How Do I Know What My Biggest Business Problem Actually Is?

You've got ten things going wrong. The website needs fixing. Sales are slow. Your best employee is unhappy. Cash flow is tight. You need to hire. You need to market. Your product needs work.

Everything feels urgent.

So you start fixing things. One after another. And somehow nothing really changes.

That's often because the biggest problem isn't necessarily the most visible one.

Maybe sales aren't the problem. Maybe the product isn't clear enough.

Maybe the product isn't the problem. Maybe you're trying to sell to the wrong customer.

Maybe the customer isn't the problem. Maybe you're trying to grow before you've built a repeatable business.

Founders spend a lot of time asking:

“How do I fix this?”

A better question might sometimes be:

“Why is this happening?”

And then:

“What would happen if I fixed the thing underneath it?”

That's where having a few smart people around you becomes incredibly valuable.

They don't have to know your business better than you do. They just need enough distance to see what you can't.

Sometimes we're simply too close to the problem. We've been staring at the same thing for months, thinking about it from the same angle, making the same assumptions.

Someone outside of it can sometimes see the obvious thing you've stopped seeing.

That's one of the reasons I like the idea of a Village.

You bring the problem to people who know you, understand what you're trying to build and aren't afraid to challenge you.

Not so they can tell you what to do.

So they can help you see what you're not seeing.

Because sometimes the biggest problem in your business is the thing you've stopped noticing because you've been looking at it for too long.