Build a Solid Marketing Foundation

Patrick McFadden • June 27, 2023

If you follow me or have worked with the Indispensable Marketing team, we will often talk about having a marketing foundation based on diagnosis before prescription. In fact, small business marketing needs to start with a simple and effective diagnosis. But the problem is there are so many ways to access customers now that it's easy to get lost down the "prescription before diagnosis" hole.

Prescriptions like SEO, Linkedin, Google ads, clubhouse, text messaging, Facebook, Twitter, programmatic ads, TV, radio, Google My Business, and Tik Tok have a place in effective marketing but only when they have been determined by a very clear diagnosis.

So the question has come up: how do you build your marketing foundation? What does that look like?


Component #1: Building a Solid Marketing Foundation

For us, the first thing you have to understand is who makes an ideal client or makes up the multiple segments of ideal clients for your business.

From my experience, you can’t spend enough time narrowing, refining, and understanding that. Even to the point of identifying what they care about, what they value, how they want to be served and what makes them tick. Spend a lot of time on this.


Understanding Your Ideal Client Is The Ultimate Growth Hack

It’s the owner's and CEO’s job to deeply understand the ideal client they want to attract, serve, and support. And gaining that understanding takes time and effort. ( I would say a process)

You can hire marketing consultants and firms to aid in the discovery of your ideal client but they will never be as close to your market as you. Sadly, too many small businesses forget that.


How to Define Your Ideal Customer in 4 Questions

In any marketing conversation (or one that you hope to be effective) it’s common to hear that you must know your target market. What bothers me most about this simple target market approach is that it still allows small businesses to chase anyone who has a business card.


Answering these customer profile questions from the beginning and during the growth of your business will save you tons of time going in circles trying to be all things to all people.


  1. What do they look like? Defining your ideal customer starts with things like: Demographics, Psychographics, and Challenges or Problems.
  2. What are their problems? No matter what you sell — a product, a service, a subscription, etc. — you’re selling a solution to a problem … and people are looking to get their problems solved.
  3. How do they want to be served? What I’m really asking you here is to understand the demands and expectations an ideal customer has first and then discover ways to address those through the interactions they have with your business.
  4. What do they think value is? “Value is in eyes of the beholder,” so to speak. The difficult part of this question is remembering the beholder is not you. It is your ideal customer. You must come to understand how ideal customers think and determine what value is.


Component #2: Building a Solid Marketing Foundation

And the second part – particularly for existing businesses – is to really fully understand what it is you do that is wanted and valued by this ideal client. Avoid what you think it is, and focus on what your clients say.


Understand What Is Valued and Wanted

My message to owners and CEOs of small businesses has been quite clear: You cannot create a business that is unique to every client.

The key to any good marketing strategy is to market to the ideal client within your target market that wants and values what it is you do that is both remarkable and unique.

And a lot of times, what your ideal client wants and values is not the core service bookkeeping, consulting, remodeling, training, etc. you provide.⠀


How to Define What is Valued and Wanted By Ideal Customers

For example, we work with a local commercial cleaning firm that feels like what their ideal clients want and value is clean common areas, counters being wiped down, toilet bowls being scrubbed, mirrors being clean, trash bins being emptied, etc.
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Well, when we conducted client research through speaking with some of their commercial cleaning clients, we kept hearing over and over again that what their clients want and value is the high priority our client places on showing up when they say they will and fixing issues when they arise.
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I know that sounds kind of simple and basic, but that’s what our client's client communicated that they want and value and that is both a remarkable and unique aspect of their service delivery.

No other commercial cleaning firm in their world was doing that.


Component #3: Building a Solid Marketing Foundation

The third part is turning that into a core marketing message where you make the customer the hero of the story and you’re simply the guide.


Understand What Attracts Ideal Customers

Online reviews, testimonials, unsolicited feedback or any 3rd party proof must be a important part of creating your marketing message strategy these days. The insight gain from any 3rd party proof provides you with a direction for creating a powerful marketing message strategy.


What’s often overlooked by small business owners in the gathering process of 3rd party proof is the actual words and phrases used by a client. In my experience a good review, testimonial, case study, blurb, or positive unsolicited feedback often implies that this is an ideal customer for your business. They had the right problem, you solved it with the right approach, and they had a great experience.


Here’s the point – if you want to attract more ideal clients like the ones giving you great feedback then you should pay very close attention to how they talk about your service – in particular, the words and phrases that show up repeatedly.


There’s money making and revenue generating insights in those words and phrases as your best customers are telling you what it is that you do that solves the real problem they have.


How to Create a Message That Attracts Ideal Customers

Let’s say you own a tree service business. Your potential customers will automatically assume that you know how to take down trees. But that doesn’t really address the problem the potential customer has.


For most homeowners, their biggest problem associated with a home service contractor is about something beyond the basic service the business provides. Homeowners hate having to wait around for their service window. When they hire someone to handle their tree removal, the team leaves tread or wheel marks and stump grindings in the yard.


These are the real problems your clients have. So your marketing message is not, “We know how to remove trees” — of course you do! Instead, it’s “We never damage your yard and always clean up when we’re done.”


Contact Your Marketing Consultant at Indispensable Marketing

If you’re a small service based business that needs help with developing a powerful marketing message and showing up on the first page of search results on Google, Bing or Yahoo at Indispensable Marketing we can help. We offer marketing strategy consulting, marketing audits, monthly marketing packages, consultations, exploratory calls or monthly local SEO services. Contact us for more information.

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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