The other day I was catching up with one of the entrepreneurs we work with – she is running a business in the beauty and fashion industry and felt that her sales would greatly improve if only she would have enough funding to open up a shop.

Opening a shop was her solution to attracting more customers.

My question for her was: which customers? How would her potential customers be able to find her shop, assuming the place where she would be opening her shop would not be brimming with customers waiting for her to show up. The situation would rather be the opposite.

In case it needs spelling out: she would anyway have to put effort into getting her social media or other marketing strategy off the ground but now, in case she opened a shop, with the burden of having to pay monthly rent regardless of how well she would be doing; and that in the times of covid where people’s routines have become much more mobile.

SPARK OF THE DAY

When looking for solutions, be careful what problem your solution is meant to solve. Make sure you understand your underlying problem first. Be careful not to try to fix the symptom, but the root cause…

In short: don’t focus on the solution before you’ve solved the problem!