Run your business on one page every morning

Joseph Pulitzer, the owner of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, ran his paper by quizzing his staff every morning. He often worked past midnight at the newsroom. A colleague recalled passing by between 11 and midnight and always finding him still at work, then back early the next day to check the business.

Each morning he asked about the prior day's press total, how many copies sold, and how many came back unsold. He also wanted advertising lines for the day, the prior week, and the year to date, plus spending on staff, paper, and telegrams set against money coming in.

Those three copy numbers came first because together they showed demand, waste, and whether to print more or less, with sold copies showing what readers bought and returns showing what was wasted.

Out of worry about failure, he trimmed the list to a short set of numbers that showed at a glance where things stood. He kept the habit for the rest of his life, even while traveling and handing off little to others.

When he was ready to expand, he had his managers put the numbers on a single page. They sent him a ready-made sheet each day with readership, advertising, spending, and when the presses started and stopped. He asked the men on the business side to keep answers short because Pulitzer said he wanted it "in a nutshell."

By then he judged the St. Louis paper could largely run without him, which let him direct it from elsewhere. The daily sheet helped him keep track while away. That remote setup was in place when he went nearly $500,000 into debt to buy the New York World, a few years after using up almost all his remaining savings on the failing St. Louis paper.

To try it, start tomorrow morning with his first three numbers for yesterday: printed, sold, and returned.