In this episode of Sequence Over Strategy, Michelle introduces the concept of the three business dials—customer niche, product mix, and marketing mix—to help entrepreneurs cut through the noise and stay aligned with their core goals.
Struggling to stay focused while growing your business? Wondering why sometimes you’re doing so much and still struggling? In this episode of Sequence Over Strategy, Michelle introduces the concept of the three business dials—customer niche, product mix, and marketing mix—to help entrepreneurs cut through the noise and stay aligned with their core goals. She explores the common pitfalls of chasing new opportunities that may not serve your long-term vision and emphasizes the importance of adjusting the right dial at the right time. Learn how to simplify your strategy, avoid unnecessary complexity, and achieve sustainable growth by staying focused on what truly moves the needle.
Check out the full episode at TheMichelleWarner.com
Hi, I'm Michelle Warner and I'm a business designer and strategist, and in the 15 years I've done this work, I've noticed the same trend everywhere. Business owners are falling into the trap of centering strategies first when they need to be centering sequence, because the reality is the steps you take in your business and the order in which you take them is more important than how well you implement any single strategy. So on this show, my goal is to fix that by helping you find and trust your own sequence of actions rather than blindly following someone else's strategy. Welcome to Sequence Over Strategy.
And in every episode of this show, I tackle a real question I'm hearing from real entrepreneurs. And today I want to get back to some fundamentals, because if you're listening to this as it's released, we're near the start of the year and everyone has a little more energy and is gearing up to chase their goals for the year. And that also means they're probably doing a version of this or asking themselves one of these questions, and I'm sure you may be as well. You might be looking at what's popular and working in the marketing world and how you'll adapt that and use that yourself. What new strategy are you going to grab?
Might be updating your products and making offers that are bigger and better or updated or just adding things that you have learned over the course of the last year or so. And you may be hoping to reach a new and updated audiences in order to grow your outreach. This is all understandable and for the most part, good. Obviously, you want to be growing your business, but it's also missing a critical step in that pesky sequence over strategy.
What it's missing is the potential hidden effects of what could happen when you do those things if you haven't thought them through in the correct order. Because by attempting to update and do what's working or update your products and services to make them better, it's possible that you actually make your job harder on yourself. And it's possible that there are some unintended consequences down the line. Cruel, but true, because all you're trying to do is make your business better, make it work better. All good intentions. But a lot of times you end up adding in some things, some unintended consequences.
So today I want to talk you through how those things work together. And most importantly, the questions you should ask yourself while you're deciding about these updates or new things that you want to do. What are a couple of quick questions you can ask yourself so you understand and can flag any potential unintended consequences before they happen? And you can address them. And then you can get on with adding all the new bells and whistles that you want and having them actually work instead of having them bring up some surprises. So let's get into it.
Listen, when I look at a business, which I do often because in my regular job, as I say, as a business designer and strategist, I get people coming to me whose businesses have plateaued. They're not growing in the way they expected them to, or they want to grow, or they're just trying to figure out what they should do. So when I'm looking at those businesses and advising people on what they should do in order to get unstuck or in order to kick off a growth span, I start by looking at what I call the three main dials of a business. So stick with me. I'm going to explain why I consider them dials, how those dials can turn. But first, we're just going to talk about what the three dials are.
And those are number one, your customer niche, number two, your product mix, number three, your marketing mix. Those are the three big dials in your business. And they shouldn't mean need much definition, but let's do that quickly to make sure we're on the same page.
When I say your customer niche, I mean your ideal customer avatar, your personas, whatever you do to identify who are your best customers. By your product mix, I'm talking about what are the different things that you offer those folks? You know, if they're services, what are different packages that you offer? And by marketing mix, I'm talking about how do you market? How do you connect the dots? How do you tell your ideal customers? How do you tell your customer niche about the products that you offer? And so what you should be asking now is when I'm looking at these, why I'm looking at these three things is because they have to work together. And this is when the dials come back into play. Because each of these three things, the customer niche, the product mix, and the marketing mix, it's on an individual dial that can be turned to different settings. Like picture your washing machine.
And here's the important thing. Those dial settings also need to work together. There are dial settings that generally work together and dial settings that don't.
So again, let's think about this washing machine example. If I'm washing my dog's bed cover or the cover I use in the backseat of my car that he beats up after we go to the beach and it's just a muddy mess, you best believe that I'm going to make the heat setting on the washer, I'm going to turn that to hot as it can get, and I'm going to turn the other dial for the type of wash that I want it to go through. I'm going to set that to heavy duty. So it's going to be hot and it's going to be heavy duty. And those dials work together, right? And if I'm washing a load of delicates, I'm probably going to set that heat setting on cold and instead of choosing heavy duty, I'm going to choose delicate and those also work together.
And I'm sure there are examples, you know, where it's appropriate, but it's probably relatively uncommon that I'm going to wash something on cold and heavy duty. We don't see those dials coming together as often, right? Or the same thing. Are we going to do something on hot and delicate? That's an uncommon dial setting. We wouldn't think of those two dials as working together.
So that's what I'm talking about. We can have individual dials. We can have individual things. We can have a customer niche, have a product mix. We can have a marketing mix. Those are three individual dials, but we want to put those on the settings where they work together. Again, when we're looking at your business, when I look at a business, the first thing I'm doing is if somebody comes to me and says, Oh, you know, I've plateaued. I don't know why this isn't working anymore.
The first thing I'm going to ask is where are those three dials set at? And are they at settings that work well together? Dare I say, are they working in alignment or are they at, you know, set on settings that don't work so well together? Because nine times out of 10, if a business isn't performing the way the founder wants it to be, those dial settings are set in positions that don't work well together.
So the same way you're probably never going to set your washing machine too hot on a delicate cycle, you can actually set your dials in your business to be as uncooperative or as out of alignment as those two dial settings would be on a washing machine. Now the good news is this is very fixable, right? We can look at a washing machine and we can change those dial settings so that they're a combination that makes sense and that works together.
But we have to first start with those dial settings. So when you're starting with the question of, Hey, what's working in marketing? What's a fun new strategy I could do? Or how am I going to update my product? Or Hey, should I try to reach a new audience? You're not starting with the question of, are my dial settings going to work together?
Because in that case, you're just going to change one dial. You're just going to add that fun new marketing strategy that you see everybody doing. You're not stopping to ask, wait, how does that affect my customer niche dial? How does that affect my product mix dial and are those still going to work together? And so that's the question that I want you to ask when you're doing these things, right? When we're out in the real world and we're looking at what's popular and working in the marketing world and how you're going to adapt that and use it for yourself. I want you to also ask, Hey, what's that going to do again to the product mix and the customer niche setting?
When you're thinking about updating your products and adding in new bells and whistles, I want you to ask, what does this do to the customer niche setting? What does this do to the marketing setting? And when you're looking at adding, you know, new and updated audiences and expanding your reach, I need you to ask, what does that do to the product setting? And what does that do to the marketing setting? What does that do to my dials? Is making a change on one going to make those dials not work as well together? Because most of the time it does affect that. And again, it affects it in a way that's very fixable.
You can change the other dials to catch up to what you want to do, but most people don't do that. Most people, because they start with the question of what do I want to change, or they start with a moment of inspiration that, Hey, I'm going to try this. They forget, they forget the sequence over strategy and they never ask about what is the impact of that going to be on my other dials. And when you do that in succession, right, maybe you can get away with it once, but when you do that in succession and when you're constantly tweaking those dials and constantly adding things and not stopping to first ask, what is that going to do to my dial settings? That's where we run into real problems. That's where we run into businesses that really stall out because the dial settings have gotten so out of whack that they're just not working together. We've gotten to the equivalent of trying to, you know, wash delicates in high heat. And I don't know about you, but I don't know a situation where that works well. And so we run into the same thing.
We get into a situation where you've made so many tweaks to your product mix that it's just no longer talking to your customer niche or to your marketing mix style. And those things are just actively working against each other at that point. And so when you think that you are doing something good, Oh, I'm improving my product. Oh, I'm going to reach more people. Oh, I'm going to do this new marketing thing that's working. And you don't first stop and say, what's that going to do to my settings? That's when over time, you're going to get really out of whack with what you're up to. And that's what we don't want to do. So when I'm talking about going back to fundamentals, when I'm talking to you at times, you're probably feeling some energy to do new things. I don't want to squash that energy. I just want you to ask the questions in the right order and be aware of what you're doing so that as you roll them out, you can adjust those other dials as needed. So let's talk about some real world examples of this, right?
I've talked in theory now, and it hopefully makes sense to you. But let's talk about what it really looks like. And we're going to go through all three and go through changing all three. So you hear me talk about this one relatively often when we're talking about new marketing ideas. And so let's say you're cruising with your marketing strategy and you hear this great new thing that's working on LinkedIn. And so you think, oh, I'm going to start doing video on LinkedIn. I'm just making this up as I go along. You think that would be really fun. I see it working.
Well, maybe your customers don't watch video, right? Or maybe your product mix isn't a product that lines up with adding video to LinkedIn. Or maybe you haven't even been on LinkedIn. And now you hear that video on LinkedIn is working, so you jump on there. And all of a sudden, you realize that, oh, actually, my customers are a little immature for customers. And they're actually on a different social media site, and they're not even on LinkedIn. So even though LinkedIn video is working, what am I doing over here? Because my customers aren't seeing it. So it doesn't matter that the strategy itself is popular right now. If my customers aren't there, I would actually have to change my customer dial to find some customers who are over on LinkedIn.
Or maybe my product is, again, something that doesn't line up with people who are going to be on LinkedIn. Maybe it is something that is health-related. And even though people, maybe they are on LinkedIn, but they're not thinking about their health when they're on LinkedIn because they're thinking about their business. All of those different things can impact a marketing idea that on the surface looks good because video on LinkedIn is hot right now. But then when you start thinking about how it is going to impact your people, is it really going to help you or not? Now that's a relatively easy example. We talk about marketing being in alignment or not all the time. We talk about relationship versus traffic. That's a pretty, I could rattle off a lot of examples there. But let's talk about some of the other examples that I don't talk about as much, like with your products. Now this is a wonderful energy to have.
If you're looking at your products and you're saying, gosh, I could make these so much smarter. I have learned so much about how to deliver or I've learned so much about this topic that I teach. Let's say that you teach copywriting and you've been teaching the basics of copywriting for a while, but you've gotten so much better at copywriting and you want to talk about more nuance into it and you want to get into advanced topics in copywriting. That's a wonderful, wonderful thing to think about and a wonderful thing to do, except what if your marketing dial has been set on beginners?
And this is more common than you would think, because a lot of times we do this a little bit unconsciously. So if your marketing dial is set on beginners who just need to learn the basics of copywriting and you've been teaching that for forever, but now you decide, hey, I've learned so much more about copywriting and I have all these nuanced tips and tricks. I'm going to add that into my product. Well, guess what happens? You're still marketing to beginners. And so now you've created a product that's a little bit over their head. And so when you're thinking about adding anything into your product, you really need to think about, hey, is this something that beginners still need, or is this over the head of beginners? And if so, do I need to change my customer dial at the same time and go meet some people who want this more advanced information, right?
Even if you think you're improving your product, you really need to make sure you're improving it in the name of still serving the customer that you have and not improving it in such a way that is going to go over the head of the customers that you have, unless you want to change the customers you're reaching. And I know that that might sound obvious, but I can't tell you how many times I see this because as creators, we're seeing our information and as teachers, we're seeing our information over and over and over again. So we think, oh, I could just make this tweak and it would make it so much more effective. But you're around your information so much that you don't realize that you're actually making it more advanced. And so you really want to think before you improve a product, you want to make sure that that improvement is still keeping it at the comprehension level that you need it to be at, right?
I mean, please improve the customer service, improve all the user experience all you want, but be real sure that's what you're improving and you're not actually improving or upping the comprehension level of the product because then you might be upping it past a point that your customers want or are prepared for. And as soon as you do that, as soon as you flip that dial where your product has become too advanced for your customer base, well, now you either have to dumb the product back down or you need to go find a new customer base because now you flip the dials and they're out of alignment.
Again, like that sounds real obvious, but I can't tell you how many people do this because you just think you're making a little tweak to make it a little bit better. But after 10 little tweaks, now you have completely moved past who your clients are. So you really want to think through those programs, especially if people are consuming them in a passive way. But even if you're a service provider, if you're a coach and you have a framework and a curriculum, this can happen for you too. You can get over the heads of your target audience. You want to be really careful about how you improve your product. And again, I know that might sound weird, but you just want to be really intentional with this and make sure you're not improving it to the point where it is now too advanced for your customer base. And then that leads us into our third example of hoping to reach new and updated audiences kind of in order to grow your reach.
Again, wonderful thing to be thinking about, right? Because we want to grow our businesses, but there are subtle differences in every audience that you go after. And it is very possible and probable that as you look at new and updated audiences, you can be changing that sophistication level, that experience level that they're at. And your product may not match as well, right?
If you've built a product for an audience that you had, and now you start to expand it, the new audience may be a little bit more advanced, or they may be a little more niche, or they may be a little less advanced, right? They may be more beginners. And all of a sudden, it's not going to match as well. And that can start to look confusing. So it's not that that's never a correct idea. It's just that if you're not asking, hey, this new audience, how close of a match are they to my current audience? And how much is it going to impact my product dial? How are they going to interact with the product or service I offer differently than the audience I already have? And if you can ask yourself that before you go for them, you can usually understand that and see if that's still a match.
But if you don't ask yourself that beforehand, then you can start to get really mixed signals. If they are reacting differently, you can start to wonder, is my marketing not working? Or what's wrong? And you can start feeling inclined to changing a bunch of things that aren't actually the problem, when the problem is that you just tweaked your audience dial too much. And so now that dial is not in agreement with the others as much.
And so these are just things you want to ask yourself before you make these changes that on the surface seem really obvious. You want to just take a second and ask, okay, if I tweak the style, what's it going to do to the other two? And make sure that your answer is, it's going to be okay. Or your answer might be, actually, it's going to tweak those other two, but that's okay, because I can make that adjustment. You just want to be aware that any of these changes you make have downstream consequences on the other two dials. Any change you make to your audience has consequences on the marketing and the product mix style. Same for the other combinations. Sometimes those consequences are perfectly fine, and you can just go forward with it. A lot of times they're going to cause you to think, how do I want to tweak the other two? Or what do I need to be on the watch for to make sure that I don't see something happening? You just want to be aware of this as you're making these decisions.
And as we think about this episode and what I want you to take from it as we talk about going back to those fundamentals, it's what I was just talking about. Your ideas have downstream consequences, and that is not a bad thing. Usually, if you're practicing the sequence over strategy and you're having these conversations that we talked about in this episode, it's a great thing. I want your businesses to grow. I want you making your products better. I want you updating your marketing and trying new things. I want you going after new customers. Those are good things.
It means you're doing a good job of growing, but we want to do that good job of growing while keeping your dials working together. Because as soon as you start to make siloed decisions, as soon as you just start to say, hey, I want to try this thing, it sounds like such a great idea, without considering what it's going to do to the alignment between your other two dials, that's when you may be in for a surprise.
And that's when it gets really confusing as well. Because when you start trying new ideas and they don't work, and it's because you forgot to think about the consequences to your other dials, you really realize that. And instead, you start kind of cycling in this confusion of why is it not working? And it sends you down a bunch of rabbit holes that are unproductive. So we can save so much of your time and so much of potential frustration by just asking this question first. Because when you ask this question about what is this going to do to my dials?
When you ask that before you make any change, number one, you just make sure that you don't have some sort of obvious unintended consequence. And then number two, if things do change as you're implementing it, you can really dial in on that and understand what's going on and you're not surprised and you don't start chasing down rabbit holes confused.
So my ask for you is that before you make that next best decision or decide to try that popular thing, take literally two minutes and ask yourself what's going to change on your dial and how that change might impact the other two.
So again, if you are thinking about updating one of your products or one of your service packages, before you do it, just think really quickly, is this update going to confuse my clients? Is it too much? Is it getting too advanced for them? Is it going to confuse any of my marketing? If the answer is no, fantastic. Go do it. If the answer is yes, then carefully consider whether you want to do that or not based on the consequences. And that's all. That's all I'm asking you to do.
And honestly, it's all that I do myself is to have that awareness of the potential consequences of your actions. And when I say consequences of your actions, it sounds so negative and I don't mean it to. You just want to have some awareness that, hey, when I decide to do something, you know, on this dial, it's going to mess with the other dials. And am I inadvertently causing a situation where I'm washing my delicates on hot? And if you are, let's stop before you do that and make another decision or adjust those other dials so that they come into alignment. And when you do that, you're going to smooth out that roller coaster of your entrepreneurial trip, right?
We can't smooth out every single wave that you're going to get hit with because that's just the journey of entrepreneurship, but we sure can smooth it out. And that is always my goal, the sequence over strategy is to smooth that ride for you so that you're asking those right questions in the right order.
So my friends, as always, thank you for being here today. I'm going to set you loose to go implement all of your great ideas that you have here and to do those empowered by knowing that you have thought through what is it going to do to the rest of your business. You've thought through that question and you're ready to tackle it and it's still a good idea. So get out there, get after it. Always let me know how it's going. If this episode helped you, I would be so grateful if you shared it with someone else that it also might help. Or if you left a review because that always helps it reach others as well.
Thank you for being here and I will see you again in a couple of weeks.