Traction
Do you have a grip on your business, or does your business have a grip on you? All entrepreneurs and business leaders face similar frustrations—personnel conflict, profit woes, and inadequate growth. Decisions never seem to get made, or, once made, fail to be properly implemented. But there is a solution. It's not complicated or theoretical.The Entrepreneurial Operating System® is a practical method for achieving the business success you have always envisioned. More than 80,000 companies have discovered what EOS can do. In Traction, you'll learn the secrets of strengthening the six key components of your business. You'll discover simple yet powerful ways to run your company that will give you and your leadership team more focus, more growth, and more enjoyment. Successful companies are applying Traction every day to run profitable, frustration-free businesses—and you can too. For an illustrative, real-world lesson on how to apply Traction to your business, check out its companion book, Get A Grip.
Stats for nerds
7recommend
9mentions
9people
2010–2022years
78% recommend22% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I run a small-ish dev shop ($1.5m revenue) and there are a lot of things I wish I knew back in 2012 when I started.
1. Finding clients is hard. Think hard about what an awesome customer looks like and then figure out how to reach them. This is the most important thing IMO. I'm reading Standout of Die, it has good advice on this.
2. First attempt, I started with about $40,000 and blew it all quickly as I didn't have enough sales. Better to get the sales first then grow the rest. You can be transparent about this with potential clients.
3. If your costs are $400,000 a year, and you'll sell 44 weeks of the year allowing for holidays, sickness and wiggle room, then you need to sell $9,000 a week to stay in business. If you want to make 25% profit then you'll need to sell closer to $500,000 a year and $11.3k a week.
4. I'm in the UK, we pay someone to politely chase clients for payment. This was a game changer. Most agreed to pay monthly but never do without a good bit of nudging.
5. As for tips... There are so many good books and courses on building and running a service business, I wish they'd been there when I started. To name a few.
- Jonathan Stark.com - Hourly Billing is Nuts
- Gareth Healey - Standout or Die
- Jason Swenk - Agency Playbook
- Blair Enns - The Win Without Pitching Manifesto
- Blair Enns - Pricing Creativity
- Traction - Gino Wickman
Running a dev shop can be incredibly rewarding and fun, especially if you love the work you're doing. Building a business will be like learning a whole new career, so don't underestimate the learning curve the number of mistakes you can make (if you're like me haha). It's great that you're asking for advice, it will save you some headaches :)
- Check out Traction by Gino Wickman. Or Google "EOS".
- I think it really depends on what kind of software business you want to create.
For example, being a solo founder running a profitable bootstrapped SaaS business requires different skills than a venture-backed B2C social mobile app!
If you want the former, I suggest you read interviews and follow companies on IndieHacker: https://www.indiehackers.com/
You'll find lots of resources and case studies of people that made the switch from developer to founder.
I quit my software developer job two years ago to build a SaaS API business with a co-founder. We're at $4500 MRR and we are documenting almost everything we do: https://www.indiehackers.com/product/scrapingninja
About business books, Traction[1] is a must-have in my opinion as a developer. You'll learn a lot about marketing, which is often the problem most developers face when launching their first company.
I also love "Start small stay small, A developer’s guide to launching a startup with no outside funding" by Rob Walling.
If you need solid advice in terms of code & technology choice/architecture to launch a startup, you should read Hello Startup.[3]
With these three books, you'll have a solid understanding of what to build, how to build, and how to market your software.
[1]: https://www.amazon.com/Traction-Get-Grip-Your-Business/dp/19... [2]: https://startupbook.net/ [3]: https://www.hello-startup.net/
- Read "Traction" by Gino Wickman.
You're an integrator. Your co-founder is either a visionary, or he's lazy, or maybe both. I don't have enough info to know for sure.
At any rate, each of you handling separate sides of what is basically two different businesses is a mistake. Sure it does a nice job in giving each of you autonomy, but it's terrible for maximizing each of your unique skill sets.
- ReWork by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson (good reference on good principles)
Traction by Gino Wickman (how to create SOPs & scale)
Authority by Nathan Barry (how to develop an audience)
- > Practical Aspect: How do I structure things with my co-founders.
Have a written scorecard with specific team member accountabilities, review weekly.
The People Component, getting the right people in the right seats will be a your most critical task. It's helpful to understand your core strengths vi-a-vis your co-founders. And making sure everyone is operating in areas of their unique abilities.
Recommend reading Traction by Gino Wickman > http://www.amazon.com/Traction-Get-Grip-Your-Business/dp/193...
