The week I handed in my notice at Deliveroo, I found out what two years of my work was worth.
I didn't work it out. Someone else did.
I'd built restaurant onboarding from nothing and taken it across all 13 of Deliveroo's markets, on a platform that was never designed for the job. It worked. And underneath it, it was quietly closing an inefficiency that was costing the business well over seven figures.
I knew it worked. I had never put a number on it. I mentioned it to the people above me, they nodded, and it went back to running in the background. Tolerated, not understood.
Then a new COO picked it up and, within days, had priced it properly. Suddenly it mattered. The business started reorganising around something I'd built and had already decided to walk away from.
Nothing about the work had changed. Only whether anyone had counted it.
We only ever count what's broken
Problems arrive with a price tag already attached. A lost client. A complaint. A deadline missed. You know roughly what each one cost you, because it hurt.
Things that work arrive with nothing. They just don't go wrong. So they never make the agenda, never get defended, and never get valued, by you or anyone else.
In a business, that's a bigger exposure than it looks:
You can't protect what you've never priced. When things get tight, the quiet thing that works is the first to get squeezed, because nobody can say what it's saving.
Someone else will price it for you. A buyer, an investor, a new senior hire. And whoever prices it gets to decide what it's for.
You can't tell what deserves your week. Without a number, the most valuable thing you do and the thing you happen to be doing look exactly the same.
That last one is the one owners feel most. When you're stretched, the instinct is to add: more hours, more hires, another tool. Usually the better move is the opposite. Find the thing that's already working, work out what it's worth, and build the rest of your week around protecting it.
Try this before Friday
Pick one thing in your business that nobody ever complains about.
Then ask: what would it cost if it stopped tomorrow? Not roughly. In pounds, hours or clients.
If you can answer in under a minute, you already know where your protection should go. If you can't, that's the first thing to count.
P.S. If you'd rather see where your own business is running on value nobody has counted, the lifestack diagnostic is free and there's no call attached: lifestack.studio/diagnostic