Dear founder,
Let’s add another one to the series of entrepreneurial advice that just really irritates me. Today, I’m going after “improve 1% every day” — you know, that meme or mantra about making tiny little improvements every day because they supposedly compound into something massive over time.
This one is infuriating, and I’ll tell you why: it’s almost impossible to measure.
I get the sentiment behind it. Make micro improvements every day, and ultimately they’ll add up to bigger ones in the future. But here’s what actually happens when people follow this advice.
And before we get to that, a word from our Sponsor, Paddle.com. Im using Paddle as my Merchant of Record for all my software projects. They take care of all the taxes, the currencies, tracking declined transactions and updated credit cards so that I can focus on dealing with my competitors (and not banks and financial regulators). If you think you’d rather just build your product, check out Paddle.com as your payment provider.
Now, 1% every day.
The Busywork Trap
First off, it gets people to do irrelevant stuff. They feel like they’re making a micro improvement when they’re really just treading water. They’re doing something for the sake of doing something, not for the sake of actually improving.
You change the color of a button. You tweak a landing page headline for the third time this week. You reorganize your task management system again. And you call it your 1% improvement for the day. But did any of that actually move the needle? Can you even measure if it did?
Second, it lacks focus. And this is the big one.
How Real Improvements Actually Happen
Here’s what I’ve learned from years of building businesses: particularly in the early stages of starting or running a business, the actual improvements that happen are quite colossal. But they happen at times when you don’t expect them.
There are moments when you have a conversation with a customer that just throws everything else into disarray because you figure something out. You realize, “Oh, I’ve been doing this wrong internally for half a year.”
I thought the process was this, but now that I actually talked to one of my customers, this process has to change significantly. And then you make that change, and it improves retention by like 10%. That’s a measurable change. That’s a real improvement.
But all those tiny little steps you may have taken before that? They haven’t moved the needle at all.
The Focus Problem
When we talk about improving 1% every day and how it all adds up to like 4000% a year or whatever — there’s a real number there somewhere — the sentiment is that you should always work on your business. You should always aim to make things better.
But here’s the problem: if you over-index on the idea of small improvements, then you stop seeing the pivotal, critical mass movements that you might make.
If it’s more important to you to get your daily change done instead of focusing on a thing that might take many weeks to build — something that might make a significant impact to the bottom line of the business — you end up refocusing on the small change. And all of a sudden, that big thing, that big potential, just gets pushed further and further down the line.
That’s problematic, of course.
The Other Side of the Coin
Now, if you under-index on daily improvements, on regular improvements, you run a different risk. You end up with these mammoth projects, these mammoth features that you build and build and try to get perfect so they have the most potential impact. And all of a sudden, you’ve just wasted a couple months on an assumption.
So either way, we have a problem.
The Real Daily Practice That Matters
Here’s what I would rather see instead of “improve 1% every day”: Have one conversation with a customer every day. Or with a prospect. Or with somebody in your market.
The actual improvement that can be gained from a real interaction with somebody in your market — somebody who will give you their honest, unfiltered opinion — beats a small feature change or a small additional landing page copy change significantly.
If you actually interface with people 365 days a year, you’ll get to a point where you can speak their language. And that’s important.
What 365 Conversations Actually Give You
You understand what words they use, how they communicate, what they say, what they don’t say, what they know, what they don’t know. You understand what the education level is in the field that you’re interested in, what they lack, what they have too much of, what they use, what they don’t use — and crucially, why and how.
You get an understanding of what their needs and requirements are, both the ones that are made explicit when they tell you they need something, and the implicit ones that they just assume to be there.
That communication with the customer is more important than minimal, gradual improvement.
The 1% Improvement I Can Live With
So if there’s anything that I take away from “improve 1% every day and you will have improved a thousand-fold in a year,” it’s this: Stay in touch with who you’re doing this for every day, and you will never run afoul of your assumptions.
Your assumptions will constantly clash with reality, and they will be refined slightly every single time you have a conversation.
That is a 1% improvement I can deal with and live with.
Because here’s the thing: when you talk to customers every day, you’re not just making arbitrary improvements. You’re building a deep, intuitive understanding of your market. You’re calibrating your product vision against reality. You’re discovering those pivotal insights that lead to 10% improvements, not 1% ones.
And most importantly, you’re ensuring that when you do invest time in building something big, it’s based on real needs, not assumptions.
So forget about improving 1% every day. Talk to one customer every day instead. That’s where the real compound growth happens — not in the features you build, but in the understanding you develop.
We're the podcast database with the best and most real-time API out there. Check out podscan.fm — and tell your friends!
Thank you for reading this week’s essay edition of The Bootstrapped Founder. Did you enjoy it? If so, please spread the word and share this issue on Twitter.
If you want to reach tens of thousands of creators, makers, and dreamers, you can apply to sponsor an episode of this newsletter. Or just reply to this email!
