Traction First

This is not just another business book, it’s a wake-up call for leaders, founders, and innovators who are tired of watching growth stall and wondering why.

If you’ve ever launched a new product, opened a new market, or built an innovation team only to be met with flat sales, lukewarm adoption, and frustrating uncertainty, this book was written for you. Josh Barker, founder of City Innovations, has lived this journey - from Big Four consulting to startup basements, from million-dollar seed rounds to painful launch-day flops. Through trial, error, and a quarter-million dollars’ worth of hard-earned lessons, he discovered a simple truth: traction comes first, everything else second.

Inside, you’ll discover the 12 Laws of Market Traction, practical, battle-tested principles that will help you:

• Sell before you build (and avoid wasting months on features no one asked for)
• Learn from early sales instead of scaling wrong assumptions
• Solve real, urgent pain instead of offering “vitamins” no one uses
• Build momentum in weeks, not plans in quarters
• Align your teams and engineer a growth engine that actually fires

Packed with real stories, candid failures, and actionable questions for your team, Traction First is not theory, not a 2x2 matrix, and definitely not another slide deck to collect dust. It’s a lens for seeing clearly where your engine is broken, and how to fix it before you burn more money, time, and morale.

Whether you’re a corporate executive steering a billion-dollar initiative or a founder landing your first ten customers, this book will help you stop guessing, start learning, and finally get the traction you need to grow.