Every week, I advise founders on how to hit $10k MRR. On Tuesdays, I share my consulting notes from those private sessions. Learn from their mistakes so you don't burn your own cash.
Your Ideal Customer Profile is a fantasy
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Hey Reader, A founder was telling me he was worried about getting 'bad' signups. He was hesitant to go broad with outreach because he didn't want users who weren't a perfect fit and would eventually cancel. I stopped him. You are in the discovery stage. You have zero idea who your Ideal Customer Profile actually is – you only have a hypothesis written on a slide deck. The obsession with defining a narrow ICP before you have data is one of the most common forms of 'productive' procrastination. You feel like you're doing important strategy work, but you're just polishing a fantasy. The goal right now isn't to attract the perfect customer. The goal is to get on calls.
The Clarity Filter Insight
Your Ideal Customer Profile is not a document you write, it's a truth you uncover through sales calls. [Share on LinkedIn] [Share on X] Stop staring at your ICP document. Go talk to ten people who you think are the 'wrong' fit. You might discover they're exactly who you've been looking for. Speak soon, P.S. Don't write code for a product nobody wants to buy. I built Traction OS to give you the exact 60-day roadmap, sales scripts, and validation templates you need to hit your first $10k MRR without guessing. From complete scratch or with an existing MVP. |
Clarity Filter
Every week, I advise founders on how to hit $10k MRR. On Tuesdays, I share my consulting notes from those private sessions. Learn from their mistakes so you don't burn your own cash.
Hey Reader, A founder I spoke with last week thought he had social selling dialed in. "I can ask a friend who knows an e-commerce manager to make an introduction," he said. I had to stop him right there. That's a warm referral. A perfectly valid tactic – but not social selling. Calling it social selling is like calling a taxi a road trip. Same road, completely different commitment. Here's what social selling actually looks like: Step 1: Find your exact ICPs on LinkedIn. Not broadly....
Hey Reader, A founder I work with was freezing up on every cold call. Not because he didn't know his product. Because every call felt like a performance review – him auditioning, the prospect judging. The pressure was killing his ability to actually listen. So we tried something that felt almost too simple. He started paying prospects $100 for a one-hour research interview. Not a demo. Not a pitch. A conversation where he asked questions, took notes, and genuinely tried to understand their...
Hey Reader, A founder I work with spent weeks validating his SaaS with Account Executives. The data was damning: AEs lose roughly 53% of their deals because they're prioritizing the wrong opportunities. But when he brought this up in conversations, prospects shut down. Not because they disagreed. Because they couldn't admit it. The problem wasn't the product. It was the pitch. He was, without realizing it, opening every conversation with: "You are bad at your job, and I have a fix." Nobody...