Over the past two weeks I’ve been working on a prototype of an idea for small high-street businesses to attract and retain customers. A friend of mine, who is something of a mentor to me, called on Friday and we had an hour-long chat about various things. I pitched the idea to him and among other questions, he asked “How would it work for convenience stores?” We back-and-forthed for a two minutes as I didn’t want to write off the tens of thousands of convenience stores that could be potential customers. A couple of times I fumbled for some edge case that might be useful.

And then I said “Actually, it won’t work for convenience stores at all. They’re never going to use it.” I felt an immediate sense of relief. Instead of flailing around trying to find some plausible reason for a group of potential customers to use this product, I realised I should just ignore them. That moment led me to ask myself what defines my target market? It’s businesses with a physical presence, providing high net margin services and products to customers. That’s bars, restaurants, hairdressers, cinemas, coffee shops, car washes etc. It’s not retailers, accountants or tradesmen.

Sometimes an idea needs to be bulked up, but I find far more often it needs to be carved into shape, and that means removing material and saying no.