Win Jeanfreau's Three Questions Every Business Must Answer Before It Can Succeed

By Win Jeanfreau, Serial Entrepreneur · November 2, 2026

There are shelves full of books that promise riches through some newly discovered formula, rediscovered ancient wisdom, or a "system" that, once mastered, supposedly opens the gates to perpetual wealth.

I'm Win Jeanfreau, a serial entrepreneur, and I've sat through hundreds of presentations by these so-called experts. In the end I came to a conclusion I can defend: the only path to success in business is to find the answers to three questions, and then execute on those answers as flawlessly as you can.

Here they are. They're the questions I've had to answer for every business I've started and grown:

What problem am I solving?
How am I solving it uniquely?
What is the value proposition my potential customers recognize as meaningful and compelling?

I first wrote about these questions in a three-part newspaper column series while I directed the Utah Valley University Business Resource Center. I've revised and combined them here because, years later, I still haven't found a fourth question worth adding. The questions ask easy, but they answer hard.

What I mean by an answer

When I say "answer," I don't mean a line in a pitch deck. I mean a bedrock answer, the kind you have an emotional response to and know is true deep in your bones.

That matters because opposition will come, usually at the moment you're least prepared to deal with it. Without real conviction you won't have the resolve to carry through. When you do have it, the kind that only comes from finding the capital-T truth about your business, you become an unstoppable whirling dervish of momentum.

It's very common for founders to skip that work and settle for half-truths. That's how a business gets built on wishful thinking.

Question one: What problem am I solving?

Finding a problem no one else is addressing is rare. That kind of insight is a true "moment of genius," like the discovery of the structure of DNA. Most of us will never have one, and we don't need to.

Most winning ideas are evolutionary rather than revolutionary, and they can be every bit as financially rewarding. Evolutionary problem solving happens when you find creative ways to put existing things together. The smartphone is the obvious example: a personal digital assistant, MP3 player, web browser, camera, computer, and phone combined into one device that most of us now can't imagine living without.

What matters is that the problem is real, that lots of people have it, and that your solution is demonstrably different from what's already out there. This is where founders drink their own Kool-Aid. Before you fall in love with the problem, go find the people who have it and test whether they'd pay to make it go away. The U.S. Small Business Administration's guide to market research and competitive analysis is a good free place to start.

Question two: How am I solving it uniquely?

While I was at the Resource Center, an earnest founder came to see me about funding a "unique" new computer processor. Intel and AMD are formidable competitors, so I listened with some skepticism. I asked whether he'd developed a breakthrough chip architecture, a faster clock speed, or both. His answer was that he was simply going to build a faster chip, and he wanted my help raising the $1 billion it would take.

Much more often I'd hear the equally earnest claim that a founder could build the same thing for less. Price is a powerful part of every purchase. But competing on price alone is usually the slow spiral of death for the undercapitalized competitor, and the undercapitalized competitor is usually the new entrant. "Cheaper" isn't unique.

Unique means one of two things. Either you offer something that isn't in the market, or you reinvent something common so thoroughly that it becomes a different offering.

Here's a hypothetical I used to teach the idea. Search for "arm sling" online and you'll find thousands of nearly identical products clustered around the same low price. Where's the opportunity? Stop competing on immobilizing an arm. Anyone who has worn a sling knows that everyone asks what happened. Now imagine a sling with a photo of the accident printed right on it, and a web address that leads to the video. It's still an instrument of healing, but it's also a badge of honor for a certain kind of customer. It won't appeal to everyone, and it doesn't have to. A young, adventurous buyer would love it, and once you know who that buyer is, you know exactly where to advertise and what to say.

That's the real test of uniqueness. It changes what you're competing on, and it tells you who your customer is.

Question three: What value does the customer recognize?

More often than not, when I asked a client to explain the value of their product, they quoted me the retail price. Price is a big factor in buying decisions, but it's rarely the only one, and it's seldom the most compelling one.

One client had built an excellent math-teaching method. As she described it, an average sixth grader could learn the times tables through 14 in about 30 minutes and keep most of it two weeks later. She sold it for $19.99, and sales were anemic.

When I asked about her value proposition, she quoted the price. When I pressed, she named the homework time saved and the relief for parents. Then she got to the one that mattered. Kids who know multiplication understand division, too. Kids who are confident in math don't opt out of math-heavy classes. And kids who are comfortable with math are free to choose educations and careers that depend on it, which include many of the best-paying careers in the economy.

Suddenly $19.99 and 30 minutes looked like a small price for opening a child's future. Once she said it out loud, her marketing practically wrote itself, and she knew exactly who to say it to: parents of kids struggling with math.

Notice that the value was there all along. She just hadn't followed it far enough. Keep asking "and what does that do for them?" until you hit the answer that makes the customer lean forward.

Then execute

Answering the three questions doesn't build a business. It tells you which business is worth building. After that, the work is execution: doing the thing you now know to be true, every day, as flawlessly as you can.

My advice is to write your three answers down, in plain language, on one page. Then hand that page to someone who has no stake in your idea and ask them to poke holes in it. If you're in the U.S., your local Small Business Development Center or the SBA's local assistance network will give you that second set of eyes at no cost, and a reality check now is a lot cheaper than one from the market later.

If you can answer all three with bedrock conviction, you're ready to build. If you can't yet, you've just saved yourself a great deal of time and money.

Which of the three questions is hardest for your business to answer?

About the author: Win Jeanfreau is a serial entrepreneur based in American Fork, Utah.