I can’t believe how fast January just disappeared. It feels like we were just gearing up for the new year, and now we’re already a month in.
In our TABLE groups, that means were getting ready for our Board Meetings, which is something we do every month.
With how easy it is to feel like you’re riding the business instead of running it, these kinds of check-ins are vital to staying in control.
Before I started my agency, every small business I worked in had some kind of regular check-in where we logged the numbers, talked through what worked (and what didn’t) so we could make adjustments and plan the next stretch. Nothing fancy… just a habit of coming up for air.
So when I started my own agency, that cadence felt natural. Not just to mindlessly fill in a spreadsheet, but to have some kind of ‘CEO Dashboard’ that helps answer a very important (but often uncomfortable) question: Do my actions actually match my intentions?
Sometimes the answer is yes, and sometimes not so much. That can be uncomfortable, but facing reality is the only real way to change it.
Everyone in our TABLE groups tracks their own set of metrics, but they generally fall into 6 buckets:
- Financials – income, expenses, profit, MRR, churn
- Sales & marketing – leads, closes, content published, visibility
- Team & admin – systems, capacity, processes, hiring
- Business & personal development – learning, energy, sustainability
- Client relationships – retention, check-ins, reviews
- Long-term goals – are this month’s actions moving me where I want to go?
And yes, that sounds like a lot… but most of this data already exists. It’s in your accounting software, inbox, PM tool, calendar, or analytics.
And that’s the problem.
It’s all so spread out and disconnected that it’s impossible to know how it’s all connected. Creating a dashboard is just a way to have it all in one place where you can have a single view that tells you how things are really going.
This kind of monthly cadence gives you 12 chances a year to not only measure your progress, but to make adjustments before a whole year slips by as quickly as January just did.
Whether you have 1 client or 100, it’s easy to stay busy solving their problems while ignoring what’s happening in your own business. It’s a comfortable excuse we use to keep from holding ourselves accountable… But the best way you can serve your clients is to make sure your agency is running smooth and you’re not burning yourself out.
If you don’t already have a habit like this, I’d really encourage you to try it. It’s never too late to start, you don’t need any kind of fancy software (a doc, sheet, or pen & paper works just fine), and you don’t have to start by tracking everything.
Start with an area of the business you know you’ve been ignoring.
If you need more work, track leads, marketing efforts, and outreach.
If you need more breathing room, track your capacity, time, and profitability.
I won’t lie and tell you my mastermind groups always look forward to our board meetings, but none of them regret stopping for an hour to actually look at how things are going. Month after month there’s less guesswork, more clarity, and a growing confidence about what to do next.
When you do this consistently, things start feeling a lot less chaotic and way more predictable.
