Sam hit her numbers. Sam quit last week.

Your quarterly numbers came back green. Revenue's up. Margin held. All great news, right?

And two of your best people just gave notice.

Yes, revenue is the most important metric.

It is, however a story of revenue is the most important metric, AND

Revenue is the most important metric and there are a variety of KPIs that matter in our businesses

Most founder-led operations run on a single bottom line. Everything else, employee retention, quality, customer experience, gets treated as an input to that number instead of a number in its own right. Nobody owns it. Nobody reports on it. It only shows up once it's already broken something: a resignation, a returned order, a customer who moved to a competitor without a word.

The operations that hold up over years don't run on one number. They run on several, financial, yes, but also the ones that predict it. Turnover. Quality escapes. Customer retention. Each one gets a target and an owner, the same way revenue does.

A single metric can look strong right up until it can't, because everything propping it up was invisible. Multiple metrics catch the crack while it's still small.

Pick one number this quarter that isn't revenue or margin. Retention. On-time delivery. Repeat customer rate. Give it a target and an owner, and put it on the same page as your financials.

Reply and tell me which second number you'd start tracking. I read every one.

Thanks for reading,

Sarah