I Thought Small Businesses Needed Better Analytics. I Was Only Half Right.

For most of my career, I helped larger companies understand what was happening inside their businesses.

When revenue moved, someone investigated why. When customer behavior changed, an analyst found the pattern. Leaders could ask a question and expect an answer.

Small business owners face many of the same questions:

Why did revenue fall? Which customers are disengaging? Where are we losing people? What deserves attention next?

The difference is that most small businesses have no one assigned to answer them.

I thought better reporting could close that gap.

I started with Jetti Sheets

The first version of the idea was called Jetti Sheets.

It turned messy exports from management software into clearer, automated spreadsheet reports. The approach was intentionally practical: no complicated implementation or new system to manage, just a better view of the numbers the business already had.

The reports organized revenue, attendance, retention, and customer activity more clearly than the source systems did.

But the owner still had to interpret them.

Which change mattered? Could the number be trusted? Who needed attention? What should happen next?

I had made the information easier to read without making the decision much easier.

That pushed Jetti beyond spreadsheets and toward software that could identify what changed, explain why, and point to a next step.

Then I focused too much on churn

My next assumption was that churn prediction should sit at the center of the product.

The logic seemed sound. Membership cancellations are often preceded by signals: fewer visits, a failed payment, an expiring pass, or a break in someone’s normal routine.

Jetti began using attendance, billing, and membership history to find those patterns and identify the people most likely to be slipping.

The predictions showed promise. In one replay test, six of the seven members flagged went on to leave.

But even a correct prediction left the owner with another question:

What should I do about it?

I had shown that the product could find the signal. I had not made the next decision easier.

The answer needed an action

Once a risk appeared, the practical questions came quickly:

Who should the team contact? Why is this person on the list? What should the team say? Has anyone already followed up?

A useful finding without a next step was still one more thing for the owner to figure out.

One design partner described the value more clearly than I had:

“I like that this gives me something to do every day. It feels very low lift.”

The prediction model still mattered, but the owner cared most about what it helped him do.

He wanted a short list of people who needed attention, the reason each person appeared, and a practical next move.

That changed how I thought about the product.

The goal was not to put more analysis in front of an owner. It was to reduce the distance between a signal and an action.

Better analytics was only part of the answer

I still believe small businesses need better analytics.

But analytics alone does not close the gap.

Owners need to know which numbers to trust, what has changed, why it matters, and where to act. Larger companies solve that problem with analysts, finance teams, and operators. Most small businesses cannot.

I started with Jetti Sheets because I thought clearer reports were the answer.

Then I built around churn because I thought better predictions were the answer.

Both became important parts of a broader need: visibility.

Today, Jetti brings together the business’s existing data, checks the numbers, finds the signals that deserve attention, and helps turn them into a clear next step.

The product is still early, and real businesses continue to shape how it works. But the direction is much clearer than when I started.

Small businesses do not need more numbers.

They need a better read on the business they already run.