Concept
The weekly owner review
The weekly owner review is one protected hour, the same time every week, on the business rather than in it: the four honest numbers, the account split, one page of manual written or improved, one growth decision answered with better-or-bigger, and the first-year plan checked against its picture.
The review is Gerber's on-the-business hour given a fixed agenda, and it is the whole difference between the two endings he describes. Without it the technician goes back into the work and the business is a job by spring; with it the entrepreneur's job gets done every week in the smallest possible dose. The agenda is fixed so that it cannot drift into doing the work: numbers first, bought, bought again, cost to reach, amount paid, from Ries's innovation accounting; then the Profit First split, on the tenth and twenty-fifth; then a page of the operations manual; then any growth question, answered with Jarvis's better-or-bigger; then the plan. An hour is enough, and it is protected like a customer appointment because it is worth more than one.
A real-life example
A baker's review is Friday at three. In month five the four numbers show the pastries are not selling and the subscriptions are; she rewrites two lines of her plan, adds a page to the manual about subscription renewals, and keeps the picture at the top unchanged.
How to use it
- 1Book the same hour every week and treat it as a customer appointment.
- 2Run the fixed agenda: numbers, split, manual page, growth question, plan.
- 3End by writing one thing that could now happen without you.