3 Ways to Measure the Progress You Cannot See
Prefer to listen rather than read? Listen to the podcast episode covering this same topic here → Quietly Disruptive Podcast
In the last post we talked about invisible progress, the real progress happening underneath the surface of your business that you cannot see yet. Today I want to get into the practical side of this, because knowing that invisible progress exists is one thing but what do you actually do when you are standing in the middle of it, the silence is deafening and every instinct is telling you that nothing is happening?
All Business Happens Between People
Before I get into the how, I need to add context that I think gets forgotten far too easily. All business, every single bit of it, happens between people. Person to person, human to human. Regardless of the platform, the strategy, the funnel, the framework, at the end of the day a person decides to work with you or buy from you because of a connection, a conversation, a feeling they got from interacting with you. When you hold that in mind, everything about how you measure progress changes. If business is fundamentally people to people, then the thing to measure is not how many likes you got or how far your content reached but how many real connections you are making with real people.
Content is the long game. It is the signal that says I am still here, and it works beautifully over time, but it works slowly. If you are in the marvellous middle and the only thing you have been doing is posting content and waiting, that might be the thing to look at. Not because the content is not working but because content on its own is only one arm of the equation. The other arm is you, out there, having conversations, reaching out, making connections, being a person talking to another person. And that arm moves faster.
Track the Conversations, Not the Content
Most founders measure their marketing by the visible stuff: how many posts went out, how many likes they got, what the reach was, how many followers they gained. Those numbers are easy to see and they feel like evidence of something happening. But on their own they do not tell you whether your business is moving forward. A post with 500 likes that did not lead to a single conversation is less valuable than a post with 3 likes that sparked a genuine connection with someone who could become a client, a collaborator, or a referral.
So start tracking the people stuff instead. How many conversations did you start this week? How many people did you reach out to with curiosity? How many replies turned into something deeper, a coffee, a call, a tell me more moment? Those are the numbers that reflect real relationships forming, and real relationships are what lead to real business. Keep it simple, a note on your phone, a tally at the end of each week. When you look back at a month of consistent conversations written down, it becomes much harder to tell yourself that nothing is happening. Something is happening. You are building it one conversation at a time. You just cannot see the results yet because they move at the speed of trust, which is slower than you would like but more solid than anything else.
Look Backwards Instead of Just Forwards
Most founders spend all their time looking ahead: what is the plan, what is the goal, what do I need to do next, what is not here yet that should be. That forward focus is useful but it also means you never stop to see what has changed. Sit down for ten minutes and write down everything that is different in your business now compared to three months ago. Not the big wins, not the milestones, just the things that exist now that did not exist three months ago. Conversations you are having now that you were not having then. People who know your name now who did not know it before. Relationships forming now that were not forming then. Content that exists now that did not exist then.
I promise you, the list will be longer than you think. It always is. And seeing it written down is the antidote to the nothing is happening feeling, because it shows you that things have moved even when it did not feel like they were moving. That list is your evidence that the seeds are growing, and when you can see the roots on paper, the silence in the marvellous middle becomes a lot easier to sit in.
Find the Micro Signals That Tell You Something Is Landing
The signals that matter are the ones that happen between people. Someone replying to your message and asking a question back. Someone saying I needed to hear that today. Someone suggesting a coffee. Someone mentioning you to someone else. Someone coming back after months of silence because something you said stuck with them. Those are the tiny green shoots poking through the soil, and each one is evidence that the roots you have been building are doing their job.
And if you are newer in business and those signals feel sparse, that is not a sign that it is not working. It is a sign that you need more conversations, not more content. Find five people this week who you would love to talk to and reach out to them. Not with a pitch, not with an agenda, just with curiosity about who they are and what they are building. Those five conversations will tell you more about whether your business is heading in the right direction than a month of posting ever could.
If your conversations are happening, your backwards list is growing, and there are micro signals landing even slowly, you are in the marvellous middle and the thing is working. It just has not arrived yet. Trust the timing. But if the conversations have dried up, the backwards list is thin, and there are no signals over a meaningful stretch of time, that is worth looking at honestly, not as a reason to panic but as an invitation to ask whether something needs adjusting. The difference between patience and avoidance is whether you are still tending to the seeds or whether you stopped watering them and hoped they would grow on their own.
About the Author: Becky Benfield Humberstone partners with Quietly Disruptive founders to build businesses that change their corner of the world, on their terms. If you started your business because you believed things could be done differently, and you're ready to make that vision real, she gets it. Based in the UK and working globally via Zoom and in person, she's done this work herself, more than once.
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