Posts about traction

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.

How do potential customers find quiet startups?

While we as quiet founders do not actively seek attention, the reality is that without some level of visibility, building a sustainable business is nearly impossible.

Ouch.

So what do we do?

Instead of chasing broad attention, quiet founders should seek strategic visibility.

This means showing up in the right place at the right time so your target audience can find you.

Here's what strategic visibility could look like in practice:

• Speaking at an event
• Being interviewed on a podcast
• Writing a guest blog post
• Collaborating with another brand on a co-hosted webinar or bundled service
• Sponsoring a relevant newsletter
• Hosting a Q&A on a relevant platform (e.g. Reddit AMA, dedicated Slack group, etc.)

But how do you find these right places?

It starts with deeply understanding your ideal customer. Where do they hang out online and offline? What do they read, watch, and listen to?

One of the best ways to do this is through informal conversations with existing customers of similar businesses to yours. Don't pitch them, just seek to understand where they are and what they're already doing.

Your mission is to learn.

This will help you identify where your audience already exists.

It's much easier to stand in front of an existing crowd than to build your own from scratch.

While the eventual goal is to have your own audience, in the beginning, everyone starts without one. It needs to be built up, one person at a time.

By practicing strategic visibility, you'll solve your early discovery problem and grow an audience at the same time - all while staying true to your values.

So, how are you strategically making your startup visible?

Social media is everywhere.

It can be hard to remember that other marketing channels even exist.

Whenever people ask me for alternatives to social media, I always point them to the book Traction. This article by Zapier summarizes the 19 channels nicely.

As an example, for the Quiet Startup, my primary marketing focus is on content marketing (my articles and notes) and SEO.

What I like about these channels is that they're high leverage and evergreen. This means I write something once and it keeps working for years.

Additional channels I'll be exploring include viral marketing (word of mouth), community building, and engineering as marketing.

So while social media gets all the attention (and consumes yours), there are plenty of other channels where you can market your business!