Artifact
One Morning Page for Every Company I Run: Answer by Number
Future state, present state and what is waiting on me, for each business, on one page. The items are numbered and I answer by typing a number.
A thing I built. This page says what it is and what is true about it. Dan Stephens writes about psychology, AI systems and the method behind both at danieltstephens.com.
Every company I am responsible for gets the same blocks on one page, every morning, in the same order. Its funnel, then its money, which together say where it stands right now. Then what is waiting on me. The page does not average them together or rank them against each other. It asks each one the same questions and puts the answers side by side.
What it is made of
- One section per organization, each carrying the same blocks in the same order, so my eye knows where to go before it has read anything.
- Where it stands: its funnel, then its money, computed from its own records.
- How full the people are. For the counseling organization that means each clinician’s caseload against what that clinician can carry, which is the figure the rest of it exists to serve.
- Everything open, sorted into four boxes by urgent and important.
- Where a company is going is not here. That lives in its vision and strategic plan. Where it has been lives in its log.
- Numbered items, frozen for the day, which I answer by typing their numbers into a chat window.
- A separate step that files each answer into the right company’s own log afterward.
What one organization’s block looks like
Below is the counseling organization’s part of the page, as a sample. The practice, the people and every number in it are invented. The shape is the real one.
Sample page. Invented practice, invented people, invented figures.
A. Keep in touch
Items 1 to 12. Grouped by how often I said I would reach out, longest debt first.
| Due for a touch | Who | Last spoke | Overdue by |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Rosalind Adeyemi | Peer therapist | 2026-02-11 | 216 days |
| 2. Caleb Whitfield | Referring physician | 2025-12-02 | 287 days |
| 3. Marisol Duarte | Supervisee, monthly | 2026-01-20 | 238 days |
| 4. Henrik Oyelaran | Former colleague | 2026-03-30 | 169 days |
C. Funnel
Thirty days, against the thirty before them.
| Stage | Count | Step conversion | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Appeared in a search | 6,120 | ▲ 12% | |
| Visits to the website | 540 | 8.8% | ▲ 9% |
| Consults booked | 31 | 5.7% | ▼ 18% |
| Consults actually held | 27 | 87.1% | ▼ 21% |
| Became clients | 11 | 40.7% | ▲ 38% |
D. Money
Year to date, against the same stretch last year.
| Figure | Change | |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue | $214,900 | ▲ 8.2% |
| Profit | $12,480 | ▲ 21.0% |
| Cash flow | $3,160 | ▼ 14.5% |
E. How full the people are
Sessions held each week against what each person can carry.
| Clinician | Held each week | Can carry | Full | Booked, next 4 weeks |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Marguerite | 13.5 | 16 | 84% | 61 (95%) |
| Wendell | 11.8 | 15 | 79% | 55 (92%) |
| Theo | 9.0 | 14 | 64% | 44 (79%) |
| Priya | 4.2 | 12 | 35% | 21 (44%) |
Held 68 percent of what the practice can carry. Below 80 percent, so this week goes to finding clients rather than to writing and speaking.
F. Waiting on me
Items 13 to 24, sorted by urgent against important.
- 13Urgent and importantConfirm the training room for the October team day. The rate goes up at the end of this month.
- 14Urgent and importantTwo thirds of what insurers owe us is now more than ninety days old. Decide whether this goes to a collections agency or stays in house.
- 15Urgent, not importantA card on file expired. Three subscriptions failed quietly last week and nobody noticed.
- 16Important, not urgentDecide whether Thursday evening becomes a second intake window, now that Priya has room.
I answer that page by typing numbers. Fourteen, going to collections. Fifteen, not this week. Sixteen is Marguerite’s call rather than mine.
Where it stands
Running every morning. Two of the organizations in it are separate from the rest and the page has no access to either; each prepares its own figures and sends them over, and my answers go back for that organization to file in its own records.
The bottom of the counseling funnel is the one part that is not automatic. The system holding our client records offers no way in for another program, and its terms forbid automated browsing even by software covered by a signed privacy agreement. So I export that part myself, once a week, and the page says plainly which half is fresh and which half is seven days old.
It has not yet told me anything I did not expect. It has confirmed rather than surprised.
By the numbers
- 17 lettered sections on the one page, and 72 item numbers reserved; the 2026-09-01 build filled 51
- 0 buttons and 0 calls out to the internet in the finished page
- 26 checks guarding the numbering, all passing, including four rounds of answers with a full rebuild between each
- 1,064 lines removed in the rewrite, among them a small program on my own machine that would run any command I typed when a button was clicked
- 2 points where anything identifying a person is reduced to a count before it is written down
- 1 full close-of-business run: 26 answers, 6 filed here, 20 handed to the two organizations that keep their own records
Why a board tool could not do this, what the four boxes are actually for, and what I was losing sleep over before, is in the essay. How the bottom of that funnel is reached at all, when the law governs what may leave a clinical record, is in Counseling Practice Analytics and HIPAA. The pattern underneath all of these companies is in Entity OS.