“Find Someone in Pain”
During my time at BYU’s Marriott School of Management, I took a class called the Entrepreneurship Lecture Series. Once a week we listened to the experiences of successful entrepreneurs from all different business sectors. It was a great class and I thoroughly enjoyed many of the guest lecturers, but one in particular stood out. He was a man who had started a successful business in the healthcare industry after he had seen an opportunity for a business and rushed to grab it. His advice to us was, “Find someone in pain.” As a medical business owner you might think he was being literal and cheeky, but he wasn’t. Rather, he was trying to describe someone in economic pain. The degree to which we could alleviate that pain would be the determinant of our business’ success. The lesson has not been forgotten, but confirmed by examples that I’ve seen in my life.
Alleviate the Pain: Meet their Needs
My father has built a career on meeting needs. He works in the marine industry in San Diego, CA, and he is another great example to me of entrepreneurial savvy. He started off as a deck hand on a commercial fishing boat, and today he owns and runs several marine industry businesses. After securing a loan and purchasing a boat yard, he jumped head first into the yacht repair industry. After a few years of experience, he began to notice people with “needs” all around him. He had a business associate with tugboats that needed a reliable relationship with a barge owner. He purchased barges and they started working together. He met a Midwestern quarry owner who needed help managing a small property in Long Beach. Soon after, he set up a consulting service and started managing the facility. Largely, I would say that my father’s success came because he recognized needs (opportunities) and acted on them quickly and whole-heartedly. In the process he’s alleviated pain and created jobs in the marine industry.
Creating Needs from Wants
A famous saying goes like this:
“There, there little want, don’t you cry, you’ll be a need, by and by.”
If any of you don’t believe that needs can be created, feel free to ask Steve Jobs about that one. The IPod, the IPhone, the IPad??? Is there any person on earth that will physically die if they do not purchase an IPad? I highly doubt it. Yet, as soon as the first commercial came out, thousands of people across the world instantly thought, “I NEED IT!” Does anyone really need Diet Coke, World of Warcraft, or Facebook to continue breathing? Click on their respective links if you think the answer is no. You might be surprised what you find. Need creation is a part of American business. The line between what we need and want is continually blurred. This fact is used to the entrepreneur’s advantage every day by those that know how to do it. My point is, needs are being created constantly. Convincing people that they need your product is hard, but if you can do it, the sky is the limit. Then again, you don’t have to be the one creating the needs, you just have to identify them quickly. Get to know your industry niche, identify the new trends, and when you see an opportunity, pounce!
Carpe Diem!
There’s a reason I said “pounce!” in the last paragraph: its pretty much always necessary! You can’t just do some strategic fence-sitting in an effort to feel out the market. You can’t spend years and years developing a perfect product in a rapidly-evolving market. When you identify a need as an opportunity for business success, you have to literally jump at the chance. An author who, to me, exemplifies this mentality is the great Seth Godin in his most recent book Linchpin. It’s a book that’s motivated me to think in a very different way, a very entrepreneurial way. I highly recommend it. In closing, I would like to quote John Greenleaf Whittier:
“For all sad words of tongue and pen, The saddest are these, ‘It might have been’.”
I hope that we all can truly seize the day in our entrepreneurial efforts. Find a need, create one if necessary, and do everything you can to meet it. Good luck!
-Hunter Beaumont
