We want to get 100 team accounts onboard.

Setting goals like this, or revenue goals like getting to 15K MRR, feels kind of pointless.

I am not saying that setting goals are pointless, just that I don't understand how it actually helps. The idea is to get as many happy customers and as much revenue as possible. Using a spreadsheet to plot out when we'd like that to happen doesn't help us get there any faster.

Revenue and users are outcomes. We don't have much control over them. It makes more sense to focus on measuring stuff we can control. Inputs rather than outcomes.

Once we have one scalable customer acquisition channel and an offer that converts well then we can put some outcome goals down and start hiring people to do the work necessary.

All we only need is one scalable customer acquisition channel and an offer that converts well to get to 100 customers.

If we already have an offer and channel that works then we should focus on optimizing that before we do anything else.

If the offers and channels we have aren't working then we need to try out some new combinations.

How many new offers and how many new channels have we tried each month? That's something worth measuring and keeping track of.

In this way, the work of finding the offer/channel fit looks more like a game of battleship, than plotting outcomes on a spreadsheet.

If you get the coordinates wrong, and a channel or offer bombs then you still learn something. Over time, you start to get an idea of where the opportunities are. When you do hit upon an opportunity, it’s safe to assume there’s a better way to do things. And the only way to find a better way is to start testing various ways to optimize the sales funnel around the channel and offer that resonates.

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These posts are thoughts-in-progress, they're meant to be conversational. Let me know what you think on Twitter @joshpitzalis.

• I first heard of this Battleship analogy in a talk by Sean Ellis. He claimed to have stolen it from Brian Balfour so I think it’s safe to claim it as my own now :) Here's the original Sean Ellis video.

• The idea of only needing one acquisition channel comes from Alex Hormozi's Free offer creation course.

• This idea of offer/channel fit has been bouncing around in my head for a while but it wasn't till a few weeks ago that Jakon Greenfield wrote a post on the topic that snapped things into place. Unrelated, but one of my other favorites of his is Build a business, not an audience.

• The artwork at the top of this post is by Justine.