Becoming the Only Business That Matters: The Power of Narrowing Your Focus

Patrick McFadden • May 20, 2023

In today's competitive business landscape, standing out and capturing the attention of your target audience is more challenging than ever. As a business owner or CEO, you may find yourself grappling with the question of how to become the only business that truly matters. It's a bold statement, but one that holds immense potential if approached strategically. So, let's delve into the concept of narrowing your focus and discovering your ideal customer – a crucial step towards achieving unmatched success.


The Biggest Question: Who Does Your Business Need to Matter To?


Before we dive deeper into this concept, let's address the elephant in the room. Who does your business need to matter to? It's a fundamental question that often gets overlooked amidst the frenzy of trying to appeal to every possible customer. The truth is, attempting to matter to all customers is a recipe for problems. This widespread issue is prevalent among many small business owners who fall into the trap of trying to cater to everyone.


The Consequences of Trying to Matter to Everyone

When you strive to cater to a broad audience, several problems arise. Your communication efforts become diluted, resulting in irrelevant pain points being addressed. Optimizing your website for the wrong keywords leads to missed search opportunities. Appearing in the wrong directories or procurement listings confuses potential customers. Customizing every proposal drains valuable time and resources. Offering too many service options dilutes your unique value proposition. Claiming generic differentiators puts you in a perpetual cycle of price competition. These problems are not merely marketing challenges; they affect the core of your business.


Customization overload means higher costs as each proposal requires extensive tailoring. It prevents you from utilizing standardized proposals that can be repurposed for similar clients. Being present in the wrong directories attracts the wrong type of customers, wasting valuable time and effort. If you're claiming generic differentiators, you'll constantly find yourself competing on price, unable to communicate the true value you provide.


The Power of Narrowing Your Focus

To address these challenges and overcome the limitations of trying to matter to everyone, the most crucial step you can take is to narrow down your target audience. Enter the concept of the ideal customer. Within your existing customer base, there is a subset of clients who align perfectly with your business values, enjoy your services, and bring profitability to your company. These ideal customers not only appreciate what you do but also become advocates for your brand.


Identifying Your Ideal Customer

Take a moment to reflect on your business and identify the traits of your ideal customer. What makes them stand out? Are they profitable? Do they value your services or solutions? Do they recommend you to others? Understanding your ideal customer enables you to focus your efforts on attracting more clients like them.


Narrowing Down the Ideal

Narrowing down your ideal customer does not mean you can't define multiple ideal customer profiles. Your ideal customer can be based on specific engagements, contract structures, services, products, geographical areas, or decision-making types. The key is to identify the characteristics that make a client ideal for your business and tailor your approach accordingly.


Examples of the Power of the Ideal Customer

To illustrate the impact of narrowing your focus, let's explore a couple of examples. Consider a local dental practice targeting a mature market. By understanding the unique needs and preferences of this demographic, they can customize their entire practice to cater specifically to this audience.


From dominant presence on Bing search engines (a platform preferred by the mature market) to larger text sizes on their website, they ensure their services are easily accessible and cater to the mature clientele. Limiting the insurance they accept aligns with the fact that this market prioritizes trust and care over insurance coverage. By tailoring their approach to the ideal customer, this dental practice creates a compelling value proposition.


Another example is a home remodeling contractor focused on serving specific geographic areas or neighborhoods. Their target market consists of homeowners seeking more space and functionality for family gatherings. To effectively capture the attention of this audience, the contractor offers a limited range of remodel services tailored to address these specific needs. They produce content and marketing materials that specifically target the desired geographic areas, ensuring their messaging resonates with the right audience. During the sales process, they proactively identify homeowners who prioritize family values, ensuring their services align with the customer's timing triggers.


Matching Marketing Tactics to Your Ideal Customer

Once you have a clear understanding of your ideal customer, it's crucial to align your marketing tactics to appeal directly to them. Tailor your messaging, choose the right marketing channels, and create content that addresses their pain points and resonates with their values. By speaking directly to your ideal customer, you increase the chances of attracting and retaining the clients who truly matter to your business.


In conclusion, becoming the only business that matters requires a strategic shift in mindset. By narrowing your focus and identifying your ideal customer, you can position your business as the go-to solution for a specific target audience. This approach allows you to tailor your marketing efforts, streamline your operations, and differentiate yourself from the competition. Embrace the power of the ideal customer and watch your business thrive as you become the business that truly matters.

The Missing Layer in AI: Why Judgment, Not Just Data, Will Define the Next Era of Intelligence

By Patrick McFadden • May 2, 2025
Everyone is scaling outputs. Almost no one is scaling judgment.

Everyone Talks About AI Judgment. We Built It.

By Patrick McFadden • May 2, 2025
Ask anyone in tech where AI is headed, and they’ll tell you: “The next leap is reasoning.” “AI needs judgment.” “We need assistants that think, not just answer.” They’re right. But while everyone’s talking about it, almost no one is actually shipping it. So we did. We built Thinking OS™ —a system that doesn’t just help AI answer questions… It helps AI think like a strategist. It helps AI decide like an operator. It helps teams and platforms scale judgment, n ot just generate output. The Theory Isn’t New. The Implementation Is. The idea of layering strategic thinking and judgment into AI isn’t new in theory. The problem is, no one’s been able to implement it effectively at scale. Let’s look at the current landscape. 1. Big Tech Has the Muscle—But Not the Mind OpenAI / ChatGPT ✅ Strength: Best-in-class language generation ❌ Limitation: No built-in judgment or reasoning. You must provide the structure. Otherwise, it follows instructions, not strategy. Google DeepMind / Gemini ✅ Known for advanced decision-making (e.g., AlphaGo) ❌ But only in structured environments like games—not messy, real-world business scenarios. Anthropic (Claude), Meta (LLaMA), Microsoft Copilot ✅ Great at answering questions and following commands ❌ But they’re assistants, not advisors. They won’t reprioritize. They won’t challenge your assumptions. They don’t ask: “Is this the right move?” These tools are powerful—but they don’t think for outcomes the way a strategist or operator would. 2. Who’s Actually Building the Thinking Layer™? This is where it gets interesting—and thin. Startups and Indie Builders Some small teams are quietly: Creating custom GPTs that mimic how experts reason Layering in business context, priorities, and tradeoffs Embedding decision logic so AI can guide, not just execute But these efforts are: Highly manual Difficult to scale Fragmented and experimental Enterprise Experiments A few companies (Salesforce, HubSpot, and others) are exploring more “judgment-aware” AI copilots. These systems can: Flag inconsistencies Recommend next actions Occasionally surface priorities based on internal logic But most of it is still: In early R&D Custom-coded Unproven beyond narrow use cases That’s Why Thinking OS™ Is Different Instead of waiting for a lab to crack it, we built a modular thinking system that installs like infrastructure. Thinking OS™: Captures how real experts reason Embeds judgment into layers AI can use Deploys into tools like ChatGPT or enterprise systems Helps teams think together, consistently, at scale It’s not another assistant. It’s the missing layer that turns outputs into outcomes. So… Is This a New Innovation? Yes—in practice. Everyone says AI needs judgment. But judgment isn’t an idea. It’s a system. It requires: Persistent memory Contextual awareness Tradeoff evaluation Value-based decisions Strategy that evolves with goals Thinking OS™ delivers that. And unlike the R&D experiments in Big Tech, it’s built for: Operators Consultants Platform founders Growth-stage teams that need to scale decision quality, not just content creation If Someone Told You They’ve Built a Thinking + Judgment Layer™… They’ve built something only a handful of people in the world are even attempting. Because this isn’t just AI that speaks fluently. It’s AI that reasons, reflects , and chooses. And in a world that’s drowning in tools, judgment becomes the differentiator. That’s the OS We Built Thinking OS™ is not a prompt pack. It’s not a dashboard. It’s not a glorified chatbot. It’s a decision architecture you can license, embed, or deploy— To help your team, your platform, or your clients think better at scale. We’ve moved past content. We’re building cognition. Let’s talk.

We Found the Missing Layer AI Has Been Waiting For

By Patrick McFadden • May 2, 2025
In every era of innovation, there’s a silent bottleneck—something obvious in hindsight, but elusive until the moment it clicks. In today’s AI-driven world, that bottleneck is clear: AI has speed. It has scale. But it doesn’t have judgment . It doesn’t really think . What’s Actually Missing From AI? When experts talk about the “thinking and judgment layer” as the next leap for AI, they’re calling out a hard truth: Modern AI systems are powerful pattern machines. But they’re missing the human layer—the one that reasons, weighs tradeoffs, and makes strategic decisions in context. Let’s break that down: 1. The Thinking Layer = Reasoning with Purpose This layer doesn’t just process inputs— it structures logic. It’s the ability to: Ask the right questions before acting Break down complexity into solvable parts Adjust direction mid-course when reality changes Think beyond “what was asked” to uncover “what really matters” Today’s AI responds. But it rarely reflects. Unless told exactly what to do, it won’t work through problems the way a strategist or operator would. 2. The Judgment Layer = Decision-Making in the Gray Judgment is the ability to: Prioritize what matters most Choose between imperfect options Make decisions when there’s no clear answer Apply values, experience, and vision—not just data It’s why a founder might not pursue a lucrative deal. Why a marketer might ignore the click-through rate. Why a strategist knows when the timing isn’t right. AI doesn’t do this well. Not yet. Because judgment requires more than data—it requires discernment . Why This Is the Bottleneck Holding Back AI AI can write. It can summarize. It can automate. But it still can’t: Diagnose the real problem behind the question Evaluate tradeoffs like a founder or operator would Recommend a path based on context, constraints, and conviction AI today is still reactive. It follows instructions. But it doesn’t lead. It doesn’t guide. It doesn’t own the outcome. And for those building serious systems—whether you’re running a company, launching a platform, or leading a team—this is the wall you eventually hit. That’s Why We Built Thinking OS™ We stopped waiting for AI to learn judgment on its own. Instead, we created a system that embeds it—by design. Thinking OS™ is an installable decision layer that captures how top founders, strategists, and operators think… …and makes that thinking repeatable , scalable , and usable inside teams, tools, and platforms. It’s not a framework. It’s not a chatbot. It’s not another playbook. It’s the layer that knows how to: Think through complex decisions Apply judgment when rules don’t help Guide others —human or AI—toward strategic outcomes This Is the Missing Infrastructure Thinking OS™ isn’t just about better answers. It’s about better thinking—made operational. And that’s what’s been missing in AI, consulting, leadership development, and platform design. If you’re trying to scale expertise, install judgment, or move from tactical to strategic… You don’t need a faster AI. You need a thinking layer that knows what to do—and why. We built it. Let’s talk.
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