I’ve always found it interesting how some of the simplest businesses can be the most successful.
Think about a cleaner. A gardener. Someone who fixes computers. A person who manages social media for a small business. Someone who assembles furniture or helps people move house.
None of these are particularly complicated ideas.
They just solve a problem.
And that’s probably one of the simplest lessons I’ve learned about business: you don’t necessarily need to invent something new. You need to find something people already need help with.
What problems are people willing to pay for?
Most of us are busy.
We have jobs, families, bills, social lives, hobbies and a never-ending list of things that need doing.
There are always jobs around the house that we keep putting off. There are emails we don’t want to write, technology we don’t understand, admin we don’t have time for and jobs that we know we could do ourselves but would rather pay someone else to do.
I’ve got plenty of them myself.
And that’s where I think there are some really interesting business opportunities.
People will pay to save time.
They’ll pay to avoid hassle.
They’ll pay for something they don’t know how to do.
They’ll pay for something they don’t want to do.
And they’ll definitely pay if you can make their life easier.
Stop asking “What business should I start?”
I think this is where a lot of people, including me, can go wrong.
You sit down and think:
What business should I start?
Then you start looking at business ideas online.
Maybe it’s an app.
Maybe it’s ecommerce.
Maybe it’s AI.
Maybe it’s property.
Maybe it’s a subscription business.
Before you know it, you’ve got 50 ideas written down and haven’t actually started any of them.
I’ve found it much more useful to turn the question around.
Instead of asking:
“What business should I start?”
Ask:
“What problems do people have?”
That’s a much more interesting question.
Start listening to conversations.
Look at Reddit and Facebook groups.
Talk to your friends.
Speak to local businesses.
Pay attention to what people complain about.
What do they keep putting off?
What do they hate doing?
What do they repeatedly ask other people for help with?
There are business ideas everywhere if you start looking at the world through the lens of problems rather than products.
You don’t need to reinvent the wheel
One thing I think stops people from starting businesses is the belief that their idea has to be completely original.
It doesn’t.
Cleaning isn’t a new idea.
Neither is gardening, bookkeeping, decorating, plumbing or social media management.
Yet people make good businesses from all of them.
Why?
Because the problem still exists.
You don’t necessarily need to create something that nobody has ever seen before.
You could make an existing service:
- cheaper
- easier
- quicker
- more convenient
- better quality
- more reliable
- easier to book
- better targeted at a particular type of customer
That’s still a business opportunity.
Sometimes you don’t need to reinvent the wheel.
You just need to make the wheel better.
Time is one of the biggest things people buy
I think time is probably one of the easiest things to overlook when thinking about business.
Imagine someone works long hours all week.
They could clean their house themselves.
They could mow the lawn.
They could do their accounts.
They could update their website.
They could manage their social media.
They could assemble that flat-pack furniture.
But they might not want to spend their limited free time doing those things.
So they pay someone else.
They’re not really buying cleaning.
They’re buying back their Saturday morning.
They’re not really buying social media management.
They’re buying back the time they would have spent creating posts.
They’re not really buying someone to assemble their furniture.
They’re buying the ability to get on with everything else.
That’s quite a powerful idea.
Look for boring problems
Some of the best business opportunities probably aren’t particularly exciting.
A small business owner might need someone to:
- organise invoices
- update their website
- manage appointments
- write blog posts
- manage social media
- organise customer information
- carry out research
- deal with basic administration
A homeowner might need someone to:
- clean the house
- tidy the garden
- assemble furniture
- organise a garage
- help move furniture
- fix basic technology problems
- prepare the house for an event
- deal with jobs they’ve been putting off for months
None of these ideas are going to change the world.
But they don’t have to.
If someone has a problem and you’re able to solve it for them, there is potentially a business there.
Don’t just solve your own problems
There’s a piece of business advice I’ve heard many times:
“Solve a problem you’ve experienced yourself.”
I think there’s some truth to that.
But I don’t think you should only look at your own problems.
Your problem might not be a big enough problem for anyone else.
Instead, look for patterns.
If you hear the same complaint from several people, that’s more interesting.
If you see lots of people asking the same question online, that’s interesting.
If businesses keep struggling with the same task, that’s interesting.
If people are already paying for a service but constantly complain about it, that’s really interesting.
You don’t always need to invent a new market.
Sometimes you just need to find an existing market and find a better way of serving it.
What makes a good problem?
If I was looking for a business idea today, I’d probably look for a problem that ticks a few of these boxes.
It’s annoying.
People don’t enjoy dealing with it.
It’s time-consuming.
It takes longer than people want it to.
It’s difficult.
People don’t know how to do it themselves.
It’s recurring.
They need the problem solved more than once.
It’s important.
There is a genuine consequence if they don’t deal with it.
And probably most importantly:
People are already willing to pay for it.
That’s a great sign because you don’t have to convince someone that the problem exists.
You just have to convince them that you’re the right person to solve it.
Start small
I think there’s far too much emphasis on having everything ready before you start.
You don’t need the perfect website.
You don’t need an office.
You don’t need a huge social media following.
You don’t need a complicated business plan.
And you definitely don’t need to spend six months planning.
Find a problem.
Find a few people who have that problem.
Offer to solve it.
Charge them.
Then see what happens.
That’s when you actually start learning.
Because something that sounds brilliant when you’re sitting at your laptop might not work when you put it in front of a real customer.
And something that sounds incredibly boring might turn out to be exactly what people need.
Listen to your customers
Your first version probably won’t be perfect.
That’s fine.
Your customers will tell you what needs changing.
Ask them what they liked.
Ask what they didn’t like.
Ask what was missing.
Ask what took too long.
Ask what they’d happily pay more for.
Ask what they would change.
You might discover that the thing you thought was important isn’t actually that important to them.
You might also discover something they want that you hadn’t even considered.
That’s how a simple service can gradually turn into a much better business.
Don’t try to offer everything
This is another mistake I think is easy to make.
When you’re starting a business, it’s tempting to say:
“We can do everything.”
You don’t want to turn customers away.
But the problem is that nobody really knows what you do.
I’d much rather see a business saying:
We help local businesses keep their websites up to date.
than:
We provide websites, marketing, social media, consulting, administration, design, SEO and business support.
The first one is easy to understand.
Start with one problem.
Solve it well.
Then, once you understand your customers, you can expand.
Being reliable is a competitive advantage
I’ve also realised that business isn’t always about being clever.
Sometimes it’s about doing the basics really well.
Answer the phone.
Reply to emails.
Give people a clear price.
Turn up when you say you’re going to.
Do the job properly.
Be polite.
Don’t disappear for three days.
It sounds obvious, but we’ve all experienced businesses where these things don’t happen.
You don’t necessarily have to be the cheapest.
You don’t have to be revolutionary.
Sometimes being reliable is enough to make someone use you again.
And repeat customers are incredibly valuable.
Don’t forget the numbers
There’s also the boring bit of running a business.
The numbers.
A service might look great on paper.
You might think:
10 customers × £100 = £1,000
Great.
But then you remember the travel costs, equipment, software, advertising, insurance, tax and, most importantly, your time.
That £1,000 isn’t £1,000 of profit.
This is why I think it’s worth testing an idea before spending a lot of money on it.
Get a pen and paper out.
Work out what it costs to deliver.
Work out what you could realistically charge.
Work out how many customers you would need.
Then see whether the numbers still look attractive.
It’s a lot better than spending thousands of pounds on a website and branding before you’ve even found out whether anyone wants what you’re selling.
Could it become a £10,000 business?
One question I like asking myself when looking at a business idea is:
Could this realistically become a £10,000-a-month business?
Not necessarily straight away.
But could the model eventually get there?
Maybe it’s 100 customers paying £100.
Or 20 customers paying £500.
Or 10 businesses paying £1,000.
Suddenly the idea starts to become more interesting.
And if those customers keep coming back, recommend you to other people or ask when they can book again, you’ve got something.
You’ve found evidence that the problem is real.
The boring business might be the good business
We hear so much about the next big technology company, the next app, the next AI business or the next revolutionary product.
And there’s nothing wrong with that.
But there is something quite appealing about a business where the proposition is incredibly simple:
You have a problem.
I can solve it.
This is what it costs.
I’ll be there Tuesday.
Done.
No complicated technology.
No endless features.
No six-month development project.
Just a useful service that makes someone’s life a little bit easier.
Final thoughts
I’ve become increasingly interested in the idea that good business ideas are often hiding in plain sight.
They aren’t necessarily sitting inside some huge gap in the market.
Sometimes they’re in the everyday things people complain about.
The job they hate.
The task they never have time for.
The technology they don’t understand.
The admin they keep putting off.
The thing they know how to do but simply don’t want to spend their Saturday doing.
That’s where I’d start looking.
Look around your own home.
Speak to your friends.
Talk to local businesses.
Look at online communities.
Listen to what people complain about.
And when you hear the same problem coming up again and again, ask yourself:
Would someone pay me to make this problem disappear?
You might be surprised by the answer.
You don’t need to invent the next big thing.
Sometimes you just need to make someone’s life a little bit easier.
And there might be a business in that.
