You only improve the things you measure

Money is malleable and subjective. In some parts of the world, a million dollars is three meals every day for a hundred people, for an entire year. In other parts of the world, a million dollars is one man’s salary for throwing an inflated piece of animal skin through a steel ring for three hours. At our company, a million dollars is what we need to make in one year to break even. That’s around $80,000/month just to keep the lights on and our staff employed.

You only improve the things you measure. A million dollars is a big, scary number to me. So I rarely think about it, and instead focus on daily and weekly revenue goals. I know that if we can make around $15,000 per week in our tasting room, and $5,000 per week in outside sales and distribution, we’ll hit our monthly target. We break that down even further and set daily bottle and cocktail sales goals. As soon as we posted these goals for staff to see, we started hitting them.