Module 3 of 6
Slow or dead
The evidence that tells a slow start apart from a dead idea.
Almost everything worth doing is slower at the start than the person doing it expected, so slowness on its own tells you nothing. What separates the two is direction and repetition, not speed.
Signals that it is slow rather than dead: the same customers come back without being chased. The people who buy tell other people. Each round of the work gets cheaper or faster than the last. The reasons for losses are changing, which means you are fixing things rather than hearing the same objection again. Someone has paid more than once.
Signals that it is dead: every sale takes the same effort as the first, so nothing is compounding. Nobody returns and nobody refers. The objection you get is identical to the one you got at the beginning, which means nothing you changed touched the real problem. Interest is high and purchase is nil — the clearest of them all, and the one people explain away for longest. And the honest one: the only thing keeping it alive is that stopping would be embarrassing.
Write down which of these you are seeing before the date arrives, and date the note. It is much easier to read your own signals when you have not yet decided what you want them to say.
Slow shows compounding — repeat purchase, referrals, changing objections. Dead shows every sale costing what the first one did.