Zero to Sold

We found out that many other teachers did the same when they started talking about their self-built solutions in their online communities. Teachers began to share their templates through Google sheets. It was clear that this was a shared problem in a very tight-knit community. Note - Location 252 发现了一个群体的集体痛点 Highlight(pink) - Location 252 even though it helped, was clunky and overwhelming. I looked into it, and it seemed quite possible to build a web-based application that would do this work faster and more reliably. ...

不管思考什么事，最重要的是在一开始就想明白要搭建出怎样的框架。 事实上，一旦有了框架，接下来只要填满就行了。 反之，如果没框架就直接去思考其中的细节,那就不得不面对一堆未经梳理的凌乱信息，白白浪费时间。 ...

usually are full of very similar competitors, fighting it out over price and marginal differences. This saturation makes it hard to enter a market, and even the businesses that are already in that market suffer.

I believe that many bootstrapped businesses only do half the work. They solve a problem, but they don’t address the most critical problem.

You built a solution for customers who think they have that problem under control. You solved the wrong problem. You developed a solution that helps only at the margins. You solved the wrong problem. You built something, but your customers have bigger fish to fry. You solved the wrong problem.

You want to build a “need-to-have” instead of a “nice-to-have.” You want to develop a painkiller instead of a vitamin. You want to be their aspirin. How can this be done? By finding their most important problem: the one issue that is critical to their success. ...

The most crucial problem a customer faces is on their minds most often. It’s the most important because it’s coming up frequently and is never easy to solve. It has the most impact on their lives, but it’s not always the obvious choice. If you can help a customer with their most critical problem, they will benefit the most.

A Critical Problem Is Painful Problems can be a nuisance. They come up, and you either deal with them or ignore them. We can’t ignore critical problems. They persistently make the lives of those who have them harder until they are resolved. They can’t be just ignored, because they consistently reduce the quality of life.

Find the critical problem where ignoring something causes a lower quality of life.

Find the critical problem at the intersection of something mandatory and something wasteful. 关键问题总是位于强制与浪费的交叉点

A Critical Problem Is Not Optional Some things can be ignored or delegated, but a critical problem can’t be. If it’s critical, people will have to deal with the problem every time it occurs. They can’t just opt out of it. Solving the problem is essential to making any kind of progress in the work. Find the critical problem where people would love to opt out, but can’t. ...

Find the critical problem where people need to do the same thing over and over again. A Critical Problem Occurs Frequently and Repeatedly The reason why critical problems are always on the minds of your customers is that the problems happen so often. Every day, every week, every month, the critical problems repeatedly occur. For your customers, it’s always the most urgent thing at that time. The issue needs to be solved there and then, every single time. If it’s not frequent, it is likely not a critical problem. If it occurs repeatedly and isn’t easily solved, it is likely to be a critical problem. ...

Find the critical problem where solving a problem takes a long time every time the problem occurs. A Critical Problem Takes up Too Much Time If a problem can be solved quickly, people either solve it the moment it appears or they set aside some time to do the work in a batch later, without feeling like it’s a waste of time. If that is the case, the problem is not really critical. Only when you need to spend considerable time and effort each time you solve the problem will it be impossible to “just” deal with it. “Doing it later” also turns into a chore, as it may take hours or days to deal with a long queue of deferred problems. A critical problem will feel like an unwelcome chore: important, yet tiresome. ...

They Have No Interest in Paying With non-critical problems, customers often find alternative ways of solving the problem because they want to save money. It’s not worthwhile for them to look for and pay for a solution that they value less than alternative solutions. They’ll be willing to pay: if the solution saves them time if the solution saves them money if the solution makes them money ...

A Critical Problem Forces People to Solve It Using Their Own System There is the joke that every SaaS is an Excel sheet transformed into business logic. The moment someone uses generic tools like word processors or spreadsheets to solve a problem, it’s an indicator that the problem is valuable enough to build tools. Most problems don’t have high complexity, and they can be solved on the spot. But a critical issue will be complicated enough to start developing a system. If your customers have a pile of Post-its or a chaotic assortment of Word and Excel files to solve a problem, you may have found a critical problem. ...

Finding the Critical Problem So, how can you learn about which is the most critical problem your customers have? It’s quite straightforward: talk to them. Ask them what annoys them most. Find out where they want to be. Ask them what keeps them from being the best at what they are doing.

If you find something that will obviously make them significantly more money or save them a lot of time, then you have something to go on. Customers should really want to pay for it, almost have a burning desire to open their wallets. When they ask you if that is possible and you tell them it is, their mouth should drop to the floor.

Focus on what you can help them accomplish. Ask what customers want and which state they want to be in when the work is done. Don’t focus too much on the “how it’s done.” That is usually more based on tradition than on an optimized process.

Time-Related Pains Most productivity-related issues cause temporal pain: people feel like they’re wasting time. These pains are caused by suboptimal processes and friction between tasks. If tedious work takes a lot of time, it keeps you from doing important and useful things instead. That leads to time mismanagement and relevant actions not being taken. By solving the time-related problem, productive tasks can be accomplished faster and sooner. When people complain about inefficiencies, tedium, or pointless work, you’re looking at a time-related problem. ...

If you hear people complaining about a waste of money, prohibitive costs, compliance, or the wrong people working on the wrong things, you’ve found a resource-related problem.