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Bruno Ashford @brunoashfordSubscribeModule 9 · Lesson 9.6 · 9 min
The One-Page Owner Dashboard
Build a weekly one-page view of the handful of numbers that actually run your business, updated by the agent from your files.
Use ← → to move. The marker highlights text and the pencil draws on the slide; navigation locks while you annotate. Undo removes the last mark, Esc exits.
1Choose 8 to 12 KPIs with the KPI sheet
Open the Owner Dashboard KPI Sheet and pick your numbers across four areas: sales, marketing, cash and operations. For each, write the source file, the target, and the green, amber and red thresholds. If you cannot name a source file, the KPI is not ready yet.
2Let Claude challenge your choices
Owners tend to pick vanity numbers like followers and total leads. Ask Claude to review your list against your goals and suggest swaps toward numbers you can act on, such as cash runway in weeks or cost per booked appointment.
Here is my draft KPI list in materials/09-owner-dashboard-kpi-sheet.csv. Review it against the goals in our CLAUDE.md. Flag any vanity metric, any KPI without a clear source file, and suggest better alternatives. Keep the total between 8 and 12.3Build the one-page dashboard
Ask Claude to generate a single self-contained HTML page that you can open in any browser: one tile per KPI with the current value, the target, the change versus last week and a green, amber or red status.
Build dashboard/index.html as a single self-contained page. One tile per KPI from my KPI sheet, showing current value, target, change versus last week and a green, amber or red status using my thresholds. Read values only from the source files listed. At the bottom, write three sentences: what improved, what needs attention, and the one action I should take this week.4Refresh it weekly
Every Monday, drop the new exports in and ask Claude to refresh the dashboard. Save the previous week's version with a date so trends build up. In Module 10 this refresh becomes an automatic routine.
Refresh dashboard/index.html with this week's files. Before overwriting it, save the current version as dashboard/archive/dashboard-YYYY-MM-DD.html with last week's date.Most dashboards fail because they show everything. Forty charts, no decision. A good owner dashboard is one page, eight to twelve numbers, each with a target, a trend and a colour. If you cannot read it in two minutes on Monday morning, it is not a dashboard, it is a data dump.
In this lesson you choose your numbers using the KPI sheet in this module's materials, and Claude builds a simple one-page HTML or markdown dashboard from the same files that feed your monthly report. No new software, no subscription, and it updates every week with a single prompt.
Key points
- One page, 8 to 12 numbers, readable in two minutes.
- Every KPI needs a source file, a target and thresholds.
- Swap vanity metrics for numbers you can act on.
- Archive each week so the trend tells the story.
Avoid
- Adding every metric you can find instead of the ones you act on.
- Tracking a KPI with no reliable source.
- Overwriting last week's dashboard and losing the trend.
- Building a dashboard nobody opens; put it in the Monday meeting agenda.
A small immigration law firm in London had partners asking for different numbers every week. They agreed on ten KPIs: new enquiries, first meetings booked, conversion to paid matter, average fee, work in progress, lock-up days, cash in bank, weeks of runway, matters past deadline risk and client reviews. The practice manager refreshes the one-page dashboard every Monday in about five minutes. Partner meetings went from an hour of debating numbers to 20 minutes of deciding actions.