I’m new to this sub and I’ve done some poking around. It seems that the unanimous advice in this sub for people looking to become an entrepreneur is ‘find a problem and sell the solution’.
I’m from a poor family and I’m just a simple working folk. I’ve been trying to think of a way to break free from that life most of my adult years but have never found a way to make it happen.
So my question is. Since I’ve been trying to find a problem to solve for most of my life and failing to do so. How can I make a shift to really find that problem I can solve? It seems most people in here have businesses. What problem did you solve and how did you figure out that problem to begin with?
Well… You could try to change your perspective about “problems”. The thing here is that we are often told that problems are something that drives everyone crazy, but in most cases a problem is something that you are so used to that you don’t even think of it as a problem.
For example: Is it a problem to wait 3 minutes for a cup of coffee? Perhaps not. But would it be better to get your coffee with just 2 minutes of waiting? In this case we don’t perceive the situation as a problem, but in contrast with a better scenario we can easily understand the first situation as a “problem” or ar leat “less better”
With find a problem and sell the solution you look out for really small problems that everyone has or enormous problems that 0.1% of people have but are willing to pay tremendous amount of money to solve it, even if they don’t realize the problem.
I can give you some real life examples:
A construction company made a mistake during the foundation process and the cost to out everything down and start again would be something around 2M. They decided to hire a specialist in the field to see what could be done. In the end the consultant gave a solution that would save months of work for just 700k. He was paid 200k for his advice.
In my country we often see homeless people on the street with a bottle of water and soap, a sponge, and a squeegee. They wait for the traffic light to go red and go clean some car windows to get a few bucks. Dirty windows are a common and small problem.
A home owner needs money to pay some medical bills but can’t manage to find someone to buy his house and that’s why he decides to ask for a real state agent to sell it for him in exchange of commission.
In general we are always solving problems and being paid for that. The description of a job is exactly what kind of problem the business already know about and are willing to pay for someone to care of it.
Of course a genius is born from time to time and his ability to track problems and find solutions is beyond our comprehension but we don’t need the mind of a billionaire to earn a great living using the concept of finding problems.
Everything is a problem and nothing is a problem.
We don’t necessarily need an iphone to call family and friends, but still we perceive the lack of iphone as being a problem, and that’s why we buy it.
I hope it helps.