Why Your Users Are Silently Screaming (And How to Fix It)

Hey, product-preneur!

Ever watch someone you love get financially screwed by their own "professional" advisor?

My mom's three-hour struggle through a 20-page financial plan would put you in tears.

All that money for an "expert," and her main takeaway was confusion and frustration. But this disaster taught me something crucial about why most products fail their users. 💡

What’s bubbling in this week’s potion:

• The $324 million trust problem that's killing user adoption (and how Wealthfront cracked the code while traditional advisors are still handing out novels nobody reads)

• The Clarity Audit Framework that separates products people love from ones they delete (three questions that will expose every friction point costing you conversions)

• Why your mom is your secret weapon for building sticky products that actually make money (plus the specific action steps to implement this week)

Spoiler alert: My mom ditched the traditional advisor and chose clarity instead. By the end of this, you'll know exactly why that matters for your product's survival.

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Potion of the Week

Mom's Financial Meltdown

Watching my mom struggle through her 20-page financial plan was like watching someone try to solve a Rubik's cube while wearing oven mitts. After three hours of mental torture, her takeaway was simple: "She just plopped in some numbers."

All those hours gathering her financials, all that money paid to a "professional," and the” the only clarity she got was confusion. Her financial advisor had delivered how a steamy pile of simple decisions feels impossible.

But lucky for her, she has been hearing me rant about Wealthfront for months. She just had to try the "traditional" route first and watch it fail spectacularly.

She realized that the secret to her investing answers was there all along. Here’s this week’s big lesson. 👇

FinTech's $324 Million Problem

324 million people have bank accounts in the US, and if you haven't figured this out, money is pretty important, so the FinTech industry has a critical job of creating solutions to people's money problems.

Products like Wealthfront must have three core elements:

• Trust

• Ease of use

• Outcomes

This is true for all products or services, but lucky for you, you most likely don't have to deal with the crushing weight of handling people's most important asset: money.

What Wealthfront Does Right (Are you doing these?)

People don't need 20-page reports, they need clarity. They need the "why" so they can build trust without a meltdown and achieve their desired outcome.

Build Trust Immediately

The second you land on Wealthfront's homepage, they're flexing harder than a CrossFit fanatic at a dinner party:

• "1M+" clients

• "$75B+" dollars managed as of late 2024

• "4.8" and "4.9" star ratings on Apple and Google app stores

These “flexes” led to revenue growth of nearly 140% and profitability with 40%+ EBITDA margins

You might not have billions to wave around, but you can still build credibility without looking desperate. Share behind-the-scenes content, showcase real testimonials, or document your journey in public.

Transparency beats perfection every time, even when it stings like hell.

Make it Easy, Avoid Meltdowns

The next step to having your customers tell you to "Shut up and take my money" is a clear path to their desired outcome.

Wealthfront has made the paths to solutions easy to consume with visuals that directly relate, and minimal enough to allow you to focus on those paths to solutions in under a minute, not 4 hours.

Bonus: That header follows you as you scroll and makes it idiot proof on what you can do with your money now, or later.

Speak Their Language

FAQs that don't suck. Maybe there is a real person behind Wealthfront, and they aren't swimming in your money just for funsies.

Not only does Wealthfront continue to speak outcomes, but they also build trust by speaking to their audience like a friend, erasing confusion to bring clarity.

Tailor your copy to your humans. We are wired to connect. A key level of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs is love and belongingness, so creating an experience that creates a community is pretty important. This is a growing trend with creators and startups who build in public.

Weathfront’s Loyal Fan Hack

Wealthfront (affiliate link) offers APY boosts and up to $500 invested for referrals. When's the last time you audited your referral system? Referrals boost conversions, acquisition, and lifetime value without making you feel like a used car salesman.

Quick Sip

The Clarity Audit Framework: 3 Questions That Lead to Higher Acquisition, Retention, and Revenue

Sticky products require creating an experience around their users that gives them simple solutions to complex problems. As you've seen, Wealthfront makes this look like a walk in the park.

Since I've shared these three questions in a LinkedIn carousel that performed well, let me give you the enhanced framework version. I call this the Clarity Audit Framework because it sounds official, and people love frameworks that work. 😌

Phase 1: The Mom Test (Kill the Confusion)

Would your Mom’s eyes glaze over while explaining a feature?

If you answered yes, kill it with fire. Most feature bloat comes from internal politics and ego, not actual user needs. Your mom becomes your unofficial BS detector.

Action step: Record yourself explaining your core feature to someone without context (try ChatGPT’s voice feature). If you sound like you're speaking in tongues, simplify until a fifth-grader gets it.

Phase 2: The $100 Question (Find the Pain Points)

Would you pay $100 to skip this step in your product?

If yes, your users are silently screaming. Every friction point costs you conversions from confused, frustrated humans.

Action step: Go through your user journey and identify every moment where you'd want to throw your laptop out the window. Those are your $100 moments that need immediate attention.

Phase 3: The One-Job Rule (Stay Focused)

Does this step do exactly one job toward getting the user their desired outcome?

If it's collecting "nice-to-have" data, gathering vanity metrics, or covering legal's paranoia, delete it. Users have one goal. Help them reach it or get out of their way.

Action step: Map out each step in your user flow and write down its single purpose. If you can't do it in one sentence, you've got a problem.

My Mom Chose Clarity, So Should You

Spoiler alert: My mom has been using Wealthfront. Why?

Because they explain every feature they offer clearly, without a bunch of analytical BS, just enough to grasp what it is and how it works into a flow that converts.

She went from financial meltdown to actually understanding where her money goes and why. All because someone decided to speak human instead of financial advisor gibberish.

The lesson isn't about financial products. It's about respecting your users enough to make complex things simple. Every industry has its own version of the "20-page financial plan" problem. What's yours?

Ready to stop confusing the hell out of your users?

I’m getting hands-on with clients. If you're tired of building features that make people want to throw themselves at the wall (at high speeds), you don't have to figure this out alone.

If this applies to you:

• Needing a brand that sticks

• Feeling stuck on the path to paying customers

• Overthinking your next move (analysis paralysis, no traction)

Hit the button below. I have some quick questions that will take you 60 seconds to answer. If it’s a fit, I’ll reach out.

If you don’t walk away with a clear action plan, you’ll get your money back. Ready to stop the madness?

What's your "20-page financial plan" equivalent that's making your users want to set everything on fire? Hit reply and tell me.

Corking Things Up

Here are some ways I can help

Idea-to-Offer Clarity Kit — a tool to help you cut through the chaos, pick one aligned idea, and start building with confidence.

Async Potion Review — a quick product teardown that includes a 15m Loom walkthrough and a one-page action plan, delivered within 48hr.

If I can’t surface three actionable quick wins, you’ll be credited toward a live strategy call.

Don’t miss me too much, I’ll see ya next week! 👋 

— Dana

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