How to Find Juicy Problems

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• The 25th Mile Rule - Which Customers to Help

Why This Episode Exists + Nerdy Stuff Not In The Pod 💡

Today’s episode is about finding problems worth solving, and I don’t think there’s a more under appreciated practice and skill.

The best way to start is to learn a system to surface things people hate doing but have to do.

The founder of one of our fastest growing businesses said this in an interview the other day - “our customers cannot stand solving this problem, but I can’t figure out why that is. I love it. It’s interesting and so important to their business. I’m happy to take it off their plate.”

The more you look for things people hate, the more likely you’ll land on a problem that can create that scenario for you - something critical your customers hate doing but you find endlessly interesting.

We talk through how to find these types of problems today, using examples from a business that helps you buy a used car and how doctors handle chronic pain.

Pod References

• Tacklebox

• Byldd

• Idea to Startup Newsletter

• Idea to Startup Bot

Timestamps

0:27 Intro - Noticing What People Hate
05:00 The Car Problem
07:52 BYLDD
09:15 Solving Hard Problems
13:42 Decision Hunting
15:30 Chronic Pain
18:30 The End - Problem Hunting

Transcript - Feel Free to Read it Like a Long-form Article:

Today, we’re going to talk about an undervalued entrepreneurial superpower - noticing what people **hate.

My inbox is flooded with folks pitching every business under the sun that could leverage ChatGPT or insert the name of your favorite AI tool. The titles of these emails are aggressive - declaring that this or that industry is quote - dead, sometimes in all caps, once with all caps and multiple skull and bones emojis. So far, I’ve gotten emails saying that banking, journalism, travel agents (that one had the skull and bones emoji), google, loneliness and even helping people start startups are dead. Hey.

The loneliness thing peaked my attention a bit, because loneliness is a full blown epidemic, with 36% of all Americans and 61% of young adults feeling - quote - severe and serious loneliness. I’m not sure a product using ChatGPT is going to be the answer to that but I’m also not sure it isn’t, and any time spent on that problem is well spent, so go nuts. And the others, yeah - fine - have some fun. Playing around with new tech that makes things possible today that weren’t a week ago is great.

But, as always, leading with the problem - specifically one you’ve got some asymmetric information on - is better than starting with tech. Specifically, hunting the smallest atomic unit of pain - the moment that you recognize and others don’t increases the odds you succeed because it increases the odds you get initial traction.

The first implementation of AI for most industries won’t be an overhaul, but a solution to a small, niche, burning problem that results in a status level jump. One with trackable metrics. And, a person who owns those metrics and will get promoted if those metrics improve.

That’s a long way of saying that AI is great, but as my Dad says AI plus two dollars and fifty cents will get you on the subway. AI is now a commodity, which means the unique thing here is still the insight - the thing you understand about the customer that no one else does - the hidden painpoint. Then, use AI to scale your process, maybe.

As a side note, I recently had an idea for a NICHE tv show called the Problem Hunters, where me, or someone better on screen than me - if possible- goes into businesses, runs a bunch of aired customer interviews, then sidles up to those businesses and watches operations for a few weeks and documents the high level stuff.

Startup nerds could watch this and it’d basically be a proxy for deep customer work. For example, the first episode might be the problem hunters following people who build fences in people’s yards in the suburbs to try to figure out why it’s so comically expensive. We’d dig in on process, sourcing, staffing, competition, demand, marketing, where they spend their money, where they spend their time - all of it. Then we’d do the same thing at accounting firms and divorce attorneys and zoos and plumbers and HVAC repair companies and bowling alleys and community colleges. We’d basically be searching for dams - things builders could fix. That’d be fun, right? If there’s someone listening who produces these sorts of things let’s make problem hunters happen. Also I just came up with a better name - the show is now called What’s Your Problem and I’m even more excited about it.

Anyway, today, we’re going to talk about finding and surfacing the stuff your customer absolutely hates. Humans will go to extraordinary lengths to avoid doing something uncomfortable - if you find that thing and solve it for them, a business usually follows.

Humans make decisions on envy not greed, and humans take action based on avoiding discomfort rather than seeking value.

I truly believe that like 10% of my married friends got married because it’d be too uncomfortable to break up. If you’re a friend and listening to the pod, don’t worry, I’m not talking about you.

Anyway, let’s get into it.

As even passive listeners of the show know because I won’t shut up about it, I had a baby and moved to Connecticut. For a huge part of my life that sentence would’ve made me want to drink a glass of the leftover luke warm shrimp stock we had from a delightful shrimp and grits sunday dinner last night - shout out NY times recipe app - but now, I love where I’m at.

Unfortunately, the suburbs are a breeding ground for the Diderot effect. This is the formal name for the thing that happens when you get a nice couch, then suddenly realize your rug and coffee table and TV don’t look as good as they used to in comparison and a $1,500 couch ends up costing multiples of that because you re-do your living room to fit the standard the couch set. The hidden costs to acquiring new things are multiples of the actual cost.

So, a few months in, we decided we needed a second car to shuttle the little guy around. We landed on getting a used car and dove into some online research to figure out which car to buy. It turns out that the ranking sites - car and driver, US news, kelly bluebook, etc. - just list most cars now. I assume their business model is affiliate and ad-driven, which means they’re incentivized to list as many cars as they can fit.

The “best mid-size SUV for families” had 14 results. That’s… less than helpful.

Next, we started scrolling through used car listings to see if anything stuck out, but I felt like Seinfeld doing that bit about reading ingredients on pain medication in the drug store as if you’ve got any clue what any of it means - “this one has 0.03 tetrahydrozaline - that’s a good amount of that.” Is a 2019 with 25k miles and no leather better than a 2020 with 36k miles and a sun roof?

Also, my antenna were up - I’m always hesitant with any transaction where I’ll only interact with the other side once, especially when there’s asymmetric information. It’s way too easy to get screwed, or at least feel like you might’ve been.

The undercurrent to all this searching was the final boss of uncomfortable moments - negotiating with a used car salesman, which sounds significantly less pleasant than the glass of that shrimp juice.

All of these headwinds had us ready to throw in the towel and buy a new car when my father in law jumped in.

“Just use my guy,” he said. My father in law is the type of guy who has a guy for everything.

“You tell him what you want and he’ll go find the best car for you, negotiate a good deal, then bring you the paperwork. You just sign where he tells you to then pick up your car.”

The clouds had parted.

How much does it cost, we asked?

“500 bucks. But he’ll easily save you more than that negotiating.”

Give us his info, my wife and I yelped at the same time.

The reason most startups fail isn’t that the tech needed to build them doesn’t exist. It’s that the entrepreneur didn’t find something the customer hated doing enough to pay someone else to do for them.

That moment - the yelp - needs to be at the center of your business. If your first customers do it, there might be something here. If your first customers don’t, you might need to dig a bit more. The way to make your life easy isn’t ChatGPT - it’s to find the a moment your customer absolutely despises and then help them teleport from one side to the other. Help them skip the mess.

ChatGPT will make that teleportation easier. But finding the moment and the customer is still up to you.

Today, we’ll get into that - how to find and build for the stuff your customer hates doing … after, a message from some friends of ours.

—

byldd

—

A day or two after getting the car guy’s email, we reached out and we got on the phone to talk about what type of car we wanted.

We’d had a specific car in mind, but he immediately pushed back. You won’t be able to fit a car seat in there - you’ll be miserable. You need to size up, or, in my opinion, get a different car altogether.

We waited on pins and needles for his opinion on which car we should get, but he didn’t give in that easy.

Why don’t you take my survey, he said. It’s $100 more, but it’ll ask you a bunch of questions and then spit out the right car. Then, I’ll go find you a great deal on it.

The $100 was even easier to spend than the first $500. It actually seemed too cheap. Telling us what car to get was at least as valuable as finding the car was.

The questions in the survey ranged from how, exactly, we’d use the car, to how tall we were, to how our family would grow, to payment range, to how important brand of car was, to what features we’d overpay for vs definitely not overpay for.

A few days later, our results came back. He’d chosen a clear winner - the absolute best car for us. It wasn’t on our original list and we don’t know anyone who has it - honestly, we never would’ve considered it - but we quickly agreed. That was the car for us.

Now, he’s out in the world finding and negotiating a great deal for us. At some point in the next week or two, he’ll send us paperwork to sign. Then, we’ll pick up our car.

A car, like a house or a new job, comes with a story. When people find out about your car or house or job, they ask about it and you dive in. My father in laws used car guy is now a central character. Each time we tell the story, we’ll spread his business.

People talk about products that help them solve hard problems. We can’t resist. We love being helpful and saving people discomfort does that. Plus, everyone loves having a guy.

Solving a really hard problem is the best possible marketing strategy for a startup.

I’ve already told the story a few times because I’m a nerd about this sort of thing, and I’ve already passed on two referrals. When I reached out to the car guy to get his website to send to friends he said “oh, never built one. After I did this the first few times the challenge has always been keeping up with demand, not looking for new customers.

“It seems like every person I find a car for ends up referring me to 5 or 10 more people.”

When you help people solve hard problems, they talk.

When I asked how many cars he bought a week, he replied - “oh anywhere from 10 to 20 most weeks.”

If you’re keeping score at home, 20 cars a week at 600 bucks a car for 52 weeks is a cool 625 grand.

I didn’t get into the automation or the database or how he negotiates or where he finds the cars. I’m obviously curious, but the guy was busy enough. And, it doesn’t really matter for the pod.

You all know what to do with this type of business - build individual systems that’ll scale and become the business. Automate and facilitate referrals from happy customers, build the survey and pair it with zapier so the right car suggestion with the right blurb is sent a few days later, build out a database of used car dealers and create relationships with them to buy quicker and negotiate pricing, probably hire a VA or two to handle all of this so you spend your time meeting with new clients exclusively.

Maybe you leverage chatgpt for this. I asked it to compose an email suggesting a honda crv to a family of four. Here’s what we got:

I hope this email finds you well. As someone who understands the importance of finding the right car for your family, I would like to suggest a Honda CRV for your family of four.

The CRV is a popular compact SUC that provides ample space for a family of four with comfortable seating, roomy cargo area, and plenty of room for child car seats. The vehicle is equipped with advanced safety features such as collision mitigation braking, lane departure warning, and adaptive cruise control that ensures the safety of your family.

This went on for a few more compelling paragraphs, and could easily become part of the product.

Once you’ve found that awful moment you’ll help your customer teleport over, AI will likely help you scale it.

So how do you find the moment?

—

Decision Hunting

Why do CEOs get paid so much?

Because they make decisions. Most people hate making decisions. The majority of our pain comes from avoiding decisions - it’s rare that the right or wrong decision will be all that bad for you. No decision is what really hurts.

When I’m looking for painful moments, for problems that might be worth solving, I’m searching for the no decision moments. The places where there should be a decision, but because there’s so much discomfort people either avoid the decision altogether or drag their feet making it.

Taking an uncomfortable decision off someone’s plate is the fastest way to get a stranger to buy something from you. Removing an uncomfortable decision leads to an instant yes from customers. I didn’t need to hear anything about the car guy who’d charge me $500 to know that that sounded way less uncomfortable than the alternative. I just knew he was teleporting me from not having a car to having one, and he was taking ownership of the process. Perfect.

The decisions people avoid tend to have some characteristics in common:

• Lack of information and difficult to acquire quality information on the decision

• High cost - dollar and emotional

• Public

• Emotional

• Lots of difficult to quantify variables

• Never made before, might never make again

Here’s an example.

Chronic pain is a massive problem. Depending on what research you believe, somewhere between 20 and 30% of people suffer from chronic pain that impacts them daily.

Chronic pain is hard to treat because of all of the variables. If you tear your ACL, you tore your ACL. Diagnosis and treatment are clear.

But chronic headaches could be neurological, they could be mus·cu·lo·skel·e·tal, they could be stress driven or depression and anxiety related or due to ankle tightness. Seriously. They could be because your hips aren’t aligned or your core is weak or your glutes don’t fire. And whatever the root cause was, the injury changes over time as your nervous system gets used to the pain so even if you align your hips and they were the initial problem, your nervous system is now used to the pain and will fire those pain synapses without any underlying physical reason.

Chronic pain is a complicated rats nest that requires physical and mental rehabilitation and doctors want no part of because of how hard it is.

So, if you have chronic pain, it’s not that there are no cures. It’s just that you’re in charge of project managing something that’ll likely take 10 doctors to cure.

And finding doctors, trying them, deciding they worked or more difficultly deciding they didn’t and it’s time to try something new, is exceedingly uncomfortable. Especially when you’ve got headaches.

So, 20-30% of the population has chronic pain because the problem of chronic pain is hard. If you can’t tell, this is a problem I’m obsessed with.

As we were working with the car guy my mind couldn’t stop floating back to this use case. I had chronic headaches for years, and I was thinking about how welcome it would’ve been for someone to say “hey, you’ve got chronic headaches and they’re bad. I’m going to manage this for you. I’ll make appointments, track the diagnoses, and continue to help you search until you find the right solution.”

About how the care provider decision had all the uncomfortable variables. About how welcome an expert in the space would’ve been.

So, I tossed up a few ads for a company that did this in a few Reddit threads for people with chronic back pain. I said I’d help them find new doctors and treatments and make new appointments for a six month stretch to attack the pain and try to kick it. It’d cost $500 / month. There were few other details other than it started with an application - basically a survey of how you felt and what you’d tried.

Within three hours I had 5 applications, 5 people eager and willing to pay for a thing that didn’t have a website. I responded to each saying I wouldn’t be able to guarantee they’d get better, just that I’d help them facilitate a bunch of appointments. I’d help them make a bunch of decisions.

Amazing, one replied. When can we start? I can start today.

I told them I was just stress testing an idea and that the service hadn’t been built yet and they were genuinely sad. Please make this, they wrote in their email with a bunch of exclamation points. I have a group of people that would all want it.

People talk about hard problems.

Back and forth

There’s a gold rush in AI right now and there probably should be - it’s useful. But not on it’s own, and not in all the obvious scenarios.

The good thing about it is this is your chance - your excuse to go hunting for the moments people hate. The decisions they avoid making. The opportunity for your product to be a teleportation device, picking them up at one side of the problem and dropping them off at the other. Like my father in law’s car guy.

And once you find that problem, leveraging the AI stuff to scale it is brilliant. Mix in the VA stuff, Zapier, no code - all the tools to build just about any sort of product you like are available.

Go Problem Hunting first, then build.

And, again, if you’re a TV producer or work at HBO or just have a high quality camera and want to film a little serious - how much fun would what’s your problem be?