Become A Problem Seeker
Become A Problem Seeker
And why it's good if you are consistently frustrated and feeling uncomfortable as an entrepreneur :D
For all of you who haven’t followed the Creative Business section from the beginning, I am currently reading the Million Dollar Weekend book by Noah Kagan and follow the book step by step and doing all the challenges in it.
I am only allowed to read on when I have tackled the latest challenge. 😂
I identified my 3 target groups in the last article and can now read on and learn more and find out about the next challenge 😀
Become a Problem Seeker
Noah reminds us in his book that the best entrepreneurs are those that are consistently dissatisfied:
They are always thinking of how things can be better
They are consistently looking for frustrations, your frustrations, their own frustrations. Because these are business opportunities.
And they push through the uncomfortable feeling of asking for money, consistently (more on that later)
What does it mean being a problem seeker?
It means for you to look out for ideas each and every day, consistently. What is bothering you, what frustrates you, over and over and over again? What are things that irritate you, that you wish there would be a quicker, better way to do it?
Start with your today, your morning, your home, your work environment, everything that is just damn frustrating gets on that list:
I need to drink water in the morning and I cannot drink the one in my current apartment in New York, as the filter is not working
I need to find food here and there is only unhealthy food over the counter. Or if there is healthy one, it is only in the supermarket, which you then need to eat and that only works outside if you are near a park or its warm outside
My German phone is not automatically calling US numbers, as it is German, and that is frustrating. And it won’t allow for specific apps due to country restrictions. If I change it though I have to set up all my German apps and lose my credit, a nightmare
I want to have an easy to use personal CRM, but so far I have not found a good one yet
I want to keep track of all my work, info snippets and contacts and events in an easier way and have AI do that for me or someone else
I am not good with keeping track of my admin work, I need someone who helps me with that
How….
This list can go on for hours. And that is the point. Find your own problems and write them down regularly. And then think of solutions (business opportunities) to sell them.
And once you think you found something, write some people, test it out and say:
“Hey friends,
One thing I realized is that I’m busy all the time and don’t have time to cook a quality meal.
I wanted to invite a few friends to test a business idea with me.
Consider yourself the lucky chosen ones ;)
Convenient and home-cooked meals.
On February 9th, for $20, there will be a personal chef making us food and delivering it to you conveniently and deliciously.
If this is something you’re seriously interested in, please paypal $20.
Open to all and any feedback.
Cheers, Boris
This is an email someone as described in the book sent to some friends and got 5 people paypaling him $20 to test the idea.
And then he goes on to describe how many businesses where built that way - people were frustrated about something and for that reason checked whether there were other people that had similar problems and taking it from there.
Finding Problems
Now let’s go deep and let us find some problems!
Noah gives some great advice tjat I was again notoriously ignoring.
I started to find my passions to realize that I have way too many to ever being able to push them into one word or topic.
But instead, to focus on the most frustrating problems out there.
The more painful the better! Because the more painful they are, the more valuable they will be.
The 3-step process of finding problems
What is the most painful problem you can solve for people?
That you also have a passion / unique expertise in
For the largest niche possible that you belong to and understand …
And make sure that it is in your Zone of Influence - you have easy access to the target group (see the last article).
And with that Noah mentions 4 upcoming challenges for us to find at least 10 potentially profitable ideas.
Solve Your Own Problems
We already discussed this topic, but there for sure are more problems I can think of here. And I hope you already started thinking 😏
But first thing first, what tips does Noah give us before we start the challenge?
Make A Game Out Of It
See it as a fun game to come up with all these problems. To find them. Go look for them. Write them down. Practice that consistently. Where are frustrations? Annoyances? Pains? Deep Pains? And write them all up. Every day. You will have damn long list soon of painful and annoying things in your life 🤣 - I get it now why entrepreneurs are consistently dissatisfied (don’t get the joke? Go back to the last article) - but on the other hand, as an entrepreneur, you can also tackle those problems, and isn’t that cool? 🤩
Asking Yourself Some Pain-Inducing Questions
What is something that irritated me this morning?
What is one thing on my todo list that is there already for a week?
What is one thing that I regularly fail to do well?
What is one thing I wanted to buy recently only to find out that no one made it?
Challenge: Solve Your Own Problems
It is time for the next challenge - Solve your own problems.
Here it is:
“Use the questions to find three ideas. Write those down in your MDW (Million Dollar Weekend) Journal.”
I am sure, any notebook or pad will do it. I started an ideas list here in one of the articles top, but may likely move it to another space, simply because this may become confusing over time.
And funnily, we end up with frustration number one:
I love making notes. Short snippets of things I like to keep track of. They are in all sort of places. Google Keep, Email, Notion, short Recordings. It is a nightmare of choas and I would love to have one clean place to put them and automatically sort them and look them up. There is a tool I found solving it - Curiosity, but then i have to pay money and so far it did not solve the sorting piece for me, only the look up. Maybe there is AI solving it for me.
I want a personal, trusting assistant who can handle the annoying finance and taxes pieces for me, schedule calls, get meeting covered, I love to create and this takes time and I dont want to do it, but know I have, and it would give me more free time to focus on the things I love (like making phone calls, meeting scheduling, going back and forth with it, sending info through and so on)
I want to build a website for free, fast, with simple layouts and my domain, but I do not find nice, stylish designs that do what I want
I want to get an overview and nice insights into app flows → how to best combine apps for building a business and reducing the time to search for good tool combinations, like a Zapier, but with the consulting piece to it and cheaper. Prices add up soon and I don’t want to pay subscription fees all the time and have all the features no one needs.
I want to have a personal CRM for all my contacts, events, meetings, interactions. Simple, not too expensive. Instead there are only these big players on the market with all these massive options that no one needs. There is Bigit by Zoho, but that is also not doing it, Hubspot is too clunky, I want an Attio but cheaper - good user experience, simply, good ease of use and a search bar. Tasks and that’s it. People focused. Airtable did ok, but also did not solve it fully for me.
I want to have nice front-end out of the box when building apps and features, and not having to invest in a programmer building it for me.
I want a good, nice-design investment app for beginners, that is easy-to-use and has explanations and market data to tab into plus some insights on how it works.
I want to be able to send money from Germany to the US without any horrendeous costs attached to doing that.
I find it frustrating that despite good qualifications I have little success finding a job on the job market in New York.
I need to build a high-stake network in New York and it takes time. What is a way to speed that up?
I want to organize meetups and events in New York, where do i find office space?
I get frustrated when I am hungry, that there is no good over-the-counter healthy food I can easily find. Instead it is pizza, rice, noodles, burgers. Where can I find healthy food that I can then also eat there directly? There is Just Salad, but that is all cold. What if it is winter and all cold and windy outside and I need warm food?
I write articles and newsletters on Linkedin but there are not more and more people signing up, its stagnating, how can I change that? (Partially know the answer to that one though ;))
I want to have one personal messaging tool for messages on Instagram, Whatsapp, Message, Linkedin. Nowadays, I have to switch back and forth. That is annoying.
I want to improve my messaging on Linkedin, how can I do that in a way that I do not come across as annoying?
I try to find a platform where I can publish and post videos, recordings, podcasts and more as a constant influx of ideas - right now there is Twitter for short and nowadays also long snippets, Instagram for Images, TikTok and Youtube for Videos in different lengths, Linkedin for Business Content, Spotify & Co for Audio, Substack for notes, and beehiiv and Co for newsletters. But is there one topic related for all of it? And especially on the Creator Side, where I can easily upload them all quickly and then the AI or program spreads them automatically to the respective channels and also creates a landing page with all content from one person like a live stream. Which I may then also able to search and through AI automatically re-create content into other pieces of content?
I hate it that I have and there are so many subscriptions, tools, etc. I would love to habe a platform that gives me an overview of all tools I bought so far and helps me keep an overview of renewal dates, pricing, usage, contact person, kind of a customer Success tool but for my own tech tools. And there I can also see how they are connected. Like a Celonis for SMBs.
That just came up, it is more of an idea than a frustration - there are so many people right now, that want to enter the job market and specifically the tech market (potentially including me too ;), but there are not many roles in New York City. What if I teach them how instead to find a market that is more lucrative to enter into? Because you can either fight for getting into an exclusive circle or open yourself up for a more attainable market and get in there first? And maybe they even pay more and the frustration will be lower ;)
But with that, let’s close this challenge. I came up with enough pain points and frustrations for that challenge and there are many exciting frustrations in there.
Before we continue with the next challenge, though, let’s focus on a quick first analysis of the pain, passion/expertise, market pieces and target group we discussed earlier.
Note Taking: Pain, Passion, but market not sure, could ask friends
Admin Assistant: High Pain, Little Expertise, Market Unsure, could ask friends
Website: Low Pain, Expertise, Market High, but many players in it, know some founders, more difficult to reach
App Flows: Pain, Partial Expertise/Passion, Market Demand, more difficult to find customers
Personal CRM: High Pain, Partial Expertise/High Passion, Market partially (combined with events yes), if focus NY and events, easy target group
Front-End: Ok Pain, Passion High/Expertise Low, Market no clue, many players already, not too easy to find target group
Investment App: Pain, Little Expertise, Market no clue, asking friends in NY
Money Transfer Cross-Country: High Pain, Little.Expertise, Market no clue, difficult to find target group
Finding Job in Tech in New York: Pain, Little Expertise/Passion (High in DACH though) High Demand, how to solve it other question, target group easy to talk to
Meetup Event Spaces: Low Pain, High Expertise / Little Passion, Market Demand no clue, I would say rather low, easy to reach target group
Healthy Food New York: Pain, Some Knowledge, Demand no clue, easy to reach target group
Linkedin Subscribers: Low Pain, Some Expertise, Market Demand ok i guess, good to reach target group
Personal Messaging Tool: Ok Pain, some expertise, Market Demand no clue, rather low I guess, good to reach target group
Publishing Platform: (High) Pain - seems weird to call it high pain, but it somehow is, Some expertise / passion high, Market Demand no clue, some tools are already out there, ok to reach target group
Tool/Subscription Overview: High Pain, Some Expertise / Passion, Market Unknown, could be interesting, ok to good to reach target group
And I found one more, not a personal frustration, but somehow too - where to find clients? I have these companies building products and they wanna sell them, but miss clients and want to get clients, and I thought of helping them offering theur services to clients, but for that to work, I need to find clients myself ;) Analysis: Pain yes, some Expertise, Market Demand yes, ok to reach target group, but as people came to me, maybe ok? ;)
What do we learn from that short quick analysis? Given that the Market Demand Analysis deep-dive happens later and that I have not spoken to any potential clients at that point despite the last pain.
For that reason, thw first to tackle problems are:
Personal CRM
Publishing Platform
Sales for Companies with Tech Tools
Given the analysis, I would have to include the Job search one too, but I am not too excited about it right now.
With that quick first analysis, I identified 3 key problems I am frustrated about and may find target personas.
But after a quick analysis, I may have to switch the publishing one with the Note Taking One for an easier to find target group.
But we will tackle that later, when we do the deep dive analysis.
For now, let’s close that challenge and go to the next one.
But before we go - have you already tackled the challenge yourself? Or have you only read along?
If you only read along. Stop here. Go back. And first tackle it before you finish reading the article.
Done?
Perfect! Then we can now go on! 🤩