The 3-Problem Method

Removes: "Business is complicated."

It isn't. A business is three problems, and you solve them over and over.

Here is where that belief comes from. You look at business from the outside and you see the whole surface at once: websites, funnels, ad platforms, email tools, pricing pages, launch calendars, content schedules, "personal brand." Every one of those has a course you could buy and an expert who says it's the one thing you're missing. So you conclude that business is a hundred things, that you're behind on ninety of them, and that you're not ready. That conclusion feels responsible. It is actually the mind that sees a problem, and that mind cannot see the solution to the thing it's looking at.

I built this method because I wanted a way to look at business that fit in one hand. I got there the way I get anywhere: by reverse engineering cause and effect. Someone buys from you. Work backwards. What had to be true, in that person, for the purchase to happen? Three things. They understood what your thing would do for them. They trusted you enough to hand you money. And they knew you existed, knew what you sold, and knew how to get it. Take any one of the three away and the purchase doesn't happen. Add a fourth and you'll find it's one of the three wearing a costume.

So: the Value Problem (people need to understand what you do), the Relationship Problem (people need to trust you enough to buy), the Ignorance Problem (people need to know you exist, what you sell, and how to get it). Every tactic you have ever been sold is a way of working on one of these. Instagram is an ignorance tactic. Testimonials are a relationship tactic. A sales page is mostly a value tactic with an ignorance tactic at the bottom (the button). Once you can name which problem a given piece of work is for, the field stops being overwhelming and turns into a loop: work one, notice the next one is now the bottleneck, work that, come back around.

That is the whole method. Not that business is easy; that it is simple. Simple things can still be hard, and two of these three are hard in different ways. But you can practice them, and the three pages that follow are the practice. Read this page, then take them in order.

The three problems

1. The Value Problem: people need to understand what you do. The hardest to figure out.
2. The Relationship Problem: people need to trust you enough to buy. The most time-consuming.
3. The Ignorance Problem: people need to know you exist, what you sell, and how to get it. Marketing is teaching.

The loop

You now have three problems and a way to work each one. The method is what you do with them together: work the one that's the bottleneck, notice that solving it exposes the next, and go around again. A business is not a thing you finish; it's this loop, run enough times that it gets smooth.

How to tell which one

The checklist at the bottom asks which problem you are working on this week, and the honest answer is usually "I don't know," so here is how to know. Each problem has a symptom, and the symptom shows up in what people say back to you.

Value. People ask "so what do you actually do?" You explain, and they ask again in different words. Or they nod, say it sounds great, and can't repeat it to their partner that night. When the value isn't stupidly simple, the symptom is clarifying questions, and the absence of referrals (nobody can pass on what they can't say).

Relationship. People know you, like you, understand the thing, and say "I'll think about it." Then nothing. Or they buy from someone with a worse offer, and you can't figure out why. The symptom is warmth without purchase: they are not against you; they don't yet trust you with money.

Ignorance. Silence. No questions, no "I'll think about it," no no. You post and nothing comes back. This one is the easiest to misread as a value or relationship problem; it usually isn't. Nobody has decided anything about you, because nothing reached them.

And the trap: the problem you want to work on is usually the one you are comfortable with. The value people keep polishing the value. The relationship people keep sharing. The bottleneck is almost always the one you avoid, and if you can't tell which that is, ask the Room; other people can see it on you in a minute.

Here's what it looks like on something real. In December 2022 I ran the first Santa's Workshop, the cohort that became this program.

Value problem. You want to learn how to make money. I teach you how to make money, and I teach it as a skill in its own right, because that's what it is. Making money is good. That is easy to understand. Stupidly simple; nobody needed a follow-up question.

Relationship problem. You knew me from somewhere: my emails, Reddit, Instagram, a course, coaching. You'd gotten to know me more over the months, not just what I teach but who I am. So when a money program came from me, among all the other money programs, you felt you could trust this one because of how I'd shown up for you before. Nothing on the sales page did that. The months before the sales page did that.

Ignorance problem. You knew me. You knew how to reach me. You knew what I was selling. You knew how to buy it, because I gave you a link and said "click this." And you knew what you were going to get: a workshop, in December. All four layers cleared.

That's it. Every piece of that launch was one of the three, and none of it was complicated. It was simple things, done, in order. We'll take other examples apart on the Saturday calls; bring yours.

Next in Study: The Streaming Money Mindset, which removes the belief that you have to make one thing succeed first.

From the Room

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