Revenue is a vanity number if cash is not staying in the business.

I keep seeing the same pattern from Shopify owners in the $10k–$100k/mo range: ads are spending, the store is converting enough to feel busy, and the owner still cannot point to a clean monthly profit.

The leak is almost never "we need more traffic." It is usually one of these, and it is usually one, not all of them:

• Ads that buy revenue, not contribution margin

• A conversion rate that looks fine until you split new vs returning

• AOV that died after the last promo

• Refunds and returns treated as a cost of doing business instead of a product problem

• Retention spend that cannot beat the cost of the first purchase

• Fees (payment, apps, 3PL, pick/pack) that scaled faster than sales

• Operating costs hired to "keep up" with a revenue line that was never that profitable

Do not try to fix seven things. Pull 90 days of numbers. Rank the leaks by dollars, not by how annoying they feel. Do the top one.

If you cannot size the leak in dollars from your own data, you are guessing. Guessing is how $40k months still end with no cash.