How to Run a $10M+ Business in 1 Hour per Week
Summary
TLDRIn this video, Ryan Dice offers a practical guide to creating a CEO dashboard for streamlined business management. He emphasizes four key principles: simplicity with Google Sheets, weekly tracking for agility, manual data entry for insight and accountability, and aligning metrics with value engines. The step-by-step tutorial includes defining metrics, choosing owners, setting targets, and utilizing a color-coded system for performance tracking, fostering a data-driven decision-making process without complexity.
Takeaways
- π The CEO dashboard is a simplified tool for managing business metrics using Google Sheets, favored for its ease of use over more complex business intelligence tools.
- π Core Principle 1: Keep it simple. Google Sheets is recommended for its functionality and low setup and maintenance requirements compared to other tools.
- π Core Principle 2: Track metrics on a weekly basis. This frequency reduces noise found in daily tracking and provides more agility than monthly reviews.
- ποΈββοΈ Core Principle 3: Make the process manual. Manual data entry is essential for team members to gain insight and ownership over their numbers.
- π Core Principle 4: Align the dashboard with the company's value engines. Metrics should reflect the stages and processes of the business's value creation.
- π Step 1: Define metric categories such as Evergreen, North Star, and department-specific metrics to structure the dashboard.
- π― Step 2: Choose specific metrics to track that are aligned with the company's goals and the value engines, with a focus on 3-5 key metrics per department.
- π€ Step 3: Assign a metric owner who is accountable for optimizing the metric and has a voice in setting targets.
- π Step 4: Set clear monthly targets to define what 'winning' looks like, avoiding ambiguity and setting achievable goals.
- π Step 5: Track and report weekly, manually entering data and adjusting status to reflect progress towards targets using a color-coded system.
- π’ The importance of 'scorecard-based leadership' is highlighted, where leaders focus on helping teams execute initiatives to improve metrics.
Q & A
What is the main purpose of the CEO dashboard mentioned in the video?
-The CEO dashboard is designed to manage an entire business efficiently, providing a quick and data-driven decision-making tool without causing overwhelm.
Why does Ryan Dice prefer using Google Sheets for his CEO dashboard?
-Ryan Dice prefers Google Sheets because it is simple and reliable. Despite having access to more sophisticated business intelligence tools, he finds that they often require extensive setup and maintenance, which can lead to inefficiencies and mistrust among users.
What are the four core principles for effectively using a CEO dashboard as outlined in the script?
-The four core principles are: 1) Keep it simple, 2) Track metrics weekly, 3) Make the process manual to ensure insight and ownership of data, and 4) Ensure the dashboard mirrors the company's value engines.
Why is it important to track metrics on a weekly basis instead of daily or monthly?
-Tracking metrics weekly provides a balance between the noise of daily fluctuations and the delay of monthly reviews. It allows for timely action without getting lost in minor details and supports agility in decision-making.
How does manual data entry into the CEO dashboard enhance understanding and ownership of the data?
-Manual data entry requires individuals to engage directly with the numbers, fostering a deeper understanding and personal connection to the data. This process helps team members to truly know and own their numbers, which is crucial for effective management and decision-making.
What is the significance of having a metric owner for each metric on the CEO dashboard?
-A metric owner is responsible for the optimization of a specific metric. This accountability ensures that each metric is actively monitored and improved upon, rather than being overlooked or neglected.
Why is it essential to set monthly targets for the metrics on the CEO dashboard?
-Monthly targets define what 'winning' looks like for each metric, providing a clear goal for the team to aim for. This prevents ambiguity and the temptation to revise goals post-factum based on outcomes.
What is the process for choosing the metrics to be tracked on the CEO dashboard?
-The process involves defining metric categories, selecting Evergreen and Northstar metrics, and choosing team-specific metrics that align with the company's value engines. It's important to involve department heads and owners in this decision to ensure relevance and accountability.
Can you explain the color coding system used in the CEO dashboard to indicate the status of metrics?
-The color coding system is as follows: Green for metrics on track or ahead of goal, Light Green for being slightly behind but with a catch-up plan, Yellow for being behind but with a clear plan to improve, Light Red for being significantly behind with uncertainty in catching up, and Red for being so far behind that catching up is unlikely by the end of the month.
What is the role of the CEO or leader in utilizing the CEO dashboard for effective leadership?
-The leader's role is to execute scorecard-based leadership, which involves tracking metrics and asking questions that help the team execute projects and initiatives to improve metric statuses. The focus is on facilitating the team's success rather than having all the answers.
Outlines
π Mastering Business Management with a CEO Dashboard
Ryan Dice, managing 17 businesses within a $200 million holding company, introduces his CEO dashboardβa tool for managing businesses efficiently. He emphasizes the importance of simplicity, advocating for Google Sheets over complex business intelligence tools. The dashboard is a 'company scorecard' tracked weekly, providing a balance between daily noise and monthly latency, and is manually updated to ensure insight and data ownership among team members. The dashboard mirrors the company's value engines, which are visual representations of business processes, and is crucial for making data-driven decisions without overwhelming complexity.
π Building a CEO Dashboard: Core Principles and Steps
The script outlines the process of creating a CEO dashboard, starting with defining metric categories such as Evergreen and North Star metrics, and department-specific metrics. It's important to choose metrics that align with the company's value engines and to assign a metric owner for accountability and optimization. Setting a clear monthly target is vital to define success, and the script suggests involving the metric owner in this process to ensure realistic and agreed-upon goals. The dashboard should be updated weekly with manual data entry to foster a deep understanding of the numbers and to facilitate a culture of ownership and insight.
π Implementing Scorecard-Based Leadership for Business Growth
This paragraph delves into the importance of assigning metric owners who are uniquely responsible for optimizing their respective metrics. It explains the process of setting monthly targets and emphasizes the need for collaboration between the CEO, department heads, and metric owners. The script introduces a color-coding system for status reporting (green, light green, yellow, light red, red) to quickly assess performance against targets. The notes column is highlighted as a tool for teams to communicate their plans for improving performance. The core of scorecard-based leadership is to ask questions that help teams execute initiatives to turn metrics from red to yellow and yellow to green, fostering company growth and scalability.
π Executing Scorecard-Based Leadership for Optimal Performance
The final paragraph focuses on the execution of scorecard-based leadership, where the leader's role is to track metrics and ensure the right people are in place to optimize them. It describes a typical Monday routine for the CEO, who reviews the dashboard, identifies areas of concern, and trusts the team to execute their plans. The script concludes by encouraging viewers to download the CEO dashboard template, build their own, and start practicing scorecard-based leadership to drive business scalability and success.
Mindmap
Keywords
π‘CEO Dashboard
π‘Google Sheets
π‘Metrics
π‘Manual Data Entry
π‘Weekly Tracking
π‘Value Engines
π‘North Star Metrics
π‘Scorecard Based Leadership
π‘Metric Owner
π‘Monthly Target
Highlights
Managing a business efficiently through a single spreadsheet with a CEO dashboard.
The CEO dashboard simplifies data-driven decision making without causing overwhelm.
Ryan Dice's experience managing 17 businesses within a $200 million holding company.
Core principle of simplicity in using Google Sheets for the CEO dashboard.
The inefficiency of complex business intelligence tools compared to Google Sheets.
Tracking metrics on a weekly basis to find the right balance between noise and agility.
The importance of manual data entry for gaining insight and ownership of data.
How manual processes enhance understanding and commitment to departmental numbers.
Aligning the CEO dashboard with the company's value engines for strategic metric tracking.
Defining metric categories for a comprehensive view of business performance.
Choosing specific metrics that reflect the current strategic focus of the company.
The significance of assigning a metric owner for accountability and optimization.
Setting clear monthly targets to define and agree upon what 'winning' looks like.
The process of tracking and reporting metrics on a weekly basis for agility.
Utilizing color coding to quickly assess the status of metrics and initiate action.
The concept of scorecard-based leadership for effective team management and growth.
Actionable steps for viewers to create their own CEO dashboard and implement it.
Transcripts
what if you could manage your entire
business in just 14 seconds from a
single spreadsheet in this video I'm
going to give you a behindth scenes look
at my CEO dashboard I'll show you how I
build them I'll show you how I use them
and I'll show you the metrics that I
track I'll even drop a link to my CEO
dashboard template down in the
description so be sure to check that out
too now if you don't know who I am my
name is Ryan Dice and my partners and I
manage 17 businesses across our $200
million holding company and this CEO
dashboard is how we make data driven
decisions without going insane let's get
into
it all right so before I get into the
CEO dashboard itself showing you how to
use it how to build it how to customize
it there are four core principles that
you really need to understand if you
want to get the most out of this core
principle number one you've got to keep
it simple now as you will see when you
get into it we use Google Sheets we use
Google Sheets and again the the template
our template it is included in the
description but the reason that we use
Google Sheets is simple it's not that we
don't know that they're fancier business
intelligence tools out there we do we
paid for them I've spent many many tens
of thousands of dollars on business
intelligence tools only to go back time
and time again to good old Google Sheets
why because it just works so often these
business intelligence tools require
entire teams to set up and run and the
second one little data feed breaks the
entire system becomes unusable people
don't trust it and it's just a massive
waste of time and space so core
principle number one keep it simple do
what we do stick with Google Sheets we
got eight figure businesses running off
of this this thing trust me it's going
to work for you core principle number
two track it weekly now as you will see
when you get into our actual CEO
dashboard or as we like to call it the
company scorecard template you will see
that we track on a week to week basis
specifically we track Monday through
Sunday and so the way that this works is
my team will come in on Monday morning
and the first thing that they do is they
input all the data for all the different
metrics from the previous week now the
reason that we track weekly instead of
daily or monthly is cuz we found that
weekly really is a sweet spot if you're
tracking daily or or even in real time
there's a lot of noise things are up and
down they're all over the place and and
you can get a lot of false positives and
you can get a lot of false negatives so
at the same time if you wait an entire
month to go back and look at data it's
not really enough time uh to to be agile
to actually take action on the data so
we really have found weekly is The Sweet
Spot track weekly core principle number
three make it manual now this is the one
that I get the most push back on by far
people will tell me they're like oh do
you realize that you could create a
macro that would automatically pull in
this data or do you realize cuz we use
some color coding you'll see that in
just a second do you realize that you
could program it you know inside of
Google Sheets to where you know if
you're 80% of your goal it's yellow and
if you're over it's green yes I realize
all of that and I don't want to do any
of it and I don't want you to do any of
it either this scorecard is manual by
Design and yours should be too and the
reason is when you have automated
scorecards when you have automated
dashboards when the data just magically
appears on the screen then what you have
is data what you don't have is insight
and the difference between data and
insight is when a human being who knows
what the heck is going on actually looks
at that data and goes hm you know what
now that I think about it this is this
way because of X Y and Z if it's not
manual you're not going to get insight
you're also going to find if you don't
ask your people to manually input their
own data they're not going to know their
numbers I promise you across all of our
different portfolio companies I could
ask a marketing leader hey Mr Mrs
marketing leader how many leads did this
particular site get last month and guess
what they would be able to tell me
because every single week they are
manually going into the CRM they're
manually going into Google analytics and
they're manually copying over that
information and manually pasting it into
the scorecard and that manual process is
where they begin to truly know their
data and it's when they begin to truly
own their data and that ownership part
is really really important so when it
comes to your scorecards make it manual
I get it it seems like it's going to be
a giant waste of time I promise it'll be
one of the most high leverage activities
you and your team do each and every week
all right core principle number four
your company scorecard your CEO
dashboard needs to mirror your value
engines now we're not getting into value
engines in this particular video but one
of the things that we do talk about and
I actually cover this inside of the $200
million case study report that I'll also
link to in the description one of the
things that you need to do if you're
going to have a comprehensive operating
system is you you need to actually map
what we refer to as your value engine so
there's a growth engine that shows how
customers happen there's a fulfillment
engine that shows how you fulfill upon
the customers and and these visual
descriptions the these visual flowcharts
of how your business works this really
is the first step don't worry we'll have
a totally different video on that one
I'm not going to leave you hanging here
but just know that once you have these
done the next thing that you need to get
to before you go and create your
scorecards is you need to ask the
question how do we know that these are
working okay all these different steps
and stages how do we know that they're
working because when it comes time to
actually determining what are the
metrics that you're going to be tracking
well they should be driven by what are
the different stages of your value
engine again uh don't sweat this one too
much this is something that we're
absolutely going to be covering in
another video I just wanted to mention
it here because it is an important core
principle all right so now that you know
what a CEO dashboard is now that you
know what makes ours different and I
would argue better uh from some of the
other ones that are out there let's get
into the actual step by step of how you
can create one for your company so
digging into it right now step number
one is you need to Define your metrics
categories and the metrics categories
are these sections that you see right
here so you can see here we've got
Evergreen uh metrics we've got North
Star metrics we have marketing here you
know what let me be a nice guy and
actually zoom in a little bit for you
there you go how's that so these are the
metrics categories now in general with
the company scorecard we're going to
have Evergreen metrics and Evergreen
metrics as the name would suggest are
metrics that we're just going to track
on and on ongoing basis Revenue cash
collected Revenue per employee maybe you
want to track things like NPS these tend
to be more of the financial metrics that
would just be kind of a a really nice to
have so that's what you see here with
the Evergreen metrics now the Northstar
metrics these are the ones that that for
us at least if you're following our
scalable operating system framework
these are the metrics that are going to
change each and every week and
specifically they're going to change
each and every week when you go in and
you set your quarterly Sprint plan so
each quarter you would go in you would
decide what are the major initiatives
that you're going to track and what are
the Northstar metrics that you're going
to emphasize it's important to note
these Northstar metrics aren't new
metrics okay these Northstar metrics are
metrics that you're likely already
tracking further down on your company
scorecard just with these particular
metrics you're plucking them out and
saying that you want to highlight them
uh then what we typically will have is
we'll have categories based on the
different departments so Marketing sales
uh your product or your programs
Department maybe technology maybe
support those types of areas so that is
step one Define your metric categories
step two is we need to actually choose
the metrics that we're going to be
tracking now Evergreen metrics again
these particular metrics you're going to
decide what do you as a leadership team
want to see I'm giving you ours right
here Revenue cash collected uh revenue
and per employee sometimes we're
tracking NPS it it it really just uh it
really just depends uh the Northstar
metrics this is what's going to be set
when you as a leadership team decide
okay these are the three to four no more
than ideally no more than five metrics
that we really want to focus and
emphasize uh these are three to five
metrics that we're going to look to
optimize by executing certain key
initiatives like like you see here these
are the ones we're going to really
highlight so that's how you pick those
these are going to stick around um each
month typically for the entire quarter
sometimes they'll roll over then when
you get into the team metrics the
Temptation is to go to your department
head and say hey what are three to five
metrics that we should be tracking for
your department and that's a good way to
do it but a better way to do it
especially for like your sales and
marketing team would be to go to in this
case and I'll I'll Zoom out a little bit
your growth engine so if you have not
seen this case study video on our $200
million scalable OS case study I would
definitely watch that again it'll be
linked up in the description but I talk
about here and I also talk about it in
this report about the importance of
mapping your value engines and the
process for doing that but once you have
mapped these value engines it's really
simple to say you know okay marketing
team we're running Facebook and
Instagram ads how do we know that these
are working what are the metrics we
track to know that these are working
this lead magnet this webinar landing
page how do we know this is working
we're look to track things like
conversion rate um people are going to
book a meeting how do we know that
that's working at an acceptable rate
these metrics here should begin to
inform the metrics that you're tracking
on your company scorecard for the
marketing department similarly for your
sales team when you get into um you know
how many people actually attended a
meeting how what was our what was our
close rate how many offers did we
present if you look at this particular
growth engine it will begin to inform
the metrics that you should be tracking
per department now another point that I
want to make is that typically each of
your main departments they're going to
have their own scorecards that they're
tracking that go into much greater depth
this is just what are the 3 to five per
Department that you want to roll up to
the company scorecard to your CEO
dashboard that's what we're talking
about um here and you just continue that
on uh for your product and your programs
team in this case uh you would then you
know you might look at your fulfillment
engine if that's documented so you can
just ask your different team members you
know your different managers hey what
are the three that we should track for
you that's fine but it's a lot better if
it aligns to your actual value flows
your actual value creation so that's
step two choosing your metrics step
three and this is the one that everybody
forgets we need to choose a metric owner
this is so incredibly important if
nobody owns a metric then I can assure
you that metric will not get optimized
so what we want to ask is who on the
team is uniquely responsible for this
particular metric not just the getting
and the Gathering of the metric and
reporting on the metric but ideally
who's the person who's uniquely
accountable for optimizing that metric
so in this case for the products and
programs team at this company Net
promoter score is something that they're
tracking and that's going to be Karly
Greg who is the head of uh client uh
success how many customer wins did we
get right that's also Carly uh what
about the member net gain well that
one's Betty and you could see on and on
and on and on every metric needs an
owner it's not just step three it's one
of the most important steps of all and I
can promise you if you're struggling
with having uh scorecards that actually
matter and with getting those scorecards
updated getting the reporting accurate
the best way to fix it is to put a name
next to the scorecard if somebody's name
is next to that scorecard there is no
ambiguity no questions whatsoever about
who is uniquely responsible step number
four we need to set the monthly Target
so the monthly Target you can see is
right here um as I mentioned before
we're going to track based on weeks so
week one week two week three week four
we typically track Monday through Sunday
that's why you have this remainder
column here but before we start tracking
moving forward we want to identify what
is the monthly Target and the monthly
Target is important because this is
where you decide ahead of time what
winning looks like so no revisionist
history no getting to the end of the
month and saying oh yeah I don't think
we quite did what we were hoping to do
but we learned a lot none of that BS
none of that garbage okay whether
something was good or bad cannot be
ambiguous everybody needs to agree ahead
of time at what winning is and that is
defined by this monthly Target so in
this case with this company how many new
leads and subscribers do they want to
generate well 6,000 in a month so 6,000
is the goal that means if they get to
5,000 they're not high-fiving they're
saying yeah 5,000 is okay but the goal
was 6,000 so we missed how do we get
better if they get to 7,000 they're
definitely high-fiving maybe they're
raising those targets so we want to set
the monthly Target and it's important
the setting of the monthly Target should
be a collaboration between you the CEO
the department head and whoever actually
owns the metric if they own the metric
they should have a voice in the Target
and I can tell you from my perspective
um what what I typically do is I'm going
to push my team just a little a little
bit and say oh can you get me a little
bit more but ultimately if I see
resistance I'm going to say you know
what let's go with your number it is
more important to me that we set goals
that we hit then that every goal be a
stretch I want our team to set goals
that we actually hit one of the most
demotivating things uh to a team is to
set goals and then con consistently miss
those goals so if they're kind of in
doubt they're like ah we might be able
you know you know I feel like we might
be able to get to 7500 leads but you
know I know for a fact we get to 6,000
you know what let's do it let's go with
6,000 let's go with your number so set
the monthly Target step five is simple
track and Report weekly so the first
week of the month you're going to come
in here and you're going to say okay how
do we do for these and again the data
entry on each of these is manual so the
team is going to go and look they're
going to go look in the CRM how many new
leads and subscribers did we get uh last
week Monday through Sunday they're going
to enter this here uh how many meetings
were booked in the CRM they're going to
enter that here the marketing team how
much media spend did we have how many
new subscribers were added uh how many
meetings got booked you know in terms of
the new deals okay we got had had three
Deals what was the at promoter score
last week you get the idea every week
they come in and that's the first thing
for us that they do on Monday now you
could choose to go you know Wednesday to
Thursday whatever time frame you pick
doesn't matter as much as long as you're
consistent that's why you can update the
actual date range here the important
thing is that you be consistent and the
important thing again is that you make
it manual when the team is forced to go
through and actually manually enter this
information they will know their numbers
but we don't just want to manually enter
the data itself we also want to manually
adjust the status and you can see here
we've got green light green yellow light
red and red and the difference is pretty
simple if it is on track or ahead of
goal it's green on track or ahead of
goal is green if we're a little bit
behind but we believe we can catch up
then that's light green or sometimes at
the end of the month as you can see here
missed but didn't miss by enough so we
went ahead and let him stay light green
there now yellow is behind but with a
plan so in this case you can see this
one was behind yellow but with a plan
now when I say a plan what that means is
I want to see some type of comment and I
want to see some type of plan mentioned
here in this notes column so this notes
column is designed for people to add a
little bit of context which is good for
people who maybe don't make the meeting
or they don't quite understand what's
going on but it is essential if you want
to say that the status is yellow when
you're behind you need to have a plan
and that plan needs to be referenced in
the notes column if you do not have a
plan for turning yellow to Green right
or a reason that it will come back that
in that case it's not yellow it is light
red light red is we're behind we're not
so far behind that we can't catch up but
I don't know how we're going to do it
and then red of course is we're so far
behind we're not going to catch up or by
the end of the month if you if you miss
and you miss badly uh it is red so that
is how the color coding comes into place
right and this is where I say is the
difference between data and insight
right data is just looking at this all
these different numbers Insight is
looking at the status and then look
scrolling over over and looking at the
notes column and having your team tell
you exactly what they're going to do to
turn red to yellow and yellow to green
and just so you know that's the key
that's the essence that is what we refer
to as scor card based leadership your
job as a leader when you have one of
these scorecards in place is really
simple ask the questions of your team
that are going to help them execute the
projects and key initiatives that turn
red metrics yellow and yellow metrics
green that is so incredibly important I
hope that you are grasping the
Simplicity of that your job is not to
have all the answers your job is to
track the metrics and to put the people
the right people in the right roles who
know how to turn red to yellow and
yellow to Green when you do that you're
executing scorecard based leadership
when you do that your company's going to
grow when you do that your company is
absolutely going to scale and that's why
I say this company scorecard my CEO
dashboard this is how it's really really
simple I'll show you what I do every
single Monday I open up a scorecard like
this I look around and I see a lot of
green a lot of green oh we got some
yellow over here in terms of the sales
and programs you know I might ask about
that oh wait looks like they've already
got a plan for it never mind if they've
already got it figured out then I'm not
going to bother them with it I trust my
team it seems like uh they they've got
it taken care of so that is how we do it
that is how you create a CEO dashboard
just like the one that we have so your
next action items are really really
simple download the template follow the
steps build your own CEO dashboard your
own company scorecard and start
executing scorecard base leadership I
hope you found this valuable if you did
be sure to like it drop a comment below
uh and also make sure that you watch the
other videos that I have in this series
all about how to create a scalable
operating system in your own business
thanks for watching I'll see you in the
next one
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