I Got More Clarity On My Business In The Last 24 Hours Than In The Last 24 Months
Includes Step By Step Walkthrough So You Can Too
I’m a bit scared of my accounts.
It makes me feel embarrassed that I’ve been running a business for this long, having made over 7 figures, and low key not really known the ins and outs of my data.
I had started to have a sneaking suspicion of a couple of things…
That people don’t really ascend through products like they used to
That not every service we offer is a profitable use of time
I needed to be able to make “data driven” decisions before killing projects… but looking at data makes me feel like I’m sat in a maths class feeling like an idiot.
Here’s how I got more clarity on my business in 24 hours than in the last 24 months (as a founder who won’t look at spreadsheets).
I run an exclusively online business, and I only take digital payments.
Everything is documented. And apart from the odd transaction that goes straight to my business bank account, everything goes through Stripe.
This process might look different if you handle cash or use some other payment processor, but the principles will be the same.
Step 1: Open your Stripe dashboard.
If you process payments through more than one place, you might need to do this step multiple times for each payment processor.
Step 2: Click Transactions
This is going to show you ALL transactions. Including the ones that didn’t complete, the failed payments…
You can refine your selection if you want, but I didn’t bother.
Step 3: Export Everything
While I was clicking around in the menu options trying to do this, I also found a way to export all the MRR data and subscriber data which was really useful too.
But I think this explanation - with ALL transactions - gives the most complete picture.
This was the first time I’d done this, so I grabbed every single transaction from all time.
From now on, I’ll be doing this monthly (or at least quarterly) so I have a much more real time view of our patterns and trends.
Because I was exporting so many pieces of information, the export took several minutes. There’s a neat little option to have Stripe notify you by email when it’s done if you’re waiting ages.
And rather than wrestle with thousands of pieces of data…
In a spreadsheet that seems to SWIM when I looked at it…
I realised I was being an idiot…
I dragged it into ChatGPT & asked it to help me interpret it. My actual prompt:
Please help me to understand this spreadsheet. Use words. Indicate where you’re referring to. Talk like I’m a fucking moron, make it dead easy to understand - like I’m 5.
It started telling me a story about my finances.
One that felt real, and human, and anchored to actual people and payments.
Quickly, I started to understand my numbers in a way I never had before.
(Considering how much fucking business mentorship I’ve paid for and still never had a conversation about ANY of this stuff… that made me feel pretty dumb, I’m not gonna lie…)
I had a conversation that went on for about a day, and as I became more confident looking at the numbers and trying to interpret them…
I became able to ask better questions.
Here’s a list of the questions I asked, with the answers removed. Please feel free to swipe & use any that seem useful to you.
Which of our services are actually the most profitable when we factor in time and delivery effort, not just revenue?
How much has each service generated in total revenue (all-time), and how many buyers has each attracted?
What does revenue look like year by year? Where are the spikes and the steady periods?
How long do clients typically stay on each service? What’s the average vs. median retention?
Were early adopters of our services “stickier” than more recent buyers?
What subtle or hidden patterns exist in our sales and retention data that aren’t obvious at first glance?
What % of our buyers purchase from us more than once, either renewing the same service or trying different ones?
What does our natural value ladder look like? Which services tend to upsell into others, and where do people tend to downsell?
What are the seasonal patterns across the year (hot spots, slumps, spikes)?
Could our current business model realistically scale to £XX months, and if so, how?
What % of customers ascend into higher-value offers, and what’s the average incremental revenue when they do?
If we increased the ascension rate (e.g. from 1 in 7 → 1 in 5), how much extra annual revenue would that generate?
Which specific buyer paths produce the most ascensions? (e.g. Service A → Service B)
How can we systemise the upgrade path from one key service into another so it’s automated and not dependent on memory?
What’s the annualised revenue per service line if we average across the time they’ve been running?
How complex is our current offer suite?
What’s the most streamlined mix of offers we could use to hit £XX/month in the most leveraged way possible?
What’s the heartbeat of our business over a 12-month cycle? When do launches peak, when do subscriptions slump, when do bundles sell best?
My instinct that people don’t ascend any more…?
Total bullshit.
70% made more than one payment (renewal or repeat buy) and 57% bought more than one distinct service/product.
And the real eye opener?
We upsell around 14% of people by doing absolutely nothing at all.
Zero systems. Maximum chaos.
So if I can get that to 20% by putting a system in place…?
An extra £54K annually without ANY new acquisition!
That is insane. I’m gonna act on that immediately.
If you use this and get some eye-opening revelations about your business... I want to hear about them. Drop me a comment or a DM and let me know what surprised you most.