How to Define Your Ideal Customer in 4 Questions

Patrick McFadden • February 2, 2018

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.

Instead, it’s important that you develop an understanding for who your ideal customer is within that target market, and start building every aspect of your marketing, sales, and service around attracting and serving them.

This thought process led me to create this post about how to define your ideal customer in four questions, which ties together characteristics (sometimes defined as demographics), psychographics, behavior, and desires.

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.

These are the kinds of things you start with, but you must narrowly define these even further or you’ll just be going after any partially defined customer who has a business card in your target market.

  • Demographics –  Business2Business (B2B)  demographics could be the type of industry, the job title of that individual, the years that a company has been in business, and/or revenue levels.  Business2Consumer (B2C)  the demographics could be age, sex, illness, income, and a particular area of town.
  • Psychographics – Understand where do they hang out, what do they read, what do they listen to, what do they search online, what makes them tick, what triggers them to go looking for a solution
  • Challenges or Problem – Marketing   is about solving customer problems, whether those are problems customers are currently facing, or problems they will face as their marketplace evolves and their needs change.

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.

The business owner who can understand the problem the best is most likely the one that gets the business. In almost every case, the act of solving problems should be the primary focus of any engagement with a prospective customer.

A recent survey found that 80% of buyers don’t believe that the salespeople they deal with understand their business.

74% of B2B buyers choose the salesperson who was first to add value and insight in their buying process.

Clearly, insight into the problems customers are having is key because very few people want what you sell. That’s not a blow to you or your business or your solutions. I’m sure all are remarkable. People want what they believe they will  get, achieve, relieve, dodge, or acquire  based on buying what you sell.

For example , a lot my firm’s prospective clients might say things like — I just want my phone to ring, I want to be on the first page of Google, I want more referrals, I want less marketing headaches, I want my website to generate leads, I feel like I’m wasting money on ineffective marketing, etc.

So my firm doesn’t sell strategic marketing or marketing plans or even consulting — all my ideal clients need to know about what we do is:

  • We make the phone ring — end of story.
  • We get you on the first page of Google — end of story.
  • We make more referrals happen — end of story.
  • We make marketing headaches go away — end of story.
  • We make the website generate leads — end of story.
  • We make marketing dollars go to work — end of story.

Another example, a massage practice:  They might have the best tables, oils, and most highly skilled therapist but all their customers seem to care about is that their pain and discomfort go away.

So, that’s the promise they need to communicate, shout about and promote. The rest is an expectation — I mean doesn’t everyone in the massage business have highly skilled therapist.

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.

Do ideal customers go all in immediately on everything they buy or are they always looking for a trial offer? Do they attend educational conferences or rarely leave the building? Do they value delivery of information electronically or prefer direct mail? Do they enjoy frequent communication or quarterly communication?

This process starts with viewing your business in 5 stages and discovering how you will move your prospects from  awareness  of your business/solution, to  educate  them on the benefits/problems you solve, to  sample  your expertise/solution, to  purchase  your core offering, and  refer  others to your business.

 

Nothing matters more to a business than how it interacts and services a customer during their experience with that brand. How the customer feels will determine whether your business survives or sinks. The secret to every business organic growth is great customer experiences, not the marketing done in the pages of a magazine, newspaper, trade publication, on TV, social media post or other media outlets.

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.

If you want to succeed in business, you must find a way to showcase a differentiation in a way that ideal customers want and value. Quite often your clients value the little things you do that are special.

Interviewing customers  is a great way to get insight into what they think value is.

What kind of question should you ask customers? Get started with this one:

What’s the one thing we should never stop doing?

Find out what your customers really value about you, your services/products and your company. This question lets you discover your true differentiator. Is it your friendly staff, the way they get results, your process approach, your 24-hour responsiveness or the way you clean up after every job?

If you try to be all things to all customers, you are sure to fail. The biggest struggle I see small business owners have is deciding who matters. You must spend time narrowly defining what your ideal customer looks like before proposing any tactics aimed at lifting sales.

 

 

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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