What to fix first when everything feels broken

Fix it in the order the money flows

1. 1

   Can the business afford a customer?

   Margin, average order, what a customer is worth over time. If a customer is worth less than they cost, nothing further down matters yet.

2. 2

   Does your site convert the traffic you already pay for?

   There is no point buying more visitors for a store that loses the ones it has.

3. 3

   Do customers come back?

   Email and retention turn one sale into several. It is usually the cheapest money on the list, when it’s done properly.

4. 4

   Only then, more traffic.

   Ads amplify what is already working. They don’t fix what isn’t.

Growth amplifies structure. It doesn’t fix its absence.

Six things founders put in the wrong order

• “We’ll do the site rebuild now and pay for it once it makes money.”

  The rebuild is supposed to be paid for by the money it hasn’t made yet.

• “Once the ads are profitable, we’ll put a proper budget behind them.”

  Profitable ads need a test budget first. Size one you can afford to lose.

• “I’ll hire someone for marketing once we can afford it.”

  Afford it out of what? Start with the bit that pays for the hire.

• “I’ll reorder the bestseller when cash frees up.”

  The bestseller is the cash. That one goes first.

• “We’ll start email once the list is bigger.”

  Email is usually the cheapest thing on the list. It just gets done last.

• “Our ROAS needs to be 12.”

  That is a requirement, not a price. Change the offer, not the target.

Read any of those back and you can hear it. The first half of the sentence depends on the second half happening first.

This is the order a Validation Sprint works through, one piece at a time. Fixing things in order can make the first months look worse. Here’s how to tell a dip from a disaster.

Want to see how we work through it? See how a Validation Sprint works →

You don’t need to fix everything. You need to fix the right thing first, then the next one.