The Most Important Business Metric
December 9, 2025
With all of the things you need to keep track of for your business, it can be easy to forget the core focus of a business in the first place…
It's your weekly dose of clarity and insight on all things tech & business from Dream in Digital! Each week, I'm here to share my thoughts to help you make the most of today's technology and build a business that genuinely supports the life you want to live.
This Week’s Core Focus:
Profit Builds a Sustainable Business
With all of the things you need to keep track of for your business, it can be easy to forget the core focus of a business in the first place - to make a profit. Now, I know profitability is often framed as a greedy goal, but for the Essentialist Entrepreneur, it’s the foundation of freedom. It’s what turns a challenging side-hustle into a sustainable reality that can genuinely fuel the life you desire. Let’s clarify why profit is not the opposite of purpose, but the essential engine that allows your purpose to thrive…
Prioritize Profitability Over Revenue: Many times, I see business owners only looking at revenue. It’s good to focus on revenue, especially when starting out, but if you’re in a cycle where your costs are always out-pacing your revenue, you’re fighting a losing battle. Profit is simply your revenue, minus your total expenses. Get this equation in the positive, and now you have a viable, scalable, business model.
Find Your Profit Formula Before You Scale: Without the right profit formula, scaling actually hurts you more than it helps! Do the work you need to do at a smaller scale to identify the formula that allows your business to generate profit consistently. Even if it’s a small amount at first, once this formula is established, scaling becomes a strategic, sustainable, move to take your company to the next level.
Direct Your Profit with Purpose: Once profitable, remember the why of your business. Use initial profits to solidify your foundation and pay yourself and your team fairly. When generating more than you need, strategically use the surplus to expand your impact, either through targeted business growth, or by contributing to causes that align with your company's mission and values.
Tech Tip of the Week:
Tracking Profitability
The Problem: Without a consistent and accessible method for you to see your business’s profitability on a monthly, or even weekly basis, it’s easy to lose sight of the core goal for building your business.
The Solution: Build a profitability tracker using Google Sheets!
Step 1: Create a new Google Sheet with the following rows:
Date (for tracking weekly or monthly periods)
Revenue (Total Money In)
Variable Expenses (Costs that fluctuate, like client materials, ad spend, contractor fees)
Fixed Expenses (Consistent, non-negotiable costs like rent, software subscriptions, insurance)
Total Expenses (The sum of Fixed and Variable)
Net Profit (Revenue - Total Expenses)
Step 2: Use formulas to automate the calculations:
Date (Manual Entry)
Revenue (Manual Entry, or SUM all of the rows underneath that are listed as revenue channels)
Variable Expenses (Manual Entry, or SUM all of the rows underneath that are variable costs)
Fixed Expenses (Manual Entry, or SUM all of the rows underneath that are fixed costs)
Total Expenses (Variable Expenses (Ex. Cell “C2”) + Fixed Expenses (Ex. Cell “D2”) - Final Formula “=C2+D2”
Net Profit (Revenue (Ex. “B2”) - Total Expenses (Ex. “E2”) - Final Formula (B2-E2)
Pro Tip: Drag these formulas across the row to apply them automatically to every column you fill out.
Step 3: Define Your Targets & “Play The Game”
Once you have all of your revenue and expenses in front of you, you can get a good view of where your business is at. If it’s in the red (aka negative), don’t panic. The first, and often most important, step to fixing any problem is defining it! From here, you can begin to strategically “play the game” by testing variables and asking questions like:
Increase Revenue: What are strategic ways to acquire more clients/customers, upsell current clients/customers, secure more high-value clients/customers, or increase prices?
Decrease Costs: Can we simplify the tech stack to reduce subscriptions, negotiate better rates with suppliers, or cut non-essential expenses?
This disciplined, back-and-forth adjustment between increasing revenue and optimizing costs is the name of the game in building a sustainable business. Keeping an eye on these metrics and making strategic changes to improve them will put your business on the right track.
How This Helps: By having a profit tracker front and center, you get immediate, simple, clarity on your business’s health. Having this up-to-date information is essential for making strategic decisions that directly drive efficiency and long-term sustainability.