Introduction
Every entrepreneur will tell you that a business succeeds because it solves a problem. Usually, what they mean is that a business is profitable because it helps people by making their lives easier and more efficient. Any good business idea will have at least one of five key principles that makes life easy.
But if you’re a new or aspiring entrepreneur, you may be at a loss for how to think of a new business idea that actually helps people.
In this blog post, I will go through these five principles of finding easy business ideas that work. These five principles can be used for coming up with a business idea, a product or service. It can also help with finding new ways of working and doing your job. Because they can be applied to a wide range of problems, the solutions that you can find by applying these principles are limitless.
Below is a list of five principles to jump start your business ideas.
1. Simplify
Simplify means to make something that is difficult to understand, easy.
Ever felt like if there was a choice to make something simple or make something overcomplicated, people would choose the more complicated route?
This is where you can come up with a solution that explains things without the need to over-complicate and resort to jargon.
For example, creating an educational class, tutorial or webinar is a type of product that sells because it simplifies learning. Knowledge is easier to come by if you make it easy to understand and implement actions. Bonus points if your buyer can achieve results faster and learn what you are trying to teach in just a few simple steps.
If you choose to simply, make sure that you uncomplicate matters. A potential buyer won’t use a product because it’s too complicated or time consuming to understand how to use.
2. Streamline
Streamline means shortening a process into fewer steps, and breaking down large steps into smaller, shorter steps.
Streamlining things can make a process more efficient. Most people are looking for products that save them time and money, and have a greater return on investment.
Products or services that streamline a process are useful because they reduce the time and money spent trying to accomplish something.
By reducing the number of steps, you are creating a “lean” process. What are the advantages of a lean process?
The major advantage is that you don’t have time to waste on doing extra work, so the more the process is reduced to a few key steps, the better. When designing a product look for ways to eliminate any unnecessary steps, which will help getting it done faster and more efficiently.
3. Aggregate
Aggregate means putting things together all in one place so it is easier to find. Aggregating gives structure and order to messy, disparate elements.
When it’s all in one place, you don’t need to go to many different sources to locate the information. Because it’s your one stop shop for information, your audience will spend more time with your product, such as a website.
If you make it easy for your customer to retrieve information, they will thank you for it. It’s even better if the way you aggregate information is organized and easily indexed.
4. Synthesize
Synthesize means summarizing, or creating something new out of disparate elements. Along the same lines of aggregating, by synthesizing you combine elements together to organize the information. By finding similarities between dissimilar objects, you bring together their commonalities so that the information is easier to understand.
Another way to think about synthesizing is that if there are different moving parts to a business, uniting the parts into a whole will make the structure more cohesive.
Synthesizing also draws out new insights and new ways of thinking about the problem, and hence leads the way to better solutions.
5. Automate
Automate means making repetitive tasks automatic. If it’s done automatically, it’s done without having to spend time thinking about it.
Technology has given us a lot of opportunities to automate, which frees up your time to concentrate on the other things that matter. It also makes things go faster so you can get more done.
With things like AI and software, you won’t need to waste your time and energy doing something when a machine can do it for you.
Also, you don’t have to pay a robot to do these tasks whereas you have to pay a human for their work.
Mistakes can be costly. If your machine is reliable and in good working order, it reduces human error. For example, scanning by the human eye is less reliable than scanning using a machine.
Conclusion
By keeping in mind these five principles, designing your product or service to solve your customer’s problem should be easy.
These principles break down the different ways that you can make life easier for your potential buyer. Your offering should fit into one of these five categories for its value to be clear and obvious.
If you are stuck at thinking of a good idea, the best way to brainstorm is to make a list of ways that your product or service accomplishes one or more of these five principles. Think of it as having a call to action already built into your system and why your buyer should act now.
Finally, these five principles are ideas that guide you on how to add value to your product or service.