We have two slogans at Data Never Lies.
The external one is clean, simple, and easy to remember: Data Never Lies. And the internal one — the one that quietly governs how we work, make decisions, and ship projects — is a bit more philosophical: “Keep your focus. Keep your promises.”
With clients, we follow this principle almost religiously. If we take on a project, we keep our focus on the outcome and we deliver what we promised, even if along the way we have to re-negotiate scope, rebuild pipelines, switch technologies, or quietly fix things at our own expense simply because we said we would.
But 2025 revealed something uncomfortable: when it came to our own growth — the way we attracted clients, scaled operations, expanded markets — we did not hold this principle. And that’s what this reflection is about: how, this year, we broke our own internal rule of “keeping focus and keeping promises,” what it cost us, and what exactly we’re changing going into next year.
What “keeping focus” actually means for us
To avoid turning “focus” into something vague and spiritual, let me be concrete.
When I say focus, I mean a few very specific operational things:
- Focus in growth channels — not 6–10 parallel experiments, but one primary channel (two at most) that we commit to properly, not symbolically.
- Focus in time — dedicated blocks in the founder’s and team leads’ calendars, not “we’ll work on this if we have some time left after fire-fighting.”
- Focus in budget — a real 3–6-month investment into a channel, not “let’s put $500 and see what happens.”
Our internal slogan “keep your focus and keep your promises” is essentially this:
If we say we’re focusing on growth, we have to actually hold that focus in our calendar, our budget, and our attention.
In 2025, we didn’t. At least not for ourselves.
Our mistake of the year: a focus we simply didn’t hold
If I had to summarise the biggest mistake we made this year, it would be this: we didn’t hold the focus in the part of the business that needed it most — growth. We underestimated how many resources we had and said “yes” to far too many channels.
At the start of the year the thinking went something like this:
- let’s try LinkedIn,
- and in parallel create more content,
- and start intent-driven outreach,
- and ICP outreach,
- and event-based outreach,
- and then maybe ads on Facebook and Google,
- plus some events,
- plus some niche PR,
- plus a podcast.
In other words, we basically told ourselves:
“Let’s test everything quickly, see what reacts, and then we’ll focus.”
On paper it sounds intelligent. In reality it was a direct violation of our own principle: we promised ourselves focus, then consciously chose distraction.
Why we kept jumping between channels
The honest explanation? Because we underestimated how much work it really takes to make any channel “work.” In our heads, the picture looked simple: turn on ads, write a few LinkedIn posts, record a couple of podcast episodes, send a few outbound messages — and voilà, we’d know if the channel fits or not.
The truth is that any scalable channel requires 3–6 months of consistent investment — not attempts, not experiments, but actual investment:
- money,
- founder time,
- team lead time,
- and deep work on messaging, ICP clarity, and feedback loops.
At the beginning of the year, we didn’t fully realise this. So we jumped: we didn’t stay long enough to see the economics, we moved to the next thing too quickly, and circled back in confusion. Which is the exact opposite of “keeping focus.” Keeping focus means staying even when it’s uncomfortable. In growth, we did the opposite.
When we realised it was a mistake
It clicked for me when I stopped looking at us in isolation and started comparing our behaviour to the broader market.
On one hand:
- we had tested a ridiculous number of channels,
- touched each one lightly,
- and committed to none long enough for it to stabilise.
On the other hand:
- I looked at competitors and adjacent players,
- saw them investing into the exact same channels,
- consistently, methodically,
- and unsurprisingly — succeeding.
And that’s when it became obvious:
“This channel is not for us” is often not a conclusion about the channel. It’s a conclusion about our execution.
Meaning the issue wasn’t LinkedIn or Google Ads or PR or podcasts. The issue was simply this: we didn’t hold the focus long enough for any of them to work.
What we tried to scale all at once
Just to be transparent, here is the full circus we attempted:
- intent-based outreach
- ICP outreach
- event-based sequences
- content
- personal brand
Ads
- Facebook Ads (CPC)
- Google Ads (CPC)
Brand & PR
- events
- serial PR
- niche PR
Media
- podcast (several attempts)
This is essentially 6–9 channels, each requiring:
strategy,
hypotheses,
correct measurement cycles,
and an owner who isn’t “responsible for marketing,”
but responsible specifically for that channel.
We tried to divide one founder’s focus — and one team’s energy — across everything. And that directly contradicted our principle.
Which resources we underestimated
Everything comes down to two constraints:
1. Financial resources
We underestimated what it actually costs to: not just “run ads,” but sustain 3–6 months of real spend required for a channel to mature. Launching Google Ads “just to test” is easy. Making it economical is expensive.
2. Cognitive resources
This is the founder’s and team leads’ attention — the scarcest resource in any company.
We underestimated how much of this resource growth consumes:
- refining offers,
- correcting messaging,
- reviewing leads,
- understanding audience signals,
- adjusting positioning,
- guiding the marketing team.
Sometimes I think: if we had twice the budget and twice the time, would we get twice the result? Most likely not. Because the bottleneck wasn’t money — the bottleneck was meaning-making, and that doesn’t scale by throwing money at it. To scale that, you change structure, roles, and how the company thinks — and we weren’t ready for that this year.
Where “keeping promises” comes in
Our internal rule isn’t only about focus. It’s about promises.
At the start of the year we made several internal commitments:
- that we would roughly double revenue,
- that we would find a new scalable customer acquisition channel,
- and that we would operate in a structured way.
By the end of the year: we kept our promises to clients, but not to ourselves.
And that honesty matters:
Externally, we keep our promises. Internally, in growth and strategy, 2025 was a mixed picture.
Seeing that gap is part of maturity.
Gartner or “we’ll just figure it out ourselves”?
A major theme this year was choosing between:
- buying structured expertise (e.g., through Gartner),
- or relying on the “we’ll test our way to clarity” approach.
Gartner would have given us:
- access to frameworks,
- access to analysts,
- help with structuring go-to-market strategy,
- and clarity on channels, focus, and prioritisation.
We chose to do everything ourselves. Why?
Honestly — because trusting someone else with something you don’t fully understand feels psychologically harder than doing it imperfectly yourself.
After a year of experiments, I now clearly see:
- what external expertise could have saved us,
- what we absolutely must own internally,
- and where “DIY” turns into “a year of avoidable chaos.”
I don’t think the original decision was wrong. It was the right choice for who we were at that moment. But now we understand the trade-offs much better.
The math of focus: how many channels can a service company actually scale?
I still believe a service-based tech provider can grow to $10M in revenue, doubling year over year. But there is an important caveat:
A bootstrapped service company with 10–20% EBITDA cannot realistically scale more than one, maximum two new channels per year.
One well-developed channel per year is already a strong result. Two is a stretch requiring lower profitability or operational strain. In 2025, we behaved as if we could scale all channels simultaneously. Reality disagreed.
The paradox: to keep focus, you sometimes have to lose it first
There is, however, a bright side. It seems that to genuinely commit to focus long-term, you must first experience the pain of scattering it.
In 2025 we:
- tested nine channels,
- collected plenty of bruises,
- discovered where our skill gaps really are,
- and defined what we will never repeat.
Now we:
clearly understand what works for us and what absolutely doesn’t,
know exactly which distractions we will say “no” to in 2026,
and realise that the real goal is not to find “the magic channel,”
but to learn how to actually build the channel we choose.
This might be the main insight of the year:
We now understand not only what we should do, but also what we must stop doing if we truly want to keep our focus and keep our promises — not just to clients, but to ourselves.
How we will keep focus and promises next year
To ensure the slogan becomes operational reality, our rules for 2026 are:
No more than one–two new channels.
Not 6–10. One. Maybe two. Everything else gets crossed out.
Every channel gets 3–6 months of real life.
We have no right to say “this doesn’t work” after two weeks.
Focus = budget + calendar.
If there is no money allocated and no time blocked — it is not a focus.
Honest metrics.
CAC, lead quality, conversion, payback — measured properly, without excuses or emotional attachments.
Promises to ourselves matter as much as promises to clients.
If we say “this is our channel for 2026,” we treat it like a contractual obligation.
In conclusion
Our external slogan — Data Never Lies — is about honesty with facts. Our internal one — Keep your focus and keep your promises — is about honesty with ourselves.
In 2025, the data showed something we didn’t want to admit:
- we didn’t hold focus in growth,
- we jumped between channels,
- we underestimated resources,
- and we lived out of sync with our own principle.
It’s uncomfortable to say out loud, but it is also the starting point. In 2026, our work is simple and difficult at the same time: keep our focus and keep our promises — including the ones we make to ourselves.