Issue 181, Part Time CEO Newsletter

Hey, it's Dhiren 👋,

I was rewatching Moneyball on Friday night.

My daughter had gone to bed. I had a glass of wine after dinner, scrolling through Netflix as I wound down my day, and landed on a film I'd seen before.

There's a scene where Billy Beane played by Brad Pitt, walks into the scouts' room. A long table of men with decades in the game, presenting their picks: good swing, great body, the right look. Billy shoots them down, one after another, and the room starts to turn really tense. Finally one of the scouts, frustrated, asks about a player Billy wants. A player nobody else in baseball wants.

"Why do you like him?"

"Because he gets on base."

The Confession

Billy understood something the room didn't. Peter Brand, a young economics graduate on his team, had shown him: wins come from runs, and runs come from people getting on base. Everything the scouts rated measured how a player looked. The one stat that produced wins had no glamour, so the entire market ignored it.

The scouts were chasing what I call vanity numbers: metrics that sound impressive in a room and predict nothing.

I know because I spent three years tracking them.

The first three years of the Council, I measured what I built. Modules created, courses added, workbooks delivered. All of it went up, year after year, and all of it sounded good out loud.

Then members would finish their year and keep telling me the same thing: I need time to implement. I got that feedback for three years before I actually heard it. Every module I added made the library more impressive and the member less likely to act on any of it.

So from year four, the Council runs on one number: the percentage of members implementing.
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​The Number

Implementation is my 'on-base percentage'. Members ask about the next workshop, prospects ask how many times we meet, and I could talk about either all day. But the implementation number is the only one that tells me whether the Council is working.

Nobody picks a vanity number deliberately though. Most of us end up tracking what everyone around us is tracking just like the scouts measured swings because every other team in baseball measured swings. I counted modules because every membership community counts content. Founders today compare how many AI agents they're running, the way they compared follower counts a few years ago. Next year it will be something else.

The scene has a second line that stuck with me. One of the scouts insists they're trying to solve the problem, and Billy cuts him off: "You're not even looking at the problem." That's the trap with vanity numbers. It's not that we as founders are measuring badly. We're measuring beside the point entirely, and working hard at it. When we stop measuring what everyone around us measures, we can finally see the number that's been sitting in front of us the whole time.

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Your Turn

I'm not going to pretend there's a formula for finding your number. Mine came from exit conversations I'd been brushing off for three years.

But that's probably where yours is too. Spend some time with the question this week. Ask a few customers what actually changed for them since working with you. Sit with your team and ask what you'd all track if nobody in the industry was watching. The answers might surprise you.

And if you get stuck, reply to this email. Tell me what you're tracking today, and I'll tell you what I'd question first.

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ps: did someone forward this to you?​
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Cheers