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.

Introduction

Creating a product or service that people will want to buy doesn’t have to be a mystery. It doesn’t require specialized techniques that are available to only a select few. With the amount of information available on the internet, setting up a business has truly become democratized. It’s accessible to anyone who will put in the effort to do their research and apply their knowledge.

Setting up a business sounds simple – come up with a business idea, package the product, market it, and rake in the money.

As you probably suspect, this is an oversimplification, so in this blog post I will go through the steps you can take to further refine your business idea and take it to market.

People have written entire books on how to sell what people want, but I’m going to distill the essentials into one easy, actionable blog post. This will give you the basics of how to get started on your entrepreneurial journey. I will go through the factors you need to consider when creating your product, the process of determining whether there is a market for it, and how to promote it and get the word out to potential customers.

Step 1. Decide whether to sell a service or a product

Everywhere you look, there is a glut of stuff for sale. Products are available through the internet, brick and mortar shops, malls, and stores. Vendors fill their shelves with products, and you can buy software online with a click of the mouse. It seems like there is a solution in the form of a product for every problem that you have.

That’s why you need to dig deep when you are trying to create a product or service to sell. Go one step ahead and try to really differentiate yourself from the crowd.

Your product doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel. You can recycle and repackage by representing it in a different way that improves upon the original idea. For example, you can re-design something so that it is easier to consume or use.

But the question you want to answer is, what do people need or want?

Unless you’re entirely self-sufficient and don’t need anything, everyone needs something!

People are persuaded to buy or consume your product because it helps them solve a problem.

The first step is to decide whether you want to sell a product or a service. There are advantages and drawbacks of each.

For a physical product, you have to manufacture it, which requires finding the equipment and raw materials to get started. You may also need a warehouse to store the products. But unlike a service, you can mass produce it and sell many units of it, whereas if you’re selling a service, it’s constrained by the amount of time you have to offer the service, and the price that you set for your time. There’s only one of you, or the number of people you employ, so your offering is constrained by time.

There’s a solution to both of these problems, and people have capitalized on it many times. Instead of a physical product, you can sell digital products such as ebooks, courses, software, and paid digital subscriptions. Your products are more scalable this way, and it eliminates the need for raw materials, warehouses or employees.

Step 2. Find a niche

The next step is to find a niche. Some of the more popular niches include finance, food, lifestyle, fitness and travel. But these are generally broad, so narrow down your niche to be more specific. The more narrow the niche, the better because you’re faced with less competition.

If you can’t decide on a niche, write down a list of all the characteristics of your target demographic, including their age, education, family, career, and gender. These are the criteria that will help you decide in which market you want to target.

Always have your target market in mind when designing your product; this will guide you on how to sell what people want.

Step 3. Do market research

Do your market research to find out whether your idea is appealing to your target market, and whether it’s something they will want to buy. The results of your research allows you to question your assumptions about your customer. For example, you might think that they want to buy something, but your results show that they want something entirely different.

Market research is usually done through interviews, emails, focus groups, surveys and questionnaires (primary sources). You don’t need to spend a lot of money or hire a third party market research company to do it for you. It can be done as simple as sending a questionnaire to your Facebook group and asking them for feedback on your idea.

Know the trends in your industry inside out by conducting research on secondary sources such as white papers, which are available at your local library or online.

Once you have collected your data, it’s time to analyze it. There are different analytic techniques you can use, depending on whether your research was quantitative or qualitative. You can use software to analyze the data, some of which are free.

Doing a competitor analysis is also part of the next step. Find out your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses to better understand how you can fill the gap in the market. The analysis will be useful when it’s time to think of ways to differentiate your business from your competitors.

Step 4. Create a minimum viable product

After you’ve done some brainstorming and some market research, it’s time to choose one idea and create what is called your “minimum viable product” or MVP. The MVP is your starting point. If you’re unsure if there will be enough demand for your product, try creating an early version of what you want your product to be. It has the basic features which will still make it functional, but without the bells and whistles of the final product. The point of the MVP is to test the waters without wasting your resources to create something that won’t sell.

An example of an MVP is as an app with the basic features, a website with only a landing page, or the essentials of a service. An MVP doesn’t have to be a product either, it could be a survey asking your potential customers whether they are interested if you created a product or service.

The MVP gauges the interest of your potential customers, and gives you an idea if you can potentially make sales off of the product. It’s at this point that you can gather feedback, and test the product, and solve any issues such as bugs in your app.

Step 5. Create your brand

Now that you have your product, the next step is to decide on your branding strategy. Branding could include anything that visually represents your business, such as logos, colours, fonts, and designs on your website. At this point, it might help to hire a graphics designer on a contract basis to design your website.

Branding also includes the messages and slogans associated with your business. There are branding agencies solely devoted to branding strategy, but if you don’t have the resources to hire an agency, you can easily do the basics on your own.

You should ask yourself, what emotions do you want to go through the minds of your customer when they think of your brand? Shape your message to trigger these emotions.

To be effective, your message must be persuasive, sharp, to the point, and geared towards your target market. It should answer the question, why should your customer buy from you instead of any other competitor?

Step 6. Marketing your product or service

The final step to selling what people want is to choose your marketing channels, which can include social media, paid ads, and email. Digital marketing is overtaking traditional forms of marketing (e.g. physical ads and broadcast ads on TV or radio) so it would be wise to concentrate your efforts on social media platforms and ads as seen on search engines.

Your marketing efforts should lead your customer down the sales funnel. To do this successfully, you have to hold their hand and guide them through the process. Have a step-by-step strategy by first promoting your product or service, offering great value, and landing the sale. To clinch the sale, use the insights gained from your market research to reiterate why your product offers the best solution to their problem.

Follow up on prospective buyers by sending out a call to action, which can be in the form of an email to keep your product on their radar. Whatever method you choose, it should convince the customer to take that final step and buy your product.

Conclusion

It takes advance planning and a good strategy to sell what people want. Start by deciding whether you will sell a product or a service in a niche that is either not too saturated or one that allows you to stand out from the crowd. Once you do your market research, create your MVP and get ready to focus on branding and marketing the product. If you follow these steps you’re well on your way to making your very first sale.