New here? Jerk is a physics term — the rate of change of acceleration. I've been tracking derivatives of business signals since the 90s. Jerk sees furthest ahead. [Learn more →]Learn more about the framework →

You already have the data. It's in whatever you use to track your monthly numbers.

Revenue. Sales. Cash flow.

You look at it. You know whether it's up or down.

That's Position. Where you are right now.

There are three more layers hiding inside those same numbers.

They don't require new data. They don't require software. They require subtraction.

Velocity: This month minus last month. Are you growing or shrinking, and by how much? Velocity tells you where you're going.

Acceleration: This month's velocity minus last month's velocity. Is your growth speeding up or slowing down? Acceleration tells you whether you're gaining or losing momentum.

Jerk: This month's acceleration minus last month's acceleration. Is a slowdown getting worse — or starting to ease? Is a surge building — or topping out? Jerk tells you something almost nobody tracks: whether the momentum itself is shifting.

Momentum shifting is the earliest warning signal in the data you already own.

How to do this in Excel

Column A: Month names.

Column B: Your monthly revenue.

Column C: =B3-B2 (Velocity)

Column D: =C4-C3 (Acceleration)

Column E: =D5-D4 (Jerk)Five columns.

Drag the formulas down. You now have four layers of insight that most companies never see.

One note on seasonality: If your business has natural peaks and valleys — holiday rushes, summer slowdowns — month-over-month derivatives will read the season, not the business. Compare each month to the same month last year instead. Year over year — March 2026 minus March 2025. Same formulas for acceleration and jerk from there. You'll need 24 months of data, but the signal is cleaner.

An example to see how this works — Coastal Provisions

Coastal Provisions is a fictional specialty food company. 18 employees, about $1.4M in annual revenue. Online sales, a few retail partners, regional markets.

Last April, the owner was looking at four months of growth. Revenue climbed from $95k to $124k. Up 30%. Things are moving. That’s Position.

But Jerk turned negative in April.

Then Acceleration turned negative in May.

Velocity — the change the owner would actually notice — didn't turn negative until August.

Four months later.

By December, Position had dropped to $114k in sales revenue.

Jerk showed it in April. The owner saw it in August. That's the early warning the framework provides.

One more thing worth noticing: by November and December, jerk turns positive again. Revenue is still falling — but the rate of decline is easing. That's the first sign a bottom is forming. Jerk sees that too, long before position confirms it.

Your five-minute practice

Pull up your monthly revenue for the past 12–24 months. Add three columns of subtraction. Look at the pattern. Is your growth accelerating or decelerating? Has jerk turned negative? If it has, the first question isn't what to cut. It's what changed.

The numbers you already have are already telling you. You just haven't asked them the right questions yet.

This is a thinking framework, not financial advice.

This applies to more than revenue. Any number you track monthly becomes more useful when you read it through four readings instead of one. Future issues will show you where.

If reading the derivatives of your own business or niche sounds useful, that's what I do. Book a conversation →

Try out the interactive version.