Most business owners know their numbers matter, and a lot of them still avoid looking. Rebecca opens this episode with a survey that sums it up: 40% of business owners consider themselves financially illiterate, and yet 81% of them are doing their own books. Her description of that Venn diagram is "vaguely terrifying." A lot of business owners use their numbers like a report card, when they could be using them like a map.

In this Double Kaufman episode of The Amanda Kaufman Show, co-host Rebecca Kaufman (Amanda's sister, who has also worked on her team) puts Amanda in the hot seat about using numbers productively inside a business. Amanda, founder of Clairvenu, shares what she avoided in her first business and what it cost her, the difference between data and strategy, the first number worth tracking, the value of building a business on paper, and the reason revenue bragging rarely tells the full picture.

Avoiding Your Numbers Costs More Than the Bad News

The numbers you avoid are still running your business. Amanda spent nine years building her first business, and what finally told her to build something new was the numbers.

How It Matters: Amanda has a degree in chemical engineering, so math was never the issue. Her first business was built on vibes, dreams, and ideas, with a lot of unicorns, sparkles, and rainbows in the branding. The numbers terrified her because she didn't know which ones really mattered, and because she didn't want her dream to be sullied. She couldn't say what it cost to acquire a client, whether her prices covered that cost, what it cost to fulfill on her commitments, or how she spent her time. In her words, "I was afraid of knowing and I was afraid that I wouldn't like the news."

How to Do It: Start by noticing how many numbers you already have. Amanda points past bookkeeping (money in, money out) to the number of people you've talked to, the hours you spend in the day, and the pieces of content you create, publish, and schedule. Her test is simple: if it's observable, there's probably a number. And she found that banging an idea up against reality is in fact more empowering.

Common Mistake: Trying to outrun the habits with more revenue. Rebecca points out that Amanda ran a successful business for nine years while avoiding these numbers, which speaks to real skill at generating revenue. Amanda agrees that this was one of the traps she fell into, and that skill is exactly what let her ignore the numbers for so long.

Feelings Matter, and They Make a Terrible Business Compass

Your feelings are important. Amanda's point is that they are usually a terrible compass for building a business, because they are being informed by a lot of things.

How It Matters: Amanda describes the early years of her business as being "woefully ignorant" of her numbers. What shifted her was a question: we're working real hard around here, we're taking big risks, and it feels like we should be further along by now. That question is what pulled her toward the numbers.

How to Do It: Use the car as your model. Amanda asks you to imagine driving a vehicle in an emotional state and never looking at the speedometer. Ignoring the gauges and letting your feelings take the wheel is the same move in a business. Don't ignore your feelings or suppress them. Deal with them, and also know your numbers.

Common Mistake: Letting a feeling stand in for a measurement. Most people can tell you how the business feels this month long before they can tell you what it did.

Data Is the Information. Strategy Is the Decisions You Make With It.

Data is what you can measure. Strategy is the decisions you make about the resources you have, based on what that data tells you.

How It Matters: Data can be opt-ins, website visits (and how many of those visitors are real people), content views, how many people watched a video all the way through, emails sent, and signups. Then there is the interpretation, the analysis piece. Amanda says this is where a lot of entrepreneurs need a little shake awake. Knowing the number is the start. The useful part is understanding what influences that number up and down. Your bank account balance is data. What it has been historically is a reflection of the decisions you've made historically.

How to Do It: Ask how you could change the decisions you're making. Amanda shares a micro example from testing an AI employee. Watching the workflow, she noticed how many tokens it used to get the job done and realized it would cost far more than she anticipated. The cause was her own decisions: the information she gave the AI was creating extra work and extra evaluation, and she was using the wrong model. Some models are super smart and eat all your tokens. Simpler models are good enough for plenty of jobs and much cheaper to operate. The data was the tokens, the instructions, and the output. The strategy was the decision she made because of that information.

Common Mistake: Designing a process and never looking at what it consumes. Without the data, it is easy to keep an inefficient process running when a really efficient one would cost hardly anything at all.

Every Product Carries a Downstream Cost

The products and processes you build have to be sold, marketed, and resourced. Amanda learned that the expensive way.

How It Matters: Early on, with no data of her own, Amanda took information from mentors and other businesses, heard the high level of their process, and put it into play. She calls that super normal. What got very expensive was having processes and products that didn't make the business any money. She built fifty-odd programs in her first business. Rebecca's observation is that this came from such a good place: Amanda was genuinely trying to give her clients more resources. Amanda agrees that nothing she built was without the customer in mind. It just didn't have data supporting it, or she was ignoring the downstream effects of the decision.

How to Do It: In her second business, Amanda built one group program and made it a membership on purpose. That gives her the flexibility to add and remove content, a bit like Netflix with a library. She recently deleted a program and replaced it with something more effective, with no new product launch, no new marketing strategy, and no new avatar analysis. It was a simple swap.

Common Mistake: Forgetting that every new product competes with your core product for the resources to market and sell it. Amanda says she was "literally designing in a ton of confusion" instead of having clarity about where she was going and the bets she was making.

The First Number to Track Depends on Where You're Going

If you're just starting to track, Amanda isn't sold that profit is the first number. She starts with the end in mind.

How It Matters: A business that pays for a passion hobby (her example is selling a few things to write off your Cricut) has a different intention than the one Amanda started with, which was replacing her corporate income and supporting her family's lifestyle as a business owner. So many entrepreneurs are miserable because they are not making enough money and don't feel they are getting a good return on their time, and Amanda notices a common thread: no goal clarity. She credits Alex Hormozi with the idea that what it takes to build a six-figure business is fundamentally different from what it takes to build a seven-figure or eight-figure business. The best decision for you today depends on where you're going.

How to Do It: Build your business on paper. Sometimes knowing your numbers has nothing to do with past numbers. It is the thought experiment of saying, if I build a business this big, here is what overhead is likely to cost, here is what acquiring a client is likely to cost, and here is what I anticipate making from each sale. That spreadsheet is your business model. Then hold a metric ton of space for being wrong about your assumptions, because you can only test assumptions you wrote down.

Common Mistake: Misplacing a couple of zeros. Amanda's mother once asked her how she was going to make enough money that she wouldn't be tempted to go back to corporate America. Amanda had been thinking $5,000 a month would make her happy, but not every $5,000 is the same once you account for taxes, employer taxes depending on your business structure, and what it costs to advertise, sell, fulfill, and stay compliant. Rebecca shares her own version: her basement number was about $5,000 a month, and when she put her lifestyle, financial goals, and retirement timing into a spreadsheet (with AI helping her think through questions she wouldn't have known to ask), the real number came out closer to $15,000 to $20,000 a month. That's 3x. Rebecca adds that people with a variable income also need far more savings than someone relying on a paycheck.

Revenue Bragging Never Tells the Full Picture

A big revenue number is a past number. On its own, it raises more questions than it answers.

How It Matters: Amanda sees a lot of entrepreneurs talk about numbers in a braggy way: I made this much in this launch, I sold a package of this size, I'm at this revenue level. It took winding down her first business and starting completely from scratch for her to see how silly that comparison is, because it never tells the full picture.

How to Do It: Ask the questions the number raises. Could you repeat it? How likely are you to repeat it? Can you delegate it? Can you build team and tool around it? Or was it an impressive thing you audaciously did one time? Amanda says this is what Clairvenu is really all about: clarity in generating revenue in a profitable and sustainable way, using systems and smarter numbers.

Common Mistake: Measuring success at the top line only. Since understanding profit better and how decisions upstream affect what happens downstream, Amanda says she has made far more money personally, maybe not top line, but bottom line. She feels happier, safer, and more secure in her decisions, because there is clarity about the direction the business is going, on purpose and with purpose.

Conclusion

Your numbers are already talking. The work is learning to listen. Notice the numbers you have been avoiding, treat feelings as information without letting them take the wheel, separate the data from the decisions you make with it, count the downstream cost of every product, and build the business on paper before you pick your boat. Then judge a result by whether you can repeat it. It takes a little courage to look, and it gets easier every time you do.

To hear the full conversation, listen to Episode 381 of The Amanda Kaufman Show on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between data and strategy in a business?

Data is the information you can measure, like opt-ins, website visits, content views, emails sent, and your bank balance. Strategy is the decisions you make about your resources based on that information. Amanda's example is an AI process: the tokens, instructions, and output were the data, and changing the model and instructions was the strategy.

What number should I track first in my business?

Amanda isn't sold that profit is the first number for a business owner who is just starting to track. She starts with the end in mind: decide what the business is for and where it is going, then model it on paper so you know what overhead, client acquisition, and each sale need to look like.

How do I figure out how much my business really needs to make?

Build the business model in a spreadsheet. Include taxes, any employer taxes for your business structure, and the costs of advertising, selling, fulfilling, and staying compliant, plus your lifestyle and savings goals. Rebecca found her real number was about three times her original estimate once she did this math.

Should business owners compare revenue numbers with each other?

Amanda calls it silly, because a revenue number never tells the full picture. It is a past number that raises questions: could you repeat it, can you delegate it, and can you build team and tool around it.

Where can I get help building a business I can measure and grow?

Amanda's free live training, How Serious Service Businesses Build High-Converting Funnels & Acquisition Systems That Run 24/7, walks through how the pieces of a service business fit together so growth is built on a system you can measure. Register at https://clairvenu.com/training. If you want an outside perspective on your specific numbers, apply for a free Revenue Clarity Conversation at https://clairvenu.com.