Advik Rathee

I looked at the Instagram pages of about 40 small businesses over the last month gyms, real estate brokers, tattoo studios, a cloud kitchen before reaching out to any of them.

One number surprised me: roughly 35 of them had zero way to know which of their marketing efforts...

People see the dashboard. They don't see the hours spent cleaning datasets, validating numbers, rebuilding reports, and starting over when something doesn't add up. That's where the real work happens.

Small thing I've started doing before starting work on any new business — I ask them one question first: "What's one thing about your business you wish you knew right now, but don't?"

Almost everyone has an answer. Which product actually makes money after costs. Which customers...

Four things I keep finding when I actually look at a business's numbers closely. None of these are guesses — just what the data usually says once someone bothers to look.