Solving problems or minimizing pain is a great paradigm to get into business or sales. But this begs several questions. What problems do I solve? What pain do I minimize? Sometimes it seems like entrepreneurs create new ideas out of thin air. People are searching for the million-dollar idea, the next best thing, but these questions are seldom helpful to the undergraduate student struggling to even find a job, let alone create a business model. That’s why instead of going outward a helpful starting point should start inward. In other words, solve your own problems and minimize your own pain, then see if you can turn those practices or lessons into a business model. For example, I’m a huge science fiction fan, both films and books, but I wanted new franchises instead of Hollywood’s endless reiteration of reboots and extensions of dying franchises. Because I was not encountering enough stories that spoke to me, I wrote my own and published my first novel last year which then became a story that other readers could enjoy as well.
What I’m hoping this example can provide is that in solving my own problem, I realized there was also a business opportunity. The problem I solved for myself was meeting a need for a specific kind of story. My love for stories led to an interest to create them which resulted in a product I could sell. I did not realize this at the time, but I suppose I was thinking entrepreneurially about my own interests. But you can do this in any sphere of your life. If you’re not as productive as you’d like to be, try to find a better system that works for you. If it works, you’ve solved your problem, and should you want to share that with others, you now have some kind of productivity consulting service or information to create online content. Obviously, you don’t want to turn every facet of your life into a business, but hopefully, the lesson should be that if you don’t know where to start, start with your own interests, needs, problems, and pain, address them, and then assess if you think that the things you learned would be valuable for other people as well.
BoweryJE22
Very well said Josh! You make a great point about how too many times we try to go out and try to find things that need fixed but actually have trouble finding them. When we begin to look at our own lives, it definitely becomes a lot easier and simple. We can ask our things like “What is something that I struggle with that I could try to find a solution too”. We all have things in our everyday lives that we can solve and make more efficient. I think it is awesome and really cool that you were able to write and publish your own book.