a hard constraint. When you're thinking about hiring, ad spend or big investments, this is your ultimate health check. Can the business pay you and be safe if this number is always near zero? Something in your model needs attention. No matter how good the other metrics look now, having those seven numbers written down is nice, but numbers only change your life if they change your behavior. So each of your seven metrics answer five questions. Who owns the metric? One name per number. Multiple owners means no owner. By the way. Question two is what's the target? What does being in the green really look like versus yellow or red? Question three is where does it live? One simple sheet or dashboard. Not six tools, not 12 tabs, not sexy software. Next question is when do we review it? Same day, same time every week in your leadership meeting rhythm. What happens if it's red? Is the next question. What project decision or conversation does it trigger if it turns red? We decide that in advance. If a number has no owner, no target, no meaning and no consequence, it's just data decoration. It's not a CEO system. So if you're watching this and you're thinking this is exactly why I feel like I'm flying blind all the time and stuck in the middle of everything, your next move isn't track more 20 more numbers or check the bank account. Your next move is to build a simple CEO scorecard that shows you where demand is, where is sales, where client value is, where the business quietly still depends on you. That's exactly what we do together. Live Inside the Free Self Scaling Business Diagnostic. It's a live workshop where we score your CEO system, your team system and your profit system and then map the next 90 day focus so you know which of these seven numbers is is your true constraint and what to do first to start getting your time back without slowing revenue. So click the link below this video register for the next live diagnostic and bring whatever scorecard you currently have, even if right now it's just your bank app. And tell me in the comments which of these seven numbers are you already tracking and which one are you going to add this week? I can't wait to see you inside the live diagnostic until next week. Bye for now. Oh, and if you want to keep learning more and more about the scaled CEO operating system, click here. Make sure you register for the diagnostic. Can't wait to see you. Bye for now. Thanks again for listening to the Epic Success Podcast. If you loved the podcast this week, do me a favor, would you give us a five star review? And over in Instagram, please share with me in the DMs. What was it that you loved about it? How did it resonate? And I always say for podcasters, those reviews are our big warm hug. And of course, if you want to go deeper or see this on video, Please follow my YouTube channel at. Dr. Shannon Ervin on YouTube. I cannot wait to see you next week on the Epic Success Podcast. Bye for now.