The Three-Letter Concept That Changes Everything
This will radically improve your business!
Here’s something that kills more startups than bad timing, bad partners, or bad luck combined:
Building something nobody asked for.
I’ve seen way too many entrepreneurs — including myself — start with what they thought was a real barn-burner of an idea and try to send it out to the marketplace.
That’s just not the way to do it.
There’s a concept every entrepreneur needs tattooed on their brain.
It’s called Product-Market Fit (PMF) — and it’s the difference between a product that spreads like wildfire and one that sits on a shelf collecting digital dust.
I’m thinking you can relate to this.
PMF isn’t complicated to define: it means you’ve built something a specific group of people actually want, need, and will open their wallets for.
It means the presentation meeting professionals are looking for that will help their members.
Simple concept.
Brutally hard to achieve.
Michael Seibel, Managing Director at Y Combinator, said something that stopped me cold.
He watches early founders spend weeks tweaking pitch decks — agonizing over fonts, gradients, slide counts.
Meanwhile? They haven’t talked to 10 real users. They haven’t closed a single customer.
I want to walk up to them and grab them by the shoulders saying, “Listen to what the market is saying, Sparky!”
The deck isn’t the problem.
The product is.
His rule: don’t start raising money until you have real traction or real insight.
That means actual customers using your product, or hard evidence you’ve found a painful problem with a unique approach.
Buyers care about solving their problems, not beautiful visuals.
Here’s the takeaway for us as entrepreneurs and Creative Conductors:
Fall in love with your customer’s problem, not your solution.
You can have all the Spizzerinctum in the world — the drive, the grit, the relentless energy — and still build something the market doesn’t want.
That’s not a hustle problem.
That’s a listening problem.
A course nobody buys, a coaching package nobody asks about, or a presentation nobody reacts to.
Talk to people, yes.
Most important — Listen ruthlessly.
The market will tell you what it wants — but only if you’re willing to hear the answer, even when it hurts.
Stop polishing. Go talk (and LISTEN) to someone today
To Your Success,
Terry
Terry@TerryBrock.com
P.S. — What’s one assumption you’ve been making about your customers that you haven’t actually validated yet? Worth thinking about.