You don't need a dashboard with forty charts. You need three numbers you actually believe — because every strategic question (raise prices? hire? double the ad budget?) is really a question about them.
CAC: what a customer actually costs
Take everything you spent acquiring customers last quarter — ads, tools, the outreach hours at an honest hourly rate — and divide by customers won. Founders routinely exclude their own time and conclude marketing is "free"; it isn't, and the moment you delegate, the illusion collapses. Know the real number now.
LTV: what a customer is actually worth
Not the first sale — the relationship: average purchase × purchases per year × years they stay. A $500 first job from a customer who returns twice a year for five years is a $5,000 relationship. This number decides how much you can rationally spend to acquire — and it's why businesses with reactivation systems can outbid competitors for the same attention.
The ratio that answers "can I afford marketing?"
LTV ÷ CAC. Below 3, your economics are tight — fix retention or pricing before scaling spend. Above 5, you're probably underinvesting in growth. This single ratio settles more founder arguments than any opinion.
Channel math: find the workhorse
Ask every new customer one question — "how did you find us?" — and log it. Within a quarter, a pattern emerges that surprises almost everyone: one channel quietly carries the business. The move is nearly always to double down on the workhorse before diversifying; diversification is a luxury of businesses whose first channel is saturated.
The monthly numbers review
None of this works as a one-time exercise. Thirty minutes, once a month, same three numbers, plus one decision made because of them — that's the whole practice. It's also precisely what a Growth Partner advisory session is: your numbers, reviewed with someone whose job is to catch the expensive mistake before you make it.