The Hardest Question You'll Ever Answer as a Business Owner
One of the hardest questions you'll ever answer as a business owner is this.. What is the core problem I actually solve? Not the surface problem. Not the symptom. The real one underneath everything else. Most people never get there. They describe what they do -- "I help people build funnels" or "I help coaches get clients" -- and stop at the first layer. Which means their messaging sounds like everyone else's. Because everyone else stopped at the first layer too. Here's a technique I picked up today that I think is genuinely useful. Start with any problem you solve. Just pick one. Doesn't have to be the most important one. Just one you're confident about. Then go upstream. Ask: what caused that problem? What's the problem that created this problem? Write it down. Then ask again. What caused that? Keep going as many iterations as you can until you genuinely can't go further. Then go back to your original problem and go downstream. Ask: what does this problem create? What's the new problem that this problem causes if it isn't solved? Write that down. Then ask again. What does that create? Keep going as many iterations as you can. Now do the same thing for two or three other problems you solve. Go upstream and downstream on each one. Here's what happens when you do this properly.. One problem keeps appearing in multiple chains. It shows up as an upstream cause of several different problems. It shows up as a downstream consequence of several others. It sits at the center of everything. That's your root. That's the real problem your business exists to solve. Not because you decided it was -- because the chains led you there independently. When you find it, your messaging changes completely. Because you're no longer describing a symptom. You're naming the thing underneath the symptoms that your ideal client has been feeling for years without being able to articulate it. When you put words to someone's unspoken problem before they do.. they stop scrolling.