Here’s one example startup — a restaurant scheduling tool — worked through all 10 boxes of the Traction Canvas, in order. Use it to see how each box builds on the one before it.
LEARN (Boxes 1–5)
Box 1 — Problems
“Find a problem big enough that people want to become your customers now, NOT later.”
Box 2 — Bifurcation
“Three questions that find the 12.5% of the market most likely to become your customer.”
Example: Restaurant scheduling software, cut three times: (1) Independents, or chains? → independents. (2) Already using some scheduling tool, or none at all? → none at all — more pain, more motivated. (3) Owner-operators, or restaurants with a dedicated manager? → owner-operators, who feel the scheduling pain personally every week. Three cuts, 12.5% of the original market, one specific person: an independent restaurant owner-operator with no scheduling tool today.
Example: Splitting “restaurant owners” by size: independents vs. chains. Chains are the bigger half by revenue. But independents who just lost a manager are more motivated — smaller pool, but they’re actively in pain this week. That’s the half to chase first.
Box 3 — Competition
“How to differentiate yourself from the three forms of competition every startup has.”
Example: Restaurant scheduling software, 4 X 4: vs. Direct competitors — real-time visibility they don’t offer. vs. Most Commonly Used (Google Sheets + group texts) — automatic conflict alerts instead of manual cross-checking. vs. Most Expensive (a $2,000/month part-time scheduler) — $149/month, works on a phone on the floor instead of a laptop in the office. Fourth row, true across all three: built specifically for under-20-staff restaurants, not generic scheduling.
Box 4 — Seven Second Sale
“How to create almost instant interest in any product or service.”
Example: Vitamin: “We help restaurants optimize their staffing workflow.” Take-away: “We help restaurant managers eliminate the scheduling conflicts costing them $800 a month in overtime.” Same product, same customer, same price. One gets a nod. The other gets “How?”
Box 5 — Enrolling
“How to get meetings with your ICP before you build anything related to your product.”
EARN (Boxes 6–9)
Box 6 — Trigger Events
“Be first with recently motivated decision-makers and you are 500% more likely to make a sale.”
Example: For a restaurant scheduling tool, all three top triggers were Category C: new manager hired, new location opened, ownership changed. Each one puts a person in a seat who wants to prove themselves by fixing what’s broken — and has a short window of political capital to spend on new tools.
Example: A founder set a LinkedIn alert for the job title “Restaurant Manager” within a 50km radius. A new manager posted about starting her role on a Tuesday. He sent a short, useful note on the Wednesday. She replied within an hour — she had spent her first two days discovering the scheduling mess she had inherited.
Box 7 — Disqualifying
“How to score and disqualify opportunities so you only spend time on the ones most likely to close.”
The founder scores three prospects on the 5-Factor Disqualifying Matrix (2 = strong, 1 = some, 0 = absent):
| Factor | Maria, new GM, 3-location bistro group | Café owner, single location | Assistant manager, regional chain |
|---|---|---|---|
| Problem Urgency | 2: summer staffing crunch in 3 weeks | 0: “it’s fine for now” | 1 |
| Trigger Event | 2: hired as GM 2 weeks ago | 0: none | 1: new location opened 8 months ago |
| Decision Authority | 2: signs for tools under $500/month | 2 | 1: needs head office approval |
| Current Solution Dissatisfaction | 2: Google Sheets + group texts causing no-shows | 0: happy with the paper schedule | 1 |
| Resource Availability | 2: budget approved | 1 | 1 |
| Score | 10/10 | 3/10 | 5/10 |
Applying the 2-Point Disqualification Rule: the best active prospect scores 10, so anything below 8 is archived, with a reminder to revisit if their score changes. The café owner “seemed really interested” — that’s qualifying creeping back in. The founder spends their hours on Maria.
Box 8 — Emotional Favourite
“Become the person they call first when they’re ready to buy.”
- Three shared AVI with Maria: Aspiration — she wants to open her own restaurant one day. Value — she believes staff with kids deserve schedules a week ahead. Interest — they both run half-marathons.
- Three people beyond Maria: the person she reports to (Daniel, the owner); the person most likely to replace her (Ahmed, the kitchen manager she’s grooming); and someone in another department who benefits (Lisa, the bookkeeper, who loses hours fixing overtime errors).
- The signal: before the proposal, Maria says, unprompted: “I’d rather work with you than the big app — you actually listened.”
Box 9 — Won Sales Analysis
“How to find and replicate your biggest and best wins.”
Within 72 hours of Maria signing, a 20-minute call with the five questions:
- What events led up to this purchase? “Three no-shows on a Saturday in my second week, and the owner asked what I was going to do about it.”
- When did they happen? “Two weeks after I started.”
- What made you choose us? “You asked how much the no-shows cost us before you showed me anything.”
- What can we make easier? “Importing the staff list from our spreadsheet.”
- Where can we find more people like you? “The GMs in my restaurant association’s WhatsApp group.”
After five calls, “no-shows on a Saturday” comes up three times — so it becomes the Seven Second Sale headline. And the WhatsApp group becomes the first place to build the Marketing Moat.
SCALE (Box 10)
Box 10 — Marketing Moat
“Word of mouth is your most powerful channel — make it happen, don’t hope it happens.”