Ryan Deiss breaks down which metrics matter most for a company at $500K revenue trying to reach $1M. Cost per acquisition beats every other metric at this stage because it controls cash flow and growth. Once CPA is locked down, shift to average order value, which makes your business more valuable than competitors and is what actually scales you past $500K.
Your net profit or your LTV? Net profit. You don't know what your LTV is yet. You haven't been L-ing long enough. Your net profit or your cost per acquisition? Cost per acquisition, definitely. Cost per acquisition or your cash flow? Still, still cost per acquisition, because that's what's largely going to define your cash flow at this point. Cost per acquisition or churn? Still cost per acquisition. Churn, you just don't have enough time and data to know what your actual churn rate is. Cost per acquisition or revenue per employee? Still cost per acquisition, because at $500K, your biggest expense center likely is the cost of new customers. It's not employees yet. Cost per acquisition or runway? That is still cost per acquisition, unless you just went and raised a ton of money, which at $500K you shouldn't have. Cost per acquisition or customer concentration? Cost per acquisition. Cost per acquisition or conversion rate? I'm still gonna say cost per acquisition, because it factors in conversion rate. Cost per acquisition or average order value? Ooh, I'm actually gonna shift it to average order value because that is what you should be optimizing at this stage if you want to scale. So is average order value the most important metric? It is. If a customer is worth more to you than it is to the competitor, you're gonna win.
