Behind the Blog
The Face Behind This
A resource built from curiosity about a specific problem that turns out to be very common.
A resource built from curiosity about a specific problem that turns out to be very common.
Several years ago, I was running a small side business selling handmade goods online. Revenue was growing. Orders were coming in consistently. By every surface-level metric, things were going well.
Then I built a spreadsheet that actually accounted for everything. The Etsy fee. The PayPal fee. The cost of the box. The tissue paper. The label. The tape. The proportion of orders that came back. The time I spent on customer service for returns. What I found was uncomfortable. Some products were generating meaningful contribution. Others were essentially costing me money to sell.
That spreadsheet changed how I thought about the business. Not because it told me what to do, but because it made the actual situation visible. Before that, I was making decisions with incomplete information and calling it intuition.
This blog is an attempt to share that process. The guides here are not financial advice. They are explanations of how to build the same kind of visibility into your own numbers, using tools most people already have.
Unit economics is not a single number. It involves assumptions, estimates, and decisions about how to categorize costs. The guides here acknowledge that complexity rather than pretending there is one correct way to calculate everything.
What you decide to do with the information on this site is entirely your decision. The content explains concepts and provides calculation frameworks. It does not recommend pricing strategies, business decisions, or financial actions.
There is a difference between explaining something simply and talking down to the reader. These guides aim for the former. The assumption is that you are intelligent and capable, and that the concepts just haven't been explained well before.
Every concept on this site connects to something you can actually do with a spreadsheet. Abstract financial theory is interesting, but the goal here is clarity about your own specific numbers.
Written explanations of financial concepts can only go so far. At some point, seeing the actual formula in a cell, or watching a number change as an input changes, makes the concept real in a way that prose cannot achieve.
Every guide on this site includes screenshots of actual spreadsheet setups. Not polished, idealized versions. Real formulas, real cell references, real examples with realistic numbers. The downloadable templates are the same ones shown in the screenshots.
This approach came from noticing that most financial content for small business owners either oversimplifies to the point of uselessness or assumes a level of accounting knowledge that most sellers do not have. The middle ground, where real complexity is acknowledged but explained accessibly, is where this content tries to live.
If something in a guide is unclear, or if there is a topic you think should be covered, the contact page is the right place to share that. This resource is shaped by the questions people actually have.
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