The Build or Burn Score

TLDR: Your Build or Burn Score shows if your growth is creating wealth or destroying it. It compares what you earn after the first sale to what it cost to acquire the customer. A low score means you burn cash. A high score means your back end is compounding and funding your growth. Track it, improve it, and scale only when the score is positive.

The one number that shows whether your growth is creating wealth or consuming it

Most founders look at the same dashboard: revenue, profit, CAC, and maybe lifetime value.

Those numbers are useful, but they don’t tell you the only thing that matters:

Is your growth building wealth or burning it?

That’s what the Build or Burn Score (BoB Score) shows.

What the Build or Burn Score Measures

Every business has two parts:

1. The front end: where you spend money to get customers.
   

2. The back end: where you make money after you’ve already paid to get them.

The BoB Score measures how well the back end pays you back for what you spend on the front. In plain English…It’s the return on your marketing and sales dollars after the first sale.

If you spend $100 to get a customer and that customer only buys once, you’re treading water.

If that same customer keeps buying, subscribing, or upgrading without more ad spend—you’re compounding. That compounding is what separates a busy business from a wealth-building one.

How to Calculate It

Here’s the simple formula:

(Back-End Profit – Front-End Profit) ÷ Customer Acquisition Cost

• Front-End Profit: What you earn from the first transaction.
  

• Back-End Profit: What you earn after that, renewals, upsells, services, financing, partnerships, etc.
  

• CAC: The total cost to acquire the customer.

The result tells you how many dollars your business adds (or loses) for every dollar you invest to win a customer.

A Simple Story: Lisa vs. Mark

Lisa and Mark both run $3 million-per-year online education businesses. Both spend $500 k on ads. Both sell a $197 starter course.

Lisa’s model:

She earns $45 profit on each initial sale. Her follow-up offer brings in an extra $80 per customer. So:

(80 – 45) ÷ 50 = 0.7

Lisa’s BoB Score is 0.7.

For every $1 spent on ads, she only gets 70 cents back in back-end profit. Her business looks like it’s growing, but she’s actually burning cash.

Mark’s model:

Same $197 course, same $45 front-end profit. But he’s built a $49/month membership, a $2 k mastermind, and earns affiliate commissions on recommended tools. Over 90 days, each customer generates $180 of additional profit.

(180 – 45) ÷ 50 = 2.7

Mark’s BoB Score is 2.7.

For every $1 spent on ads, he earns $2.70 in back-end profit. Now his growth funds itself. Six months later, Lisa’s chasing cash flow. 

Mark’s reinvesting profits into new offers and scaling without outside capital. Same revenue, totally different trajectory.

Benchmarks

How to Improve Your BoB Score

1. Separate front-end and back-end revenue in your reporting.

2. Track CAC and profit per cohort weekly.

3. Focus marketing on channels with BoB ≥ 1.

4. Add or strengthen your back-end: subscriptions, attach-rate offers, financing, data plays.

5. Review monthly to ensure yield stays positive as you scale.

The Mindset Shift

Revenue isn’t proof of success. Self-funding growth is.

When your Build or Burn Score compounds upward, your business stops needing outside capital and starts creating it.

P.S. Special Announcement

After 5 years of teaching entrepreneurs how to build, buy, and sell companies, I'm retiring all Epic courses and educational content permanently.

This isn't because they didn't work, thousands have built real wealth with these frameworks, but because AI, capital markets, and collaboration have changed the game. I'm shifting from teaching deals to doing deals. Want access to everything before it disappears forever?

This is your last chance to grab 5 years of proven frameworks, strategies, and training materials before they're gone for good. See the full story and whats going into the vault here: Go to the vault

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