Step 10: Pressure test and describe the problem in one sentence

Quick reality check. Take the customer problem you wrote and strip it down to one line of plain English – something a stranger could repeat back without missing the point. If your problem statement wouldn't make sense to the people you want to help, or it takes more than seven seconds to say out loud, it's not ready yet.

Not about making your problem sound smart or marketable. It's about honesty – naming what hurts, annoys, or blocks your customer in the words they actually use. Skip the jargon and focus on the real frustration, pain, or hassle your idea is meant to solve. If you have to explain or justify the line, it needs simplifying.

There's a psychological principle at play here: the curse of knowledge. Once you know your solution inside-out, you forget what it's like not to know. You start using insider language, assuming everyone understands what you mean. Your customer doesn't. They're still stuck in the problem, using plain words to describe their frustration. Meet them there.

What To Do

  • Write your customer's problem in one clear, plain-English sentence – no jargon, no marketing claims.
  • Name what hurts or frustrates them today, not what you hope will matter in future.
  • Say it out loud in under seven seconds. If you hesitate or have to explain, make it simpler.
Checkpoint: Would a real person in your chosen audience say it like this? Use the exact words they'd use in real conversations, messages, reviews, or forums. If not, rewrite it in their voice until it feels real.

Stripping Away the Jargon

A working proposition is a good start. But have you been lying to yourself? We all do it when we dress up our ideas in borrowed language because we think that's what "real" businesses sound like. Time to strip the idea naked and see if it can still stand up.

Spot the jargon:

  • Jargon: Words that sound impressive but mean nothing. "Synergistic solutions." These are the business equivalent of saying "utilise" instead of "use." They don't make you sound smarter. They make you sound like you're hiding something.
  • Unearned claims: Promises you can't prove yet. "Revolutionary." "Game-changing." Unless you've actually revolutionised something, you're just another person with an adjective problem.
  • Hidden costs: Commitments that will break you. "Available 24/7." "Unlimited revisions." These aren't features. They're future resentments.
Quick red flags:
  • If a stranger couldn't repeat your problem sentence after hearing it once, it's not clear enough.
  • If your claims need caveats to sound true, they're not earned yet.
  • If your wording would make your exact person roll their eyes, rewrite it in their language.
Compare for yourself:

"Our innovative, game-changing service revolutionises the way purpose-driven wellness entrepreneurs synergise their unique nutritional propositions with dynamic consumer demands."

vs.

"Our app helps busy parents find healthy meals their kids will actually eat."

The first version is all performance and borrowed language. The second is plain English and gets to the point. The difference? One is pretending. The other is solving a real problem someone woke up with.

Say it out loud: Does your proposition sound like something you'd explain to a mate at the pub, or like you're auditioning for Dragon's Den? Rewrite it using only words you'd use in real conversation.
Final challenge: What problem does your idea really solve? Not the noble version. The actual, specific, maybe-kind-of-small problem it solves today. Write that.

What's next

If you can say what your business solves, in plain English, without a single borrowed buzzword, you are already ahead of most founders.

This isn't a pessimism exercise – it's about getting honest with yourself about the real risks and traps, not imagining every possible disaster. When you're brutally honest about what could genuinely trip you up, you can actually do something about it.

Most founders either ignore the real issues or invent unlikely disasters to look "thorough" – neither helps. This is about nailing down the things that have a real chance of derailing you, so you can spot them coming.

So what? You're not here to worry yourself out of action, but to stop your future self walking into the same wall you've hit before. If you know what trips you up in real life, you can name the traps early and build your idea around avoiding them – not falling for them twice.

Most people never do this work. They keep their idea dressed up in business drag, hoping no one notices they don't quite believe it themselves. The problem isn't the idea. It's that they're trying to sell something they can't even describe honestly.

This isn't about being "casual" or flippant. It's about making sure you can actually say, in your own words, what your business fixes for someone else. If you can't, neither can your customers.

Try this: If your business only sounds believable when you put on a suit or an accent, it probably is not.

The curse of knowledge is a cognitive bias first identified by economists Robin Hogarth and Colin Camerer, later popularised by Chip and Dan Heath in Made to Stick. Once you understand something deeply, it becomes nearly impossible to remember what it was like not to know it. You assume terms like "synergistic" or "dynamic" are clear, when to an outsider they're meaningless noise.

This is why founders drown their propositions in jargon - they've forgotten what their customer's actual problem sounds like. The customer isn't thinking "I need a synergistic solution." They're thinking "I'm tired of spending three hours every week doing this annoying task."

Example: A financial adviser might say "We optimise your portfolio for risk-adjusted returns." But their customer is thinking "I'm worried I won't have enough money to retire." The second version is what gets remembered and repeated - because it's the problem as the customer actually experiences it, not the solution as the expert frames it.
Practical takeaway: Test for the curse of knowledge by asking someone outside your industry to repeat your problem statement back to you. If they can't, you're still speaking expert language, not customer language. Strip it back until a stranger gets it immediately.

Plain English: The more you know about your solution, the harder it is to speak like someone who still has the problem. Fight that by using their words, not yours.

This story builds on borrowed language: In Careless People, Sarah Wynn-Williams exposes Facebook's internal culture through their infamous "Little Red Book". This was a manifesto demanding total dedication. "Move fast and break things." "Done is better than perfect."

It sounds inspiring until you realise "things" included democracy, mental health, and their employees' marriages.

The Misfit Perspective: This is what happens when you borrow someone else's language for too long. You forget what you actually think. Your proposition might not be a cult manifesto, but if you are using words that are not yours, you are already starting down that path. If your proposition feels like a slogan you would roll your eyes at if you heard it from someone else, it needs stripping back to something you would actually say.

Use these with your AI Buddy to make sure you're not missing anything obvious – and to turn vague risks into sharp, specific traps you can actually plan for:

  • "Here's what I think could derail my idea. Help me expand this list with anything I might have missed."
  • "I keep writing vague risks like 'the market might change'. Help me rewrite these as specific, testable traps."

If you get stuck writing your proposition in plain English, use these prompts to push past business-speak:

  • "I've written my proposition but it sounds like I swallowed a business textbook. Help me rewrite it like I'm explaining it to my sceptical best friend."
  • "Point out every word that sounds like I'm trying to impress someone rather than help someone."
  • "My proposition is technically accurate but has no soul. How do I make it sound like a human wrote it?"
Tip: The sharper and more specific your traps, the easier they are to dodge. If you feel awkward reading your proposition out loud, keep rewriting until it feels like you talking, not a LinkedIn influencer.

A key idea: the same patterns that trip you up in life will trip you up in business. If you've quit projects in the past because you lost interest, burned out, or got distracted – those are your traps. They don't go away because the idea is "better" this time.

Reality check: If your past self were running this idea, what would stop them finishing it – and how will you stop that happening now? The trap you don't name is the one you'll fall into, every time.

A reflection on the final challenge: If you cannot explain your business without air quotes, you are not ready to build it.

When you strip away all the borrowed language, what is left? Is it enough to build on, or were the fancy words holding up an empty frame?

Bottom line: The moment you can name the real problem you solve in words your mates would understand, you are building something real.