How to Measure Progress

Especially early on, it's hard to know how we should be spending our time.

What actually is progress?

What is worth spending time on?

What should I be busy with and working on?

These are totally valid questions to be asking. After all, nobody wants to waste their time.

But how do we measure progress?

Eventually you’ll want to measure things in revenue and profit, but early on the best metric I’ve found is traction.

This isn’t the time it takes to execute a plan, rather it’s a metric you can measure that tracks the rate of monetizable value you can capture. A key activity that makes people buy from you.

In the case of a SaaS company, traction can be measured in the number of new sign ups per week. If you don't have any traffic yet, your metric could be number of visitors per week. Your traction metric will change over time as you move "down-funnel" (visitors -> sign ups -> paid customers).

Or for a coaching business, that could be the number of client sessions booked per week or something else that measures achieved client milestones/outcomes - what is chosen depends on what is being sold/monetized.

The key thing is that this metric is measured per unit of time (per week, per month, etc.). Early on, a weekly cadence is a good place to start. As your volume increases, you can move to a more frequent metric (per day).

Even though they feel good, avoid cumulative vanity metrics like total number of page visits, likes on a post, total number of newsletter subscribers, etc. as these don’t really tell you much of anything actionable.

With something measurable to focus on, it'll be much clearer what you need to be focusing on every day.