Ready to start an impactful small business from scratch? Many believe impactful ventures require groundbreaking tech, but we’ll show you another, often overlooked, path: human innovations. These small businesses excel at supporting communities, satisfying niche demands, sharing unique talents, and leveraging technology to combat social issues. At its core, every successful business solves a problem or satisfies a definite need. If you can address a widespread complaint, you’re on your way to building a thriving enterprise! This guide reveals how to turn complaints into business opportunities.

From Complaints to Cash: Your Entrepreneurial Opportunity

Complaints are everywhere we go, from family gatherings to popular culture and media. If you can resolve any one of these, you have a business! If you start seeing these complaints as small business opportunities, you’ll begin training your subconscious mind to look at every problem you encounter or hear as an entrepreneurial opportunity, and this will change your life.

But don’t stop there. Start by exploring solutions. This is what most people never do because they “don’t know how.”

Today I’m going to share a five-step process to turn a problem into a business.

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The 5 Essential Steps to Turn a Problem into a Business

Observation: Spotting Business Opportunities

All things start with observation. Begin taking notice of problems around you – at home, at work, when you hear someone complain, and especially when you hear multiple individuals complain about the same thing. What would have happened if Newton didn’t notice the apple that fell down? This initial step is crucial for identifying potential business ideas from scratch.

Problem Discovery: Uncovering the Root Cause

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” While the authenticity of this quote attributed to Henry Ford is under question, there’s a truth in this statement. If you notice someone asking for faster horses, they’re not truly looking for faster horses; they’re actually looking for faster means of transportation. There’s a difference between a complaint statement and the actual problem, and an entrepreneur must be able to see the difference.

Always discover the root cause of any problem. A simple technique to use is to ask “Why?” five times consecutively. Here is an example:

🥺 Boy, I have a headache…

❔ Why? Because I have a cold.

❔ Why did you catch a cold? Because yesterday I spent time in the cold.

❔ Why? Because I didn’t take my coat.

❔ Why? Because I didn’t think that it would be so cold outside. (

❔ Why? Because in the morning I don’t check the weather forecast.

(✅) Solution: Install a thermometer on the balcony and watch it before going out.

Ideation: Brainstorming Innovative Solutions 🧩💭🧠

Ideation is the mode of the design process in which you concentrate on idea generation. Mentally, it represents a process of ‘going wide’ in terms of concepts and outcomes. Ideation provides both the fuel and also the source material for building prototypes and getting innovative solutions into the hands of your users. — Stanford d.school

The goal of ideation is to quickly come up with ideas to solve the problem. Don’t be overly critical in this phase; just sit with your team (or a bunch of friends if you don’t have a team yet) and come up with ideas, engaging even your wildest fantasies.

Tips for an effective ideation session:

💡 Defer judgment

💡 Encourage wild ideas

💡 Build on the ideas of others

💡 Stay focused on the topic

💡 One conversation at a time

💡 Be visual

💡 Go for quantity

After you have a bunch of ideas, put your mind to something else—eat a pie, watch a show—and come back to it the next day. The next morning, write down any fresh ideas you might have come up with, and then remove all the ideas that you think are not commercially viable or technologically feasible. For example, a supersonic passenger plane is technologically feasible (we even had one called Concorde), but it wasn’t commercially viable, so now we have Airbus 380s.

If everything went well, you might have 3 to 7 ideas. Now it’s time to test these, but how do you prioritize? Make a decision matrix. My decision matrices usually have these four columns:

👉 How easy is it to implement this and get some feedback in 90 days?

👉 How much does this “cause” or “idea” move you and your team?

👉 How much control do you have over the implementation?

👉 How easy is it to get sponsors, subsidies, government aid, etc.?

So now you have an idea and resources to implement it, but how do you monetize it? 💰💵

Business Model & Revenue: (2 in 1 Incorporated) Your Blueprint for Profitability 📝📊

A business model is a company’s core strategy for profitably doing business. The four most important questions to consider are:

⭐ Who are you selling to?

⭐ What do you sell?

⭐ How do you create and deliver it?

⭐ Why is it commercially viable?

You can even download a ” Business Model Canvas ” to make this process easier for your startup. Now you’re set to go. Start sharing about your product/service to your family and friends even while you’re developing it. Eventually, you might want to create a more deliberate marketing strategy, but for now, you can even ask some of the people whose complaints you’re trying to solve if they’d like to book it in advance for a special pre-launch price. Talk to people, post on social media, and try to earn $1000 in the first three months. This is a crucial step in early revenue generation for your small business.

If you succeed with this, then take a step back, go back to your drafting table, and now put systems in place to scale the business. Create a marketing plan and register the business if you haven’t already done so to limit your personal liabilities. Consider hiring people, outsourcing tasks, etc. No more juggling and stressing unnecessarily.

This is how you do it! When people with money want something (or to get rid of something) more than their money, they’ll pay any (fair) price for it. And that is the only sustainable way to be rich by the means of a business. At the end of the day, a business is about revenue, and it should be sustainable and profitable.

✨ Your Entrepreneurial Journey Starts NOW! ✨

Didn’t that just ignite a wildfire of inspiration in your soul?! 🔥 We absolutely believe this guide holds the golden key 🔑 to unlocking your incredible potential and helping you start that impactful small business from scratch you’ve been dreaming of! This isn’t just theory on a page; it’s a treasure map 🗺️ and an actionable roadmap to turn your keen observations into sparkling opportunities, and your innovative ideas into tangible income. 💰

So, what in the world are you waiting for?! 🤩 Don’t keep this pure gold 🌟 all to yourself!

🚀 SHARE this article with every aspiring entrepreneur, brilliant problem-solver, and determined dream-chaser you know! Let’s literally flood the internet 🌊 with the entrepreneurial spirit and make an impact, together! 🌍💖

✍️ COMMENT below and tell us: What’s YOUR big, bold idea? 💡 What nagging problem are YOU itching to solve? 🤔 We are beyond excited to hear your unique insights and cheer you on every single step of your amazing journey! 🎉🥳

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Let’s build a world brimming with impactful businesses, one brilliant idea, one courageous step, and one shared success story at a time! 💪🌟🚀