The focusing question criteria

“People seem to like what I'm putting out, but it's not leading to sales yet. How do I know if I just need to be patient or if this is never going to work?”

I've heard a version of this several times from readers and clients.

It captures Seth Godin’s concept of a Dip vs. a Cul-de-Sac.

A Dip is the inevitable stretch in a meaningful endeavour where progress seemingly comes to a halt. Most people quit, but for those who persist, results are on the other side.

A cul-de-sac is a dead end. The type of endeavour you could keep at forever, but it's never going to lead to the results you want.

In the context of this article, the question is: Am I writing the right content and just need to get through the Dip, or is this material never going to lead to sales and I need to pivot?

For me, the best way to minimise the risk of driving down a cul-de-sac is through a strategic focusing question.

A focusing question is a single question, framed around a painful frustration, that directs your entire body of work

Everything you write, speak about, and research moves you closer to answering it. It’s the tension between where your reader is and where they want to be.

Because it's anchored to a real frustration, the people it attracts are people who would actually buy from you.

It's also the thing you check back against every time you're choosing what to write. Does this move towards answering the focusing question? If not, it doesn't make the cut. And paradoxically, that constraint makes it easier to come up with ideas, not harder.

Every authority has a focusing question that frames their body of work, whether they've explicitly stated it or not. Here's how I'd frame a few:

Louis Grenier: "What does it actually take to stand the fck out without resorting to the marketing bullshit you hate?"*

Carl Richards: "Why is there a gap between what we know we should do with money and what we actually do?"

Dorie Clark: "How do you play the long game when you can't see the finish line?"

When you’re developing a focusing question, it’s a hypothesis.

The criteria below help you figure out whether it's a good one. Here's how I use these in practice:

Before scoring anything, we brainstorm a shortlist of hypothesised focusing questions. Then we score each one against five criteria, rating them 1 to 5, for a total out of 25. The highest scoring question is our best bet to pursue and build on over the next 6 to 18 months, which is typically how long it takes before strangers consistently start reaching out to you on the back of your content.

1. Recognition - The extent to which this question captures a frustration the people you seek to serve already feel, even if they haven’t been able to articulate it themselves.
2. Proof - This is a frustration people pay to relieve, for which you have proof. Proof doesn't necessarily mean they've bought from you. It could mean you can find examples of these people paying to solve this frustration elsewhere, even if it's solved in a different way to your solution.
3. Ownability - The territory is specific enough to own. You can't own consumer psychology as a practising authority, but you could own consumer psychology for pet owners. "Nobody else owns it" doesn't have to be true. Sometimes you sub-niche into a specific frustration nobody's staring at. Sometimes the market's big enough that your voice and delivery attract different people. The point is there's a credible path to owning it, however you get there.
4. Energy - You genuinely want to go deep on this. The question connects to the work you're curious about and the future you're building towards. If you're infinitely curious, you'll keep going when others quit. If you're choosing this topic because it makes commercial sense but you're not actually curious about it, you'll quit when the results don't come quickly enough.
5. Expertise - The focusing question correlates with work you've been doing. You've already formed opinions and insights without trying to, through osmosis. You have something to say because you've been living in it, even if you haven't articulated it as persuasively as you'd like.

If your focusing question scores somewhere between 20 and 25, you can be confident that the direction is sound and that the slow period ahead is a Dip, not a cul-de-sac. Now it's a matter of execution, consistency, and time.

Keep going.