How We Stay on Track at Herodesk

I try to have a very structured approach to how I work in Herodesk.

There are a thousand moving parts, so you can quickly lose "the big picture" if you try to keep everything in your head.

If you go too deep in one area of the business, you might lose sight of the greater picture and how what we're doing today will move us toward our goals.

There are so many different frameworks, methodologies and "operating systems" that you can implement in your business.

OKRs (Objective and Key Results), EOS (Entrepreneur Operating System), PLG (ProductLed Growth), and even some more specific ones like ShapeUp! (from 37signals - get the guide for free on their website), Kanban vs Sprints (which are not necessarily product/dev specific but can be used by all teams), etc...

I think I've come to the conclusion that because every business is so different, you can't just pick one framework and implement it 1:1 in your business as described by the authors.

Instead, I pick a bit from here and there and put it together into a "Herodesk Operating System", which dictates how we run our business.

At the end of the day, what matters is that you have some formalised way of running your business. Without that, you risk constantly chasing whatever is more interesting right now and losing track of the long-term goals.

Implementing a Business Scorecard

One of the elements that we've implemented this year to help us keep track of our performance and make sure we're moving in the right direction is a Business Scorecard.

I first read about it in Wes Bush's ProductLed Playbook (which is a great book, btw. - I highly recommend it if you're running a SaaS business).

The concept is as powerful as it is simple:

• Find your North Star Metric - the one single metric you can track that tells you how your business is doing (which is not your revenue!)
• Track your Growth Metrics - is the business growing as it should and in a healthy way?
• Track your Business Metrics - is the business itself healthy?

Here's a (slightly blurred) copy of our 2025M1 business scorecard:

The metrics we're tracking

I'll quickly run through each metric we track and why:

North Star Metric: Paid seats

You could argue that "total number of messages sent via Herodesk" would be a better NSM, because it says something about how much our product is being used by our customers (value proposition).

However, we feel that tracking the number of paid seats is better at this point, as it tells us something about growth (based on our per-seat business model) and how many are using our product.

Sign-ups

How many new 14-day free trials have signed up each week?

Key Usage Indication

We haven't gotten around to tracking this yet. It's work in progress.

For us, the Key Usage Indication (did the customer manage to do a minimum of onboarding and start using the product) is when they've sent and received messages via their Herodesk.

This will be important to track, as onboarding automation will also be based on this.

Upgrades (free to paid)

How many customers (not seats) have upgraded to a paid subscription?

CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost)

We also haven't gotten around to start tracking this properly yet. Also, work in progress...

This is an important task for us this half-year.

CAC / CLV (Customer Acquisition Cost divided by Customer Lifetime Value)

This will also be important to track. It tells us whether we're spending too much (or too little) acquiring new customers.

MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue)

What is the total monthly recurring revenue across all paying customers? This is an obviously important metric to track as it ties directly to our overall revenue and cash flow.

Paid accounts

What's the total number of paid accounts?

New MRR

How much MRR growth comes from new customers signing up?

Expansion MRR

How much MRR growth comes from existing customers upgrading (adding more paid seats)?

Churned MRR

How much MRR have we lost due to downgrades or customer churn?

NRR (Net Retention Rate)

This metric tells us whether our subscription base is naturally expanding or declining. The formula is:

(BoP MRR + Expansion MRR - Churned MRR) / BoP MRR

(BoP = beginning of period)

If it's >100%, you have a natural growing customer base, which is what you want to aim for.

Cash balance

And finally, we track our cash balance week-by-week.

A note on including the cash balance. The scorecard is shared with everyone internally. While it is absolutely key to management (if you run out of cash, it's game over), it might not be relevant or something you want to share with everyone.

I've chosen to include it for now, as I think it's good for everyone to know where we're at at this stage.

You can't just show the number, however. You also have to explain how we expect it to develop in the future and why not to worry if it declines (which can be part of the plan).

So, for now, I like the full transparency, but I also acknowledge that some extra context is needed to keep people from worrying too much about it.

We might remove it in the future. Time will tell...

When you put it all together, it gives you the business at a glance and a quick overview of whether everything is going according to plan or not.

Why we're updating it manually

As you've might have guessed from the format, it has to be updated manually.

It's one thing to track all these metrics. It's another to work with them actively.

First of all, we're tracking this in a Google Slide and it's manually updated. This is on purpose, as I want us to actually look at the numbers and not just see an automatically updated dashboard.

Second, every metric shows its progress, monthly goal, and how much remains this month. Each week, every metric is updated with a status:

✅ All OK

⚠️ Attention

❗We might miss this

‼️ We will miss this

Every metric has an owner

If a metric is off, that person is "CEO of the week", and we'll put our collective attention to fixing whatever must be fixed to get it back on track.

We'll have one scorecard per month and update them weekly.

This fits nicely into our overall "operating system":

Yearly Goals → Quarterly targets → Monthly focuses

The yearly goals are set at the first Advisory Board meeting of the year, and the quarterly targets are set and updated at each following quarterly meeting.

Subsequently, we'll have a company meet-up shortly after each advisory board meeting to put our plans into action.

And finally, we have 4-week Cycles across everything we're doing that follows each month.

For each cycle, we'll plan in detail for every part of the business (product, marketing, customers, and management, at this time) and what we'll do the following month.

Everything is implemented to ensure that we're on track towards our yearly goals and allow us to quickly adjust our course if we're heading in the wrong direction.

That's it!

Again, I have a short ask from you: Share your experience with me (and other people reading).

What metrics do you track, how do you track them and why are they important to you and your business❓

If you'd like more posts like this about how we're structuring and running Herodesk, let me know and I'll share more of it! 👍