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OBJECTIVES: Make sure you're connected with an audience who need a solution to their problem, because successful products depend on making things people need. Ensure you're motivated to solve their problem, because successful products require a huge amount of time and dedication.

If you're ready, you can use this chapter's practical tasks. Or you can read about the theory below.

Theory

Before we go deeper into developing our idea, as well as understanding our audience and their problems further, there are some fundamentals we need nailed down. If we don't have these, we shouldn't bother making a product at all. You'll be wasting time, money, and pay the opportunity cost of not doing something better. But if you feel energised after reading this section, then there's a good chance you've got the elements of something great. Or you're unhinged.

Here are the aspects of winning products we'll focus on in this chapter:

Why are you here?

Why are you building a product? Are you helping your company try something new? Is it because you’re solving a personal problem so dire, life can’t continue without it? Or is it to make a tonne of cash in a startup, buy a private island, and lose touch with reality?

Knowing your motives is the first challenge, and one you have to answer honestly. Creating a product to solve a problem you’re experiencing can be really rewarding, but it may not lead to financial or professional success, and vice-versa.

Be honest with yourself about why you're doing this.

The magic combo

You might be starting with an idea in mind already, but we need to park that for the moment - sorry. Let's make sure we understand the root problem, and learn about the audience you’re planning to serve.

Problems don’t exist without an unwilling victim (audience). Audiences don’t exist without a common problem to tie them together.

That means you start the journey at a fork in the road. Either find a problem worth solving and then learn about the audience; or find an audience you want to help and then discover a problem they need solving. You may be prospecting for a problem that could spell success your startup, or solving further problems for an already-established audience of your product (to create a deeper loyalty with them).

A problem is only worth solving if its audience deems it so. An audience will only be engaged when their problem is dire enough. The key is to keep looking at, researching and talking to audiences about their problems, until you find something worth solving.

The Magic Combo: Finding an engaged audience with a problem they're desperate to solve.

Let's take an example. Imagine that you once worked in a school, and want to create a product for teachers - you know there are lots of problems they have to solve. After talking to several teachers, you find they have a problem with discovering inspiration for lesson planning. An engaged audience with a problem they want solving! Bingo. However during your research, you find that many of the teachers have a much bigger, unmentioned problem of scheduling and tracking homework. The initial audience is the same, but now it’s grown to include students too, and the problem has changed (in nature and severity). In a few conversations, you've potentially increased the value of your product by an order of magnitude, without building a thing.

So don’t fall in love with your idea just yet. Or ever in fact. Start with the problem and the audience.

Finding your audience

We know that having an engaged audience with a problem worth solving will mean the difference between success and abject failure of your product.

Before we continue, let's look at defining what we mean by audience. I'll use the terms audience, users and customers in this book, and there is a difference. These are my own definitions, so you may see alternatives elsewhere.

As shown in the diagram, an audience is the largest group, comprised of people who share a common problem. Users are members of an audience who take up your product and use it. Customers go on to pay for your product, and normally find the most value in using it. Sometimes users and customers can be the same group of people, but there are many products where its usage is free for some, but not others; think free online courses with premium lectures for paying customers.

Back to finding your audience.

At times when I already had a problem in mind, I've used social media to great effect, specifically Facebook and Twitter. I'll simply ask if anyone in my network, and extended network, have experienced a problem. People are often quite forthcoming about issues they've faced, and if you're offering to listen, you might be surprised how much people want to talk. If that's not working, ask friends and family to ask their friends and family. Try a forum, gatherings of people, in-person or online.

If you don't yet have a problem you'd like to solve, then I recommend you still start with the audience, ideally an audience you're either connected to, or care about. These may be people like you, or from an industry you worked in, a cause you believe in, or friends who've complained about a problem they keep encountering.

A word of warning. Be aware that it's sometimes difficult to be objective when you have close relationships to your audience. The less connected you are personally to your audience, the more you can rely on their feedback. People who love you will often tell you what you want to hear.

Here's a rule of thumb I find helpful.

You know the names of three members of your audience, and you've spoken to them in-depth about their problem.

If you can find three people who share a problem, and can talk about it with them, you'll either be super energised, or realise you shouldn't go any further. If your audience is made up of people close to you (close friends and family), try increasing that number to ten - because a stranger's opinion is very valuable.

Something to understand now is also, how many audiences do you have?

The platform Etsy has buyers and sellers, which means it has two audiences. Both are distinct and need to be treated uniquely, but also understanding they need each other for the platform to work.

Here's what to ask your audience when prospecting for problems. Some of these are different ways of asking the same question, but tend to elicit different responses:

• Can you describe the problem(s) in your own words?
• What are your biggest pain points?
• What are your biggest worries?
• What happens if you don't solve these problems?
• If you could push a magic button, how would it solve your problems?
• How do other people deal with the same problems?
• Why do you need to solve these problems?
• Can you list the steps before and after this problem occurs?

I've found these are effective ways of getting to root causes of problems and helping me focus on the most valuable issues to solve. They should help us start to understand where we focus our efforts. After all, if there are 100 problems to solve, and we can optimistically only solve 5 right now, let's make sure they're worth it.

I'd also suggest performing the ultimate test. Take the most dire problem, or small set of problems and pose this:

Will your audience give you £10 upfront to solve their problem?

It's a fun way to gauge interest in what you're doing. I've used it myself, in the form of a pre-sale; offering my audience the chance to get their hands on the product first, and get exclusive discounts when it's released. If you don't solve their problem in a way they love, give them the £10 back. Or offer to pay them an extra £10 - make it interesting.

If you don't want to start with an audience, you can go in search of problems to solve. However I've found that the faster you speak to the audience suffering the problem, the better, because you'll get a sense of perspective; whether the problem actually needs solving. It's easy to spend hours on a quest to solve a problem that no-one cares about.

If no-one cares about the problem, no-one cares about your product.

It's brutal, but it's inescapable.

Do you care?

You don’t always need to love your audience, or share their problem. But you at least need to care enough about solving it, so that common distractions are less interesting than what you’re working on, and you’re energised to sacrifice the time and energy to create something truly great.

Note to those building products on behalf of your employer or a client. If you have to create a prosaic product, like building something necessary but boring for your company, don’t underestimate the value of your team finding inspiration in their work. If the nature of the problem is not compelling to your team, it helps to reframe the project in pursuit of self-development, or at least being committed to achieving a level of quality which speaks to their pride. Not everything we work on will be interesting, but we can find ways to make it so. If you can't find a way to love solving the problem (including personal development, team pride, breaking ground etc), I'd genuinely consider if you're in the right place. Maybe ask to work on something else, or find somewhere new, where you love solving the problems there. The commitment required to build great solutions could be described as total.

Know yourself. If you’re bored by solving the problem, you’re wasting your time.

You’ll start strong, but very quickly find other ways to spend your time, and yet another unfinished project will get filed on the shelf to fossilise.

What Next?

If you're working on a product right now, try completing the tasks for this chapter. Alternatively you can read the theory of the next chapter.