How do you come up with an awesome idea?

Hey, everyone, I'm Sam Ovens and this is Nick Fisher. And welcome to Consulting tv. On this channel, we talk about everything to do with business and financial success and starting your own business, as well as, like, psychology and philosophy and, you know, really how to improve yourself and hack your own brain. Because what I've observed in business and in entrepreneurship is most people, they forget that they need to improve themselves and they're only looking to learn new things or get better in business. But really, it's been my observation that people need to work on both things, and it's the coming together of those two things that really makes people successful. And so that's what we talk about on this channel. And today in this video, we are going to discuss coming up with an idea. Like, how do you come up with a unique idea? Like, I hear this all the time. Like, what is an awesome idea? Or how do I come up with an idea? Or the one thing stopping me from starting my business is I need an idea. And so that's what we're going to talk about in this video today.

So the topic of today's conversation, one that we see a lot, is people that come and they say, I can't find a good business idea. All the good business ideas are taken. I had this idea. Someone stole it from me. I had the idea for Uber or Facebook. Yeah, I hear that one a lot. Right? It's the social media for whatever. What do you say to those people who come to you and say, my idea got stolen. All the ideas are taken. Things were so much easier back then. There's nothing for me to do in business, so why even try?

Well, if you go looking for an idea, you won't find it. Like, people don't understand how ideas. Well, at least good ideas exist. And good ideas are like, people think that, like, the way they start a business, the way they become an entrepreneur, or the way they start a successful anything is they have an idea and they think that, like, they, you know, they're in the shower quite often. There's the shower story. You know, someone's in the shower and then they just have this idea and then they make a billion dollars. And it doesn't really happen that way, not ever. Unless the person had already been in business for, like, 10 years and then had the idea in the shower. Like, sometimes that can happen. But, you know, it's like people go out looking for ideas, and if you go out looking for ideas, you never find them. And I had this problem, too. I was like, what is that idea? And really, you've got to flip it over and look for problems. And so what you do instead is you go looking in the marketplace for problems. You go around and you ask people, hey, like, what is a massive problem for you? What do you hate? What do you dislike? What things in your life are burdening you? And then when you find out a massive problem people have, then the solution to that problem is your idea. So it's a different way of looking for things instead of looking for ideas, if you come up with one, then it's not attached to any problem. No one wants it. And so I did that. I started an online job board where people could post a profile of them online and then employers would look for them and it would work that way around. And I thought it was a cool idea, and I decided that that's what I was going to do. But then I did it and no one wanted it. And I was like, wow, I thought this was a good idea. And then people told me, it's a good idea, but I don't want it. And so I got the want part wrong. It was a cool idea. It was cool, but it wasn't needed. And you need more than just cool in business to make money, because someone won't just buy something that's cool. If I show you this one, this T shirt with a cat on it and it's all colorful, you might be like, that's a cool shirt, but I don't want it. I'm not going to pay for it. It's not enough to just have a cool idea. You need to solve a problem or you need to attach a cool idea to a problem. So my massive breakthrough in business came when I stopped looking for cool ideas and I started looking for problems. And I just started calling around property management companies and asking them, hey, what's the most painful part about being a property manager? And they would say. They'd be like, oh, it's property inspections. I talked to a lot of them and they'd all say, property inspections. So then I came up with an idea to create a mobile app to help property managers do inspections. And then that worked. That was the first time in my life that I created something that someone wanted. And that was the big aha moment. It's like, you don't come up with anything yourself. You go to the market and look for their problems, and the solution to their problem is your idea.

And how many people do you need to call before you can determine this is a market problem? Is it 2? Is it 5? Is it 10.

There's not a specific number, but you want to know that it's widespread instead of concentrated on one person. I see a lot of people, especially people who don't like talking to people, introverts, they'll often latch onto an idea early because they don't want to talk to more people. They're too scared. That's the worst thing you can do because it's false confidence. It's a belief that this one person represents the rest of the marketplace. And that is not a good bet to make. I would say if you had to pick a number, I'd say 30 people at least. The more the better. But if you can notice that a problem is spread across 30 people that have no real connection to each other. So like you, you might call a property manager in New York, one in California, one in Canada, one in London, a good mix. And if they all have the same problems and they all see value in the same Solution, and there's 30 of them and they're spread over different demographics, then I would say that there's a high chance that that is a market wide problem.

One thing I've seen when people do that, I think 30 is a good amount is they'll go and they'll ask 30 different people and they say, oh yeah, this is a problem. But then they forget one small part because then they create the solution and then they, hey, I have this and then no one buys it. So how do you determine how serious they are? Do they have the money to spend on this, on this problem? Is the problem painful enough to where they'll actually want you to get, you know, to help?

Yeah, well, you can't, you can't do the research when you already have a hypothesis because you make it biased. So you can't go to people. I see this happen all the time. An entrepreneur thinks everyone needs SEO, then he goes out to do market research and he says, do you need SEO? And pretty much pummels the person with questions until they're like, yes, I need SEO. I did my research. That doesn't work. You can't have a bias or you can't have any form of hypothesis about what the market wants, because if you do have any bias or any form of hypothesis, then you will make that come true in your research. So if I believed everyone wanted, I did believe that everyone wanted this job board website, which I made. So I would talk to everyone and maneuver my questions around to pretty much get them to say, yeah, I want this. And then I was like, aha. I knew it. Everyone wants this. And then I went out to sell it to people and, and it was, they were like, I don't want this. And you've got to remove that confirmation bias. When you're trying to figure out what people want so you don't go to someone, do you have this problem? Because they might say, yeah. And then when it comes to paying money, they don't. Right. So you really have to go to people and you have to say like without any bias, you have to let them tell you what their problems are and you can't seed the problem for them to say that they have it. So like if I was going to ask you, I would say, hey Nick, on a day to day basis, what are the most painful problems that you experience in your business? And then you would tell me now.

Do people want to answer that question right off the bat?

Well, you probably want to say hello and everything first. But yeah, people love talking about themselves and especially problems. People like talking about their problems. And especially when you have no agenda. The no agenda part is crucial. If you're planning to sell someone something on that very call, then the research is gone. You know, like when you're doing research, you're doing research and when you're doing sales, you're doing sales. Like you and entrepreneurs, they can't really do this very well because they're so hungry to make money and so they can't be non biased for a while. And so when you're doing your research and trying to form an accurate view of the market, you need to step outside of like all of your beliefs and all of your biases and have no opinion of the person of the industry and no opinion of what they want or what you. And you, you can't have any opinion of selling them anything either. You just are trying to get like the truth. They want to get a very accurate picture of the truth.

Yeah, so I see what you mean. Because then they recognize something right away if it's questions are asked in a way that they think might lead to a sale on that call. Because it kind of shows up when you're there and you're like, oh, are you really just asking me this so you can sell me something? You're trying to put me into a trap as opposed to really letting them take you in whichever way they want to take the conversation. Right.

You can still lead the conversation, but you can't put the ideas in their head and then ask them, you know, like I can't say, is SEO a problem for you? Or I looked you up on Google and you're not ranking on the first page. Is that a problem for you? You know, like that's. Someone might not have had that as a problem, but now that that person sees that, they might think, oh, yeah, maybe I don't want to be there. But you can't do that because that's not representative of the market. Because you went in and like you went in your opinion and your bias affected that conversation. And so you can't have a bias when you're doing it. Otherwise you'll end up with the wrong idea. You'll come up with an idea like I did that no one wanted, right?

So oftentimes it sounds like the best business ideas are ones that you had no idea beforehand before talking to someone with a problem.

Of course, it's like trying to find out what Suzy wants for lunch. Like, if Susie's sitting over here on a park bench, you're here on the other park bench. If your job is to find out what Susie wants for lunch, you can't go over there and say like, hey, I've got like a chicken sandwich. Like, is it chicken sandwich what you want for lunch? Right? You have to. Nor can you ever guess what Suzy wants for lunch. You just have to go over there and ask her without bias, like, what do you want for lunch? And she might have to think about that and then she will tell you and then that truly is what she wants for lunch. And I use Suzy as an example or a metaphor of the market. And you need to find out what the market wants and you need to have no bias when you do it, otherwise you're going to. If you say like a ham sandwich, do you want one? Then she might say, yeah, but then the rest of the market didn't want ham sandwiches, right? Like, you've got to be totally non biased when you do that research.

Now on the other side, I've seen some people say the market doesn't know what they want, right? You determine what the market wants with your marketing ability or whatnot. But oftentimes that's pretty rare. And it's kind of knocking out of the park to be able to hit a product that no one knew they wanted beforehand or didn't have that problem beforehand.

So someone can know that they don't. Someone can. You can provide something which people don't know that they want, but that desire has to be there at some point. You can't, like, you know, you can't create desire in a marketplace. You can only harness exile you can only harness desire that already exists. Like, I like to think about it like a wave. Like you can't, you know, swim out on your surfboard, create a wave and then surf it. Like, you have to go out in your surfboard, find a wave and then surf it. And you know, if you try go surfing with no waves, it ain't working. And that's kind of like business. You can't fight the market. If you try and fight the market, you'll go broke. But quite a lot of the time the market doesn't know what they want, but they kind of their desire, they know what that is. Like, they might know that they aren't happy or they might know that, like they have too many social media platforms or they might have frustrations. You know, people have problems. People always know what problems they have. They don't know what solutions they want. And so, you know, you can't. That's why you can't go to a market and ask them, what do you want? Because a lot of the time they don't know. And if they tell you something that might be totally wrong, but they always know what they don't like, right?

And what typically when you call people and ask and you're trying to discover these problems, do you preface the conversation when you start with, hey, I'm not trying to sell you anything.

I did, Yeah, I did that a lot. Like, I'd email them first. I'd say, hey, my name's Sam. I'm not trying to sell you anything. I'm just conducting some research at the end of it, and I'm happy to share all of my findings. I'm trying to find out what the most painful problems in this industry are. And if you could just write back, even if it's two sentences, it'd be awesome. I'd send out that email, I'd get people replied, then I'd try and escalate that to a phone conversation. Some of the conversations even ended up, like with coffee and lunch and stuff. And it's because I had no bias. I wasn't there to push my agenda. I didn't have one. I had nothing to sell. I truly just wanted to understand the person and the industry. And after I did that with 30, 40 people, I had a very accurate picture.

Got it. And then at what point do you come back and revisit those people? Because I assume they're prospects, right? Because those are the ones you got the information for and you eventually want to sell them something. So once you have a solution developed Whether it's consulting or whatever that is. And you come back and you're like, hey, I think I can implement this. Or what do you do? How's that proposal work?

So you could go back to them and say like I did. I was like, hey, you know, I went and built this thing and I'd say it solves, you know, the problems. Do you want to, do you want to try it? And then. But if you got it right, the answer should be yes, because that was their most painful problem. Who doesn't want that solved?

Right? Yeah, that makes sense. Now does that work the same as it in like human capital, like consulting services? It does. When building a software solution for someone.

It'S just the same things. Yeah. Atoms or bits?

Same thing, atoms and bits. So the conversation works very similar. In fact, when you're doing that, you ask them, maybe you're, let's say you're a marketing consultant and you go, do you typically ask them the process or is there a different way that you go about selling that type of stuff? Service that would be unique.

Honestly, it's the same. It's like, it's what problems are you facing without any bias? If they are facing a problem which I can solve, then I tell them that I can solve it. And if we're aligned properly like that, then it's a no brainer. Right? People are just out there trying to. The way the economy works is people are just out there every day trying to buy a better version of themselves and whatever they might think that is. So some people might want to get skinnier, fitter, some of them might want to wear different clothes, some of them might want a beach house, someone might want to retire. Whatever people want, the global economy ticks on that every day just by people buying a better version of themselves according to what better means to that person. And when you're trying to, when you're trying to become a producer in the economy, you need to understand what people want. And the best way to do that is to have no bias. Find out, go talk to the market, find out what people want. And then when you have a conviction on what people want, you can become a supplier of that thing and there's no other way to do it. If you become a supplier without taking a view on the market accurately, then no one's going to buy or supply. You have to really find out what people want, then supply it. And you have to keep coming back to the market too because it changes and something that's right right now might not be right. In five years. And that's why it's important to constantly keep in touch with your market and check the pulse on it to make sure that you're iterating and improving to be in alignment with what's going on.

Yeah, I see that a lot. Especially with someone who they specialize in a certain problem solution. Then all of a sudden something came along, whether it was technology or something else. And that no longer is even a problem for people anymore because there's even a better solution. And it's in a different mechanism or a different. It's not anything related to them, but then they're still stuck on this business idea and trying to make it work.

Yeah, things change. Like, people change, markets change. And it's whoever knows the most about the market, really the people who know the most about the market and have the most accurate view on it, they're always the people that win. And having a good and accurate view on the market also means you can kind of predict where it's going to go. And that's how you can stay ahead of that curve all of the time.

And how do you best do that to someone who's looking to stay ahead of the market?

You've got to understand it first before you can ever learn to get ahead. Like, most people don't even know how to take an accurate view on what is, let alone what it's going to be. I mean it. Once you've, like. Once you've submerged yourself in understanding one particular area of the market, after years you'll start to get a natural sense of where things are going. Just because it's like riding a bike, you know, like, once you are so. Once you're so skilled at riding a bike, you can't. You don't think I'm riding a bike. You're just on it and you swerve. It's like. It's just. It becomes a part of you. And that's what happens when you really submerge yourself into one particular area of the market. You just know it and you can sense it. Like, if something moves here, like, you can feel it. And like, you know, I've been in the consulting market for long enough and I've studied it for so long that I can sense it. Like, I can sense where it's going to go. I'm not saying I'm always going. If I thought I was always going to be right, then I'd eventually be wrong. So I still am very cautious that I could be wrong. But to date, I've been Able to accurately predict where it's moving.

So how many people do you come into contact with often are stuck on the idea that they have to do this cool business idea. And how many people are open, I guess, to even considering something?

Well, I think they should do it anyway because often people have to do the wrong thing to figure out what the right thing is. I'm not to really say if someone really wants to start a business, I'm not gonna tell them that it's the wrong thing because I think it's just best they get started. I started how many different businesses that didn't work out before I found one that did. So. So who am I to say what the right business is to start? I think people who want to start a business do it, just start it. Because you're going to figure out the right one anyway.

Yeah, I'd agree. It's probably just best they take any sort of some.

Yeah, just do it. Even if everyone thinks it's stupid, just do it and then see what happens and then learn from that iterate and improve. You need to get moving in some direction to figure out which way to pivot and turn and, and eventually with enough time and with enough variation, you will find it.

Got it. So I guess in summary, is there such thing as a good business idea? Is there such thing as a dumb business idea or is there just.

I think there is. It totally depends on. It totally depends on everything. I think the best business idea is a solution to a massive problem that no one else can see. That's what I think it is. I don't think it's a solution to a problem that's really obvious or already being done. I think it's one that no one else can see and it's massive. Those are the ones which I think are the best. And the more painful the problem, the better the business is going to be. Like if you could figure out a way to make, to make yourself like. Like if you could find a pill that you could take that made you like a billion dollars. Right? That would be a great business idea because the pain is like, you know, the pain of poverty and the pain of non success is very high. Also the pain of different diseases like cancer and things like that. If you found a solution to that. I mean, I'm using extreme examples to make a point. But the more painful the problem and the more widespread the problem, the greater the opportunity is when you solve that problem. And sometimes you can't think that big in the beginning. Like I didn't think big at all compared to some people like Elon Musk. I'm still thinking small. But you just start somewhere and just try and solve problems. All businesses really is solving people's problems.

Yeah, that's a good way to put it.

Yes. So if anyone's wondering, like, I don't have any ideas or what's a cool idea, or how do I come up with an idea, don't look for ideas, just look for problems. And then the solution to that problem is your idea. And if you do that, you should have no problem being successful in business.