Most companies are obsessed with speed.
More leads. More traffic. More customers. Faster, faster, faster.
But here’s the thing nobody wants to hear.
It doesn’t matter how fast your boat is moving if there’s a hole in the bottom of it.
Eric Ries talks about this in The Lean Startup. He introduces something called engines of growth — the core mechanism that actually drives your business forward.
There are a few different engines. But the mistake most companies make is trying to run all of them at once.
That’s like trying to steer a car, change the tire, and check the map at the same time. You end up going nowhere.
You pick one engine. You focus everything on it. Then you move to the next.
One engine at a time keeps your team aligned, your resources concentrated, and your results measurable. Scattered focus gives you scattered results.
So let’s start with the first one.
The Sticky Engine of Growth
The sticky engine is not about getting more customers.
It’s about keeping the ones you already have.
Before you spend another dollar on ads, before you launch another campaign, before you hire another salesperson — you need to answer one question.
How many customers are walking out the back door while you’re dragging new ones through the front?
Because that’s what most businesses look like. A revolving door. New customers come in, old customers leave, and the net result is a whole lot of effort for very little growth.
The sticky engine forces you to look at two numbers side by side.
Customer acquisition — how many new customers are you bringing in every month?
Customer churn — how many customers are you losing every month?
If your acquisition rate is higher than your churn rate, you grow. If it’s not, you’re sinking. Slowly, quietly, expensively.
And here’s where it gets uncomfortable.
Most companies don’t even know their churn rate. They celebrate the new sign-ups. They throw parties when the pipeline is full. But nobody is watching the back door.
Nobody is asking how much revenue is leaking out every single month.
Not just customers. Revenue. Because losing ten customers who pay you $10 a month is very different from losing one customer who pays you $5,000.
The sticky engine says stop celebrating the bucket getting fuller and start checking if the bucket has holes.
What This Actually Looks Like
Imagine you run a subscription business. You sign up 100 new customers this month. Great.
But 90 customers cancelled. Not so great.
Your net growth is 10 customers. And you paid the full acquisition cost for 100.
Now imagine a different scenario. You fix whatever is making people leave. You improve onboarding. You follow up at the right moments. You listen to cancellation reasons and actually act on them.
Next month you sign up 80 new customers. Fewer than before. But only 20 cancel.
Your net growth is 60. Six times better. And you spent less to get there.
That’s the power of the sticky engine. It doesn’t ask you to grow faster. It asks you to stop losing what you already have.
Your Move This Week
Pull up your numbers. Not just the exciting ones.
How many customers did you gain last month?
How many did you lose?
What was the total revenue that walked out the door?
If you don’t know these numbers, that’s your first problem. You can’t plug a leak you haven’t measured.
If you do know them, ask yourself — is this leak sustainable?
Because every business leaks. That’s normal. The question is whether you’re leaking at a rate that still allows you to grow, or whether you’re bailing water out of a boat that’s slowly going under.
Fix the leak first.
Then go fast.