Your Product Doesn't Matter: The Brutal Truth About What People Actually Buy
It’s Sunday morning. As the world outside slowly wakes, you’re at your desk, the glow of your laptop illuminating a dozen open tabs. Your mind is buzzing with the electric energy of a new idea. Maybe it’s a beautifully designed sustainable planner, a revolutionary online course on personal finance, or a coaching program that will change lives. You’re in love with your creation. You’re perfecting the logo, refining the curriculum, imagining the beautiful packaging.
This creative passion is the fuel of entrepreneurship. But what if I told you that this very passion, when misdirected, is the number one reason most new businesses fail?
Want to know the real, unsexy truth about the most successful entrepreneurs? They’re not product geniuses. They’re not marketing wizards. Most of them aren’t even the smartest person in the room.
But they are world-class problem solvers.
Because business, at its absolute core, is about one thing: solving a painful, urgent problem for someone else—and getting paid handsomely for it.
So before you spend another minute perfecting your product, before you launch your website, or write a single line of your business plan, I want you to stop and ask yourself one brutally honest question:
What problem am I solving—and for who?
That one question, when answered with obsessive clarity, will do more to guarantee the success of your business than any MBA, any marketing hack, or any perfectly designed logo ever could. It’s time we talk about the brutal truth: nobody cares about your product. They only care about their problem.
The "Solution in Search of a Problem" Trap
The entrepreneurial graveyard is filled with the ghosts of beautiful, innovative, and perfectly executed products that no one ever bought. These are the casualties of the most common and fatal flaw in business: creating a "solution in search of a problem."
It’s a trap that’s especially alluring to passionate, creative women. We get a brilliant idea, we fall in love with the process of making it, and we become so convinced of its genius that we assume the market will feel the same way. We are like a doctor who invents a new, revolutionary pill and then walks around hoping to find patients with the specific, rare disease it cures. It's backward, inefficient, and almost always destined for failure.
How do you know if you’re stuck in this trap?
- Your marketing feels like you’re constantly trying to convince people they need what you have.
- You describe your business by its features (“I sell 12-week online courses”) instead of its outcomes.
- You get a lot of compliments on your idea ("That's so cool!") but very few actual sales.
This isn’t just a strategic error; it’s an expensive one. It costs you time, money, and your most valuable resource: your confidence.
Your New Job Title: Chief Problem Officer
To break free from this trap, you need to give yourself a new job title. Starting today, you are not a course creator, a jewelry designer, or a life coach. You are the Chief Problem Officer for a very specific group of people.
This isn't just a title; it's a radical identity shift. Your new job description has one primary responsibility: to become the world’s leading expert on a single, painful problem.
Your obsession is no longer your product; it’s your customer’s pain. You need to understand that pain better than they do. You need to know what they’ve tried, why it hasn’t worked, what they secretly wish existed, and what they say to their best friend about it at 11 PM at night.
As a Chief Problem Officer, you become a detective. You hunt for clues in the wild:
- You scour Reddit forums and Facebook groups, looking for phrases like, "I'm so frustrated with..." or "Does anyone know how to..."
- You read the 1- and 2-star reviews of your competitors’ products, because that’s where customers air their unmet needs.
- You talk to people. You ask your target audience, "What's the hardest part about [X]?" and then you shut up and listen for a very long time.
Your goal is to find an "aspirin" problem, not a "vitamin" problem. Vitamins are nice to have. People know they should take them, but they can easily put it off. Aspirin solves an immediate, throbbing headache. People will crawl over broken glass at midnight to buy an aspirin. Your business needs to be the aspirin.
The Problem-First Business Blueprint
Once you’ve adopted your new identity, you can start building your business on a rock-solid foundation. This is the Problem-First Business Blueprint.
Step 1: Identify the "Aspirin-Level" Problem.
Get specific. "Feeling disorganized" is a vitamin. "Spending two hours every Sunday night dreading the work week and frantically trying to plan meals for my picky-eater toddlers" is an aspirin. The first is vague; the second is a specific, emotionally charged pain point that someone will happily pay to solve.
Step 2: Define Your "Minimum Viable Audience.
" Who feels this pain most acutely? Who is actively searching for a solution? It's not "busy moms." It’s "first-time moms of toddlers who work from home and feel like they’ve lost their identity outside of motherhood and work." The more specific your "who," the more powerful your solution will be, and the easier your marketing will become.
Step 3: Co-Create the Solution (Your Ultimate Insurance Policy).
Do not retreat into your creative cave to build the solution alone. Go back to the people you identified in Step 2. Talk to them. Say, "I'm working on a solution to [the aspirin-level problem]. What have you tried so far? What did you like or dislike about it? If you could wave a magic wand, what would the perfect solution look like?"
Their answers are pure gold. They are literally giving you the blueprint for the product they are desperate to buy. This process of co-creation validates your business idea before you invest a single dollar or a single hour into building it. It is your ultimate insurance policy against creating something nobody wants.
Step 4: Craft Your "Problem-First" Message.
Now, when it’s time to market your business, your job is incredibly simple. You don't have to invent clever taglines or use pushy sales tactics. You simply have to articulate the problem better than your customer can, and then present your product as the logical solution.
You’re no longer selling a "productivity planner." You’re selling "The 90-Day System to Reclaim 10 Hours a Week for the Overwhelmed Working Mom." You’re no longer selling a "course on public speaking." You’re selling "The Founder's Framework to Conquer Public Speaking Anxiety and Nail Your Next Investor Pitch."
Your marketing becomes a mirror, reflecting your customer’s pain back to them with a clear path to relief. The sale becomes the natural conclusion to a helpful conversation.
Your Most Productive Task This Sunday
As you sit here this Sunday morning, with the quiet potential of a new week stretching out before you, I want you to reconsider your to-do list. The most important task you can do today is not to work on your product. It’s to get obsessively, unapologetically clear on the problem.
Fall in love with the problem, not your solution. Become a student of your customer's pain. When you do that, the money, the impact, and the success you're dreaming of will not be a matter of hope. They will be an inevitability. Because you won’t just be a person with a product to sell. You’ll be a solver. And the world pays very well for that.