April 19th, 2020 | Fast and slow

Today I woke up to a pleasant surprise. A $50/mo subscriber!

I asked him where he found Cyberleads from, I am waiting for a response.

Maybe it was Quora. Maybe it was ProductHunt. Maybe it was Reddit. We'll see.

I started reading a book called "Traction" yesterday. It's co-authored by the founder of DuckDuckGo.

It talks about how startups should focus 50% of their time on getting traction. Most spend 20% of their time on marketing, and not focused.

I felt good while reading the book. I'm focusing 100% of my time!

The book's recipe:
1. Brainstorm around all 19 traction channels.
2. Pick 3-4 traction channels to experiment with. Brainstorm around them. Try all of them.
3. Pick the most successful one and focus on that one.

When your traction channel is not working any more, repeat.

At different stages, you will need different traction channels.

For example, direct sales may work in the beginning, but content marketing might work later on.

The book didn't teach me anything new. But it made me realize that my focus now is NOT scaling. It's identifying my distribution channel for this stage of my growth.

So, let's continue to be playful and see what happens. When I find it, then I can start scaling and streamlining the process.

Today I will send more emails and answer a question on Quora.

Also, I want to try three different techniques:

1. Ask for advice. From my experience, 1/20 replies and you have a call.
2. Start a conversation. Ask something. Don't pitch. Haven't had good results yet.
3. Offer to interview them. Haven't tried it yet.

I will try all three. My hunch says number 3 will be good, because instead of asking for things, I am offering something. The problem is that I don't know if a conversation is easy to start afterwards.

One thing is for sure. If you don't try, you never know.

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