Ever been frustrated by your phone falling between your car seats, or by your socks always disappearing? Our homes and work environments are filled with tiny frustrations, and for the most part, we accept them as part of life. However, there’s a growing section of society that values peace of mind and solutions to common problems.
Innovative solutions are the bread and butter of any million-dollar idea, and this is a widely understood fact. Research by consulting firm BCG highlights that 79% of companies ranked innovation among their top three priorities. They also found that the most innovative companies outperform the MSCI World Index on shareholder return by 3.3 points.
Fortunately, finding innovative solutions to life’s problems isn’t the monopoly of large companies like Apple. In this article, let’s find out how tiny annoyances have the potential to make even new entrepreneurs a ton of money.
Why Do Annoyances Make Great Business Ideas?
A common mistake that new entrepreneurs make is believing that they need to solve groundbreaking problems to see great success. However, veterans understand that more often than not, you are better off trying to fix tiny problems permanently. There are many reasons for this. There are tons of annoyances that are still unsolved. In addition, if you pick the right niche early on, you barely have any competition to worry about.
Look at the process of building websites. It was one annoyance that stumped entrepreneurs for many years. You either had to have the know-how or pay good money to have someone do it for you. However, entrepreneurs with keen eyes noticed that this annoyance represented a great business idea. Today, you can see this idea manifested in the form of Hocoos, an AI website builder.
As Hocoos explains, all you need to do is answer a bunch of questions about your ideal website and voilà! You have a website up and running in a matter of minutes. It’s a perfect instance of an annoyance being turned into a business. Think about it: if you’re an entrepreneur, it doesn’t matter what kind of niche you’re in; a website is a necessity.
However, the difficulty in building one stopped a lot of people. Today, that obstacle or barrier no longer exists. So, think long and hard about what pain points you can solve. If you find the right one, it may set the standard and become the norm.
How Do You Pick the Right Annoyance?
A recent article on Entrepreneur highlights that identifying and resolving pain points is fundamental to launching a successful business. Aytekin Tank, an industry leader and founder of Jotform, explains that solving a pain point can sometimes even mean taking an existing product and making it better.
However, if you prefer to solve something new, then start paying attention to your daily life. We recommend you maintain something like an “Annoyance Journal,” where you make a log of every aspect that frustrates you.
In about a week’s time, you should have several entries from observing your daily routine, your work life, and any hobbies you participate in. You’ll have plenty of frustrations you encounter that can potentially make for great business ideas.
However, don’t just limit observation to yourself; start paying attention to what other people are also frustrated by. YouTube comments sections, Amazon reviews, and even Reddit threads are great places to keep an eye on.
Similarly, start looking at situations where people are trying to create DIY and half-baked solutions. Typically, this represents a prime opportunity for a smart entrepreneur to create a full solution that can go viral if the price is right. This brings us to our next point, which is particularly important.
Stop Overpricing Fixes to Minor Annoyances
This is a trend that everyone has noticed, and it has the potential to stump your entire business. We’ve all seen products that appear out of nowhere and seemingly solve something we were frustrated by. However, you look at the price, and for some reason, it's $799 before taxes. The fact is, at high price points, even a perfect solution becomes a gimmick product for a niche audience.
You may have arrived at that price after factoring in R&D costs and other factors, and it might seem fair to you. However, the customer doesn’t care about that. This is the one flaw of using tiny problems as a business idea. You need to keep things simple and cost-effective. In other words, avoid overengineering your solution and making it unnecessarily expensive.
A great example would be a solution that aims to make any chair super ergonomic. You want to ensure that the solution isn’t as simple as a cushion, but not as complex as some sort of full-scale, electric exoskeleton. You want to find that middle ground in price that customers would gladly pay.
Gartner provides some great insights on this theme. They note that pricing isn’t a ‘set-it-and-forget-it’ thing. They recommend evaluating pricing early on, aligning it with customer value, and also revisiting the price regularly. So, if you have a hunch that you set prices too high, don’t hesitate to adjust them as required.
All things considered, there’s mainly one fundamental point to take away from this article. The point is to never forget that you are solving ‘minor annoyances.’ In other words, if your product is too expensive, it’s extremely easy for customers to say ‘no thanks’ and continue living with the issue until a simpler and more affordable solution comes along.
