Your Gut Is a Liar. Don't Run Your Business on Vibes.

When you’re leading a small company or an early-stage team, it’s easy to lull yourself into thinking you don’t need measurement.

Things are small enough that you can “just know” what’s going on. You talk to everyone regularly. The business is simple. Now isn’t the time for extra process and overhead, right?

I think that’s wrong.

Here’s why.

I’ve been running an experiment. I’m a one-person company. In theory, I have total information awareness. There’s no one to check in with, no updates to collect. I am sales, marketing, and product inside one brain.

I shouldn’t need a dashboard to show me how the business is doing.

But even with this advantage, every strategic decision I make about growth depends on metrics.

Here’s a secret (don’t tell anyone): I really dislike posting on LinkedIn. Most of what shows up there is either painfully boring, painfully self-congratulatory, or both.

Yet, I’ve posted three times a week for the last eight months because it’s still the best place to reach clients and is a core part of my growth strategy.

If I went purely by “the vibe,” I’d say it wasn’t working. Most days it’s like talking to a brick wall. It feels like there’s very little benefit.

The data tells a different story.

I track impressions, reach, and client conversions relentlessly. Surprisingly, I can predict almost to the week when the next client will convert. The speed of conversion correlates closely with audience growth and post reach (both growing at a steady rate for months).

Even as a solo operator, my gut is untrustworthy for the things that matter most.

John Doerr’s Measure What Matters gives away its entire thesis in the title. At Amazon, I learned how few metrics you actually need to track the important parts of your business. You can almost always get 80% of what you need from three or four metrics. The hardest part is deciding what to measure. But I can promise you that a handful of weekly metrics will beat your leadership vibes most of the time.