Small Business Digital CoachGROW REVENUES BY 25 TO 100% OR MORE IN 90 DAYS OR LESS while reducing advertising cost and effort

In this article, I’ll be sharing a simple but powerful framework for making difficult business choices such as:

• What kind of business do I want to be in?
• What market niche or what type of customers should I focus on?
• How can I know when to quit my market segment or even quit my business?
• …And much, much more.

No matter what type of business, organization or product you’re preparing to launch, this framework can help you think through your choices and give you enough reasons to keep the faith when times get tough (as they invariably will).

If you’re at the launch phase of a business or product concept, you may already be aware of a need to focus your idea a bit better.

Here are a few signs that your business/organization or product launch concept might need some fine-tuning:

1. People get a blank or glassy-eyed look after you’ve explained your concept.
2. You seem to change your basic ideas about your concept about once a week.
3. It takes you more than 2 minutes to explain the main premise or benefit of your concept.
4. Your business, organization or product ‘does everything for everybody’.

If any of the above apply to you, then you desperately need to narrow your focus, and fine tune your vision for launch.

The simplest way to do this is by asking yourself 4 simple questions:

1. What is the problem I’m seeking to solve?
2. Who has the problem I’m seeking to solve?
3. What is my particular approach to solving this problem?
4. Am I passionate about solving this problem, and why or why not?

Answering these four questions can immediately direct and focus your vision so that the resulting business plan, product launch or grant proposal is both marketable and viable.

For non-profit example, instead of saying:

“We help youth of all ages develop self-esteem and character by involving them in leadership training programs”.

You could say:

“We aim to reduce rates of suicide and attempted suicide in Denver area boys ages 12 to 15 through training in the fine arts”

In the above example, you have…

THE PROBLEM: Suicide and Attempted Suicide (incidents and rates of incidence)
PERSON WITH PROBLEM: Denver boys 12 to 15 (maybe who have attempted suicide or talked suicidally)
HOW YOU SOLVE PROBLEM: Through delivering a fine arts training curriculum covering instruments, comedy, sculpting, etc.

The example above can be adjusted to apply to virtually any for-profit business or niche.

In the last 48 hours, I have consulted with both non-profit and for-profit organizations that used that general framework to solve the challenge of making strategic planning decisions of what types of organizations they will be and whom exactly they will work with (or work for).

By re-framing your strategic planning challenges into a problem-based approach, you give focus to your plans, your subsequent market research and the eventual design of your business operations. By doing your planning in this sequence, you ensure that your concept or organization is not irrelevant (a solution looking for a problem), and that your concept is both viable and sustainable.