Things That Go Up
Up and to the right.
That’s pretty much the mantra for any modern-day entrepreneur. When looking at any metric or chart, we continually strive for improvement and growth. As long as those lines trend up and to the right, everything is dandy, and we’re doing a good job.
God-forbid that those trend lines are flat or going down slightly or are just a little too linear (this last point is probably a topic for another time).
I’m not the most data-driven entrepreneur around, but my academic studies do at least define me as an accountant, which means I do like looking at numbers. And I do prefer seeing them move in my desired — and expected — direction.
I also know that when they’re not moving fast or aggressively enough, I always feel like I should be doing more or better.
Two months ago, as I was working on preparing the monthly shareholder’s report for Conversio, I was looking at our revenue-related metrics. Our MRR growth had been flat-ish (i.e. we’ve only been experiencing single-digit linear growth) for a couple of months even though we had been pushing hard to grow a little faster.
This also created a deflating experience for me. I felt down. We were working hard and doing good work, but revenue didn’t reflect that.
I wanted it to go up more. Faster. Sooner.
I dwelled on this feeling a bit, but moved on, because I had to finish writing the report.
Next metric I had to look at was our churn, and to my surprise, there were very slight improvements month-over-month in both our customer and revenue churn. This improved my mood, albeit slightly.
Then I got to our product-related metrics (i.e. the metrics that show us how extensively and successfully our customers use our product) that my mood shifted though. All of these metrics were up by at least 10%, and for some of our tools, they were up by more than 30%.
The lens through which I viewed our progress changed in that instant. At our core, our customers were using our products more and better than ever before, and they also seemed to be happier doing so (judging by improvements in churn). This hadn’t yet translated to having a significant impact on revenue, but this was a very encouraging trend indeed.
I realised at that moment that revenue is a lagging factor of progress for us and also has more variables to consider when we try to improve it (subjective things like how customers measure and perceive the value they versus what they’re paying us). Actual product usage and success was accurate and already more of a leading indicator and also indisputably clear.
This hasn’t necessarily meant that I suddenly felt better about our revenue growth, but it has made me more bullish about what kind of growth we can expect in coming months.
It also made me realise that we sometimes look at singular metrics (in business or life) and have a feeling that they should be going up even more, even faster and sooner. We do this sometimes in ignorance about the other things that are already working well and are trending up and to the right.
But more than that, I can’t help to feel that our (combined) obsession with a culture of more and an “up and to the right”-perspective is not being helpful at all.
By being so narrowly focused on growing singular metrics, we’re creating so much suffering for ourselves, which just can’t be good (for us).
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