Are you solving a problem?

Regardless of whether it is a service, information, or a physical item, good products are those that solve some sort of problem. The problems can take on any shape: financial concerns, lack of knowledge, boredom. It doesn’t matter, good products attempt to provide a solution to some sort of problem.

However, the best products attempt to solve expensive problems for serious customers.

Spend your energy solving expensive problems

Where are you spending your time? Are you coming up with ideas and hoping that someone will want to buy it? Are you trying to identify a problem and solve it? Are you wasting time in a market that is unwilling to change their circumstances no matter how magnificent of a solution you create?

Hopefully you are trying to identify and solve expensive problems for serious people and business. Remember, you know stuff other people want to know. Regardless of whether you are an entrepreneur, business owner, or career person, solving the expensive problems for the right people will put you in the best possible position. Why? Because that’s when your business will begin to take off. That’s when your career will transform.

That’s when what you are offering becomes truly valuable.

Serious people and companies are willing to pay well for products that will either save them money or make them money in a shorter amount of time than they currently require. That’s the kind of thing that makes them really happy!

Focus on spending your energy solving expensive problems for serious customers

Serious?

Don’t miss the part about the serious customers though. You might have the best imaginable solution to a problem, but if you target people who have no money to spend or who couldn’t care less about truly solving the problem, you aren’t doing business.

And if you aren’t doing business, you need to call it what it is: a hobby (or possibly a waste of time).

I once saved one of my employers 2 million dollars with a solution I created. Not only have I made sure to highlight that on my resume whenever I’ve interviewed since then, but I print out a separate sheet of paper with that sentence in bold 18 point font and hand it to interviewers whenever I come face to face with them. I promise you, it catches their attention every single time.

Unfortunately, it went unnoticed at the company where I actually implemented the solution. Not only did I not see a single cent of that 2 million dollars, but it ended up creating more work for me in the long run. Worse was when I found another data related error that was costing them hundreds of thousands of dollars every year and management didn’t want to reveal it for fear of how they would be viewed for letting that problem exist for so long.

That’s when I learned that you need to make sure your customer (my previous employer in this situation) is serious. They weren’t. They still aren’t and it saddens me to watch the state of their company as it continues to decline.

I don’t intend to make that mistake again.

Spend your energy solving expensive problems for serious customers.