How to work out what to fix first

Dear reader,

You've probably got a list. Most people I speak to do. A tab somewhere full of things that are wrong with the store, half of them added at midnight after a frustrating customer email. The problem isn't that you don't know what's broken. It's that you can't tell which broken thing actually matters.

Sort by money, not by mood

The loudest problem is rarely the most expensive one. The thing that annoyed you this morning might cost you nothing, while the quiet one you've walked past for months is bleeding real revenue.

I ask clients to score each item against three simple questions:

• How many people does this touch every day?
• How much does it cost each time it happens?
• How hard is it to actually fix?

A problem that hits everyone, costs you a sale, and takes an afternoon to sort is where you start. Every time.

If you can't say how a fix earns its keep, it isn't a priority yet — it's a preference.

Do one thing properly

The temptation is to spread yourself thin and nudge ten things forward at once. Resist it. Half-finished changes don't compound; they just clutter.

Pick the single highest-value fix, ship it fully, measure what it did, then choose the next one with better information than you had before. One finished thing beats five started ones, and it teaches you something the list never could.

You'll also find that solving the real bottleneck often makes three other complaints quietly disappear, because they were symptoms all along.

If your list has grown longer than your patience and you'd like help ranking it against actual numbers, start with a FREE call and we'll find your first move together.