Revenue Isn't Enough: How I'm Building for Client Outcomes, Not Just Sales
“I really hope they got what they came here for. I hope they got what they’ve been saving up their money for.”
In Taylor Swift's documentary on the making of The Eras Tour, she reflects on what she thinks about at the end of every show, as people leave and walk home. That’s what she said, that she really hopes her fans actually got what they came to the concert for.
When I started my business, I made myself a promise: I will build a product that actually solves my customers' problems.
Not a product that (just) makes money, not one that clients (just) engage with, not even one where they (just) say, “I learned so much”…
Sure, all these are important. But at the end of the day, I want to help people get jobs.
The actual thing they came here for.
But for months, something bothered me: I was running my business on intentions, not systems.
The Intention vs. System Problem
I've always operated with the right heart:
- Clients can book unlimited calls with me
- I don't stick rigidly to "the program" — I problem-solve for their specific job search
- I work with them until they get the job
But it always bothered me that I had all these intentions, but no system.
Recently, a long-term client put this into focus. He's Head of Operational Excellence at a globally recognized brand (you know it), based in Pakistan, planning to move to Germany in 1.5 years. This is a much longer time horizon than my typical clients who are already in Germany looking to land a job in 3-6 months. He wants to work with me to build his personal brand and relationships long-term, so that when he actively job searches in Germany, he'll already have planted the seeds.
I asked him: "Why hire me? Why not just do this yourself?"
His answer:
"At this stage of my career, I've learned that success is built not on motivation, but on systems. You are the system. Knowing I have a call with you, knowing you're holding me accountable — that's what will help me do this long-term stuff and not get sucked into my current job."
How ironic. I was his system, but I didn't have a system for myself to ensure I was actually creating client success.
The False Start
My original North Star Metric was simple: revenue.
Something felt amiss, but I couldn’t pinpoint what.
I also considered success rate (% of clients who get a job within 3-6 months), but that's too lagging. By the time I know someone hasn't gotten a job in 6 months, I've already failed them. I needed something more actionable, more leading, but still strongly correlated with their success.
The Breakthrough
Then I read Evidence-Guided by Itamar Gilad and it finally clicked:
Every business fundamentally does two things:
- Create value
- Capture value
I needed TWO North Star Metrics, not one.
- NSM #1 (Capture Value): € Revenue
- NSM #2 (Create Value):# Job-Relevant Conversations and Interviews
Specifically, my goal is for each of my clients to average 8 job-relevant conversations and interviews per month.
Why this metric? Three reasons:
- Strong correlation with customer success: Job-relevant conversations and interviews are the leading indicator of getting hired. If my clients aren't having these conversations, they're not going to get jobs, period.
- Actionable: Unlike "success rate within 6 months," I can track this weekly and intervene when numbers drop.
- Sustainable: 8 per month (roughly 2 per week) is ambitious but achievable — it pushes clients without burning them out.
How This Changes Everything
This isn't just a metric I track passively. It's changed my entire operating system:
Weekly tracking: I track conversations and interviews per week for each client
Leading indicator for the NSM: I track a weekly KPI — # of customer interviews (target: 1 per week to start). In these conversations, I dig into: What's keeping you from having more conversations and interviews?
Current diagnosis: My clients tell me:
"I'm talking to people and getting vaguely useful information, but I'm not sure how this leads to job opportunities."
When I dig deeper, here's what (I think) is actually happening: we haven't validated whether the role they're pursuing is right for them. So every conversation carries this underlying uncertainty. They can't advocate for themselves with conviction because they're not sure they should even be pursuing this role. The outreach feels awkward. They can't articulate why they want it. And without that clarity, conversations stay vague and don't convert to opportunities.
Current experiment:
1. CMF Hypothesis -- helping clients articulate their candidate-market fit hypothesis. This is an upgraded version of my Primary Target Role and Unique Value Proposition exercises, but structured as a testable hypothesis rather than a static positioning statement.
2. Validation via Listening Tour — before networking and applying, clients validate (or invalidate) our hypothesis through conversations with peers and hiring managers at their top 10 target employers (which we identify in the CMF Hypothesis)
This is the system: Not just good intentions, not just "we'll figure it out...." but a measurable commitment to the outcome my clients actually came to me for.
I’m Afraid I’ll Build a Business That Makes Money But I’m Not Proud Of
I have an in-progress blog post about my fear of building a business that makes money but I'm not proud of. I believe the creator economy has a product problem: everyone teaches you how to sell the course, but nobody teaches you how to create one that reliably gets results.
In product management, non-usage is a design flaw. In education and coaching, non-usage is a character flaw ("the client didn't do the work"). Once responsibility is framed as individual rather than systemic, there's very little incentive to build tight feedback loops.
Everyone tells me,
"But this is not in your control!”
Well, just because you can't control the final outcome doesn't mean you shouldn't even try.
I love what Oliver Burkeman said, which I wrote about here,
Exercise agency, even when you don’t have control.
I’ve been a PM at three different companies. In every one, I faced the classic PM challenge: I always wanted to drive outcomes — business outcomes (revenue) or product outcomes (customer success). But there was either too much pressure to just build features (any feature!), or we just never managed to create features that ACTUALLY led to customer success. It was always "well, we built all these features, so we tried."
I don’t want to run my business that way.
Reliability ≠ Certainty. Reliability = Taking Responsibility
I'm unusually stubborn about one thing: I want to reliably help my clients get jobs.
People tell me this is unrealistic. Maybe it is. But if I'm not even willing to try — if I'm not willing to design, measure, and iterate toward that outcome — then this isn't a business I want to build.
Marc Andreessen wrote about Steve Jobs and the iPhone:
"That's the quality bar that Steve set, what it meant to ship products. But also the bar for what it meant to have a customer, and whether that customer was happy — ideally, giddily happy. Steve made real the notion of customer delight."
Before the iPhone, phones were just... shipped. They worked from an engineering perspective. But they didn't work from the customer's perspective.
I want my clients to be giddily happy because they got what they came here for: the job.
Just like those smartphones, it’s not gonna happen overnight. It will probably take a while...
At least now I have a system to make sure I’m doing everything to make that happen.