Spot the seven sticking points and make the hard call

1. Why the next move feels hard

Start from one point: whatever you need to do next is hard. If it were easy, it would already be done. The only things that hold you back are the things you have not yet learned to do. So a task you have never learned will feel hard, and that should surprise nobody.

The level you keep dying on. Think back to playing a video game. You reach a stage of the game you have not yet cleared, and you lose on it over and over until you work out how it goes. After that, the level takes no thought at all: in through the door, a turn to the left, fire at the enemy, and on you go. Nothing is left to decide, because you already know how to beat that level's boss.

Two hard options. So the choice in front of you sits between two decisions that both look hard, and the view here is that this is why so many people stall. One option is hard now. The other is hard now and hard later as well. Framed that way, the hard-now option becomes easier for one owner to take, since the other one is still hard today and stays hard afterward.

Recasting hard as a skill you have not learned yet, and breaking it into pieces, has its own procedure: SOP 193 — Treat hard as a skill you lack and chunk it down.

2. The seven sticking points

These are common places where owners get stuck: situations in which every option looks like a rock or a hard place. Some of you may have met the list before; for you it is a reminder that, it is thought, is worth giving. Experience here counts seven, seen consistently across businesses, taken in this order:

Order	Sticking point	Where it is taken up
1	Avatar: unclear whom you want to serve	Section 3
2	Data: the metrics are missing	Section 4
3	Focus: too many things pursued at once	Sections 5 to 8
4	Over-expansion	SOP 203
5	Compensation	SOP 203
6	Underpriced	SOP 203
7	A single product	SOP 203

Each of the later ones in the table has its own treatment on SOP 203 — Fix over-expansion, pay, underpricing and a single product.

3. Avatar

Where it shows up. Super common in roughly the $1 million to $3 million range, though sometimes it comes a bit before that band and sometimes after it. Owners in that range are ripe for it, and should pay attention.

What it looks like. You are not clear on whom you want to serve. Some customers sit at the low end and some at the high end. You usually prefer the ones at the high end and care less for the ones at the low end. But if you stopped selling to the low end, you could not cover payroll, so you are unsure what to do.

The decision to make. Strategically, the thing to settle is which kind of customer you believe you could deliver the greatest value to, and what price you would set if you served that avatar alone.

Why the price in between is the problem. What typically happens: with a high avatar and a low avatar drawn on one line, your price ends up somewhere between them. That is the issue. If you served the high avatar alone, you could price at its level. So even if volume fell, pricing power would let you make it up, and by extension make up your profit. Avatar is just one of the seven.

Check it with lifetime value against acquisition cost. If you are unsure which customer to go after, look next at LTV to CAC for each kind: once for the cheaper customer and once for the higher one. If the higher customer's ratio is better, the next question is how to do more of that business, enough to make up for what you lose at the low end. Doing that lets you shift the share of your base toward customers of the higher caliber.

How the ratio is worked out, and the minimum set on it: SOP 55 — Compute lifetime gross profit and the ratio that gates spending, section 6. Narrowing to the customers who pay and return the most, with a $1 million to $3 million band also named as where it bites: SOP 149, section 3.

4. Data

This sticking point is the metrics. If the business has no metrics, you are caught both ways. It feels as though you cannot afford to go and get them, or to make the call, and yet you cannot afford to leave the call unmade either. There are three responses, in this order:

1. Be able to act on data that is incomplete.
2. Think in directions rather than in absolutes.
3. If there is some route to the data, obtaining it becomes the priority. Maybe that means the business does not grow for a quarter, so that it has the data to grow for the next three.

Why knowing the numbers comes first, and how to weigh the data against your gut: SOP 189 — Get the numbers and decide fast on reversible bets.

5. Focus: why owners keep starting over

One of the biggest of the seven. It is super common early in an entrepreneur's life. You quit your job, or whatever you were doing, and start something of your own. That feels deeply rewarding, since you are still standing and still in the game. Having made that jump, you get a strong reinforcement loop, but on a bad behavior: leaving one thing to start something new. That is what the jump rewards, and the belief here is that this is why so many entrepreneurs are hooked on starting new things.

The five stages. One owner's own curve has, roughly, five stages, in this order:

1. Uninformed optimism.
2. Informed pessimism.
3. The valley of despair.
4. Informed optimism.
5. Achievement.

Where people loop. The problem is that many people run through stages one, two and three and then start again, over and over. They reach the valley of despair, notice something else that looks interesting, and decide to take that ride once more. And so it goes on.

6. Focus: one business, not two

The two businesses. In one example, a woman was running two businesses with nothing in common. Fondly put, it was one of the most hilarious cases, with no wish to make her feel bad.

Whatever reason you have for running two businesses that have nothing to do with each other, you probably should not be running both. Making one work is hard enough; making two win is close to impossible. With two, you are basically splitting everything you have between them: your horsepower, your mental energy, your spare time and your talent. Instead, pour every bit of that attention, those resources, that talent and your money into one opportunity.

How far one opportunity can go. Run through 1 million, 10 million and 100 million, and the view here is that almost every opportunity can get to 100 million. So if you are not there and progress is too slow, the cause is usually that too much is under way at once, and none of it gets the depth it needs.

Bandwidth. If you have ever dropped some commitments from your life, you know the feeling: you feel better and sharper, and problems that once looked impossible become easy to solve. That is bandwidth. You can think through the second-order and third-order consequences of each business in more depth.

The hard call. So a big strategic problem that comes up is simply chasing too many things at once. Asked as hard now against hard later, the answer is that the hard call is yours to make: you choose which one survives. It hurts. One owner who has struggled with this sticking point more than with any other of the seven calls it painfully difficult.

7. Focus: where the extra energy goes

Give it an outlet. The view here is that entrepreneurs have more trouble staying on one thing than just about anyone. If you carry creative energy you want to let out, find it a place away from the running of the business. One founder's outlet is a creative pursuit outside the business, admitted not to be where that founder's hours are best spent. It is done for a reason: it spends energy that would otherwise go into breaking the business. The business runs very well with only so much of the founder in it; if the founder is there all the time, too much breaks.

Which part of the business wants it. Which division of a business benefits most from someone full of new ideas? The answer is marketing.

One front door. For the owner who struggles to focus and likes doing many different things, this is the encouragement here, and it took that founder far too long to work out. Have a single front door through which money comes in: that door is your business. In front of it, have as much as you want: a first, second and third lead magnet, media, content. That founder runs a long list of free things. The point is that there is that much energy to squeeze out, but it has to be squeezed in a way that leaves the business unbroken.

What it looked like before. Earlier in that founder's career, all of that horsepower went into the business itself: a new sales script, another landing page, a change to delivery, a change on the back end, and a request that finance rework how it reports. The founder whirled through the business breaking things. Nobody could breathe, because everyone was buried. A directive took two seconds to give and took the team two weeks to deliver, and directives came faster than anyone could carry them out.

What had to be accepted. You have to step back and accept that parts of the business will stay imperfect. Constant change does not bring things closer to perfect; it pushes them further away. That took the founder a very long time to see. What each change costs a business, and the minimum gain to ask of one: SOP 188 — Apply the cost-of-change rule.

Toward the front of the business. Over time the founder was drawn steadily toward the marketing end of the business, the front, since what was made there did no harm to it. The founder's early lead magnets were long and detailed, and people arrived having worked through them. The founder poured everything into them, and puts that down to an overactive mind, probably like yours.

Who it helps. For the right person, maybe 5 percent of the owners this page is written for, this might change your life: take all that restless energy away from running the business and spend it on your marketing. Choosing, building and naming a lead magnet has its own procedure: SOP 13 — Choose and build a lead magnet.

8. Avatar, data and focus, in short

Choose your avatar. See that your data is coming in. Focus, and shut down whatever business is not the core one.

The newer business looks bigger. The second business, the one started later, always seems to hold more opportunity, which is why you started it. That is probably not true. The people already in that field know it has its own problems; you just have not found them yet, because you are still on the optimistic stretch of the curve with it.

9. Make the hard call

These seven are among the most common places where owners stall. If one of them describes your business, make the hard call, decide, and clear the bottleneck.

10. Where this sits

• The single constraint and the order of questions that finds it: SOP 184.
• Why hard means unlearned, and how to break a skill into chunks: SOP 193.
• Over-expansion, compensation, underpricing and a single product, each in full: SOP 203.
• The lifetime value ratio and its minimum: SOP 55, section 6.
• Pricing to a narrower, better customer: SOP 149, section 3.
• Getting the numbers you lack, and deciding while you do: SOP 189.
• The price a business pays for each change: SOP 188.
• Building the free thing that sits in front of the door: SOP 13.

11. What this page does not decide for you

• What the $1 million to $3 million range measures. Not established on this page. SOP 149, section 3 puts a band of the same size, for the same sticking point, in revenue.
• What 1 million, 10 million and 100 million count. Not established on this page.
• Where the price lands between the two avatars. This page gives no figure for the gap between the two prices.

12. The checklist

Step	What to do
1	When the next move feels hard, frame it this way: hard now against hard now and later
2	Hold the business against the seven sticking points
3	Avatar: settle which customer you could deliver the greatest value to, and what you would charge serving that one alone
4	Compare LTV to CAC for the cheaper and the higher customer; if the higher one's is better, ask how to do more of that
5	Data: act on incomplete data, think in directions; if you can get the data, make it the priority
6	Focus: pick one opportunity and shut down whatever business is not the core one
7	If you have creative energy you want to let out, the encouragement here: one front door to money, and as much free material as you want in front of it
8	For the remaining sticking points, go to SOP 203
9	Make the hard call and clear the bottleneck

13. What this page does not cover

Over-expansion and compensation are not covered on this page. Underpricing and selling a single product are not covered on this page.