Customers Care About Their Problems, Not Your Solutions—Here’s How to Get It Right
At the heart of every successful product is a sharp focus on real problems—not just clever ideas. Imagine someone obsessed with how to make an app faster, but their customers are actually frustrated that they can't find the 'help' button or the sign-up process takes too long. When businesses fall in love with their own solutions instead of understanding the everyday struggles of their audience, they waste months or even years chasing features that no one truly values. The 'solution-first' mindset makes it easy to miss what customers would actually pay for or recommend.
Take ten minutes to jot down three pressing problems your target audience faces—this could be students, clients, or even family. Resist the urge to list your favorite features; instead, ask people directly which problem keeps them up at night. Then, dig a little deeper by finding out how they currently handle these issues. Maybe they use makeshift solutions, or maybe they just live with the annoyance. Try sharing your list with a few folks and listen—this might be uncomfortable but is the fastest way to make sure you’re working on something people will truly value. Act on what you discover before building your next solution.
What You'll Achieve
Shift your mindset toward real-world needs, increasing your capacity to build solutions people are eager to use and recommend while saving resources on unnecessary features.
Make the Problems, Not Solutions, Your Business Starting Point
List the top three problems your target customers face.
Focus on challenges that are urgent or frequent in your customer’s daily life. If you can, talk to a few real people to get their words.
Research how customers solve these problems right now.
Look at competitors, everyday workarounds, or whether they just do nothing (sometimes ‘doing nothing’ means the problem isn’t urgent).
Test your understanding with actual customers.
Share your identified problems with a few potential users, and see if they agree on which matters most.
Reflection Questions
- What’s the single biggest pain your customers face?
- How do they currently solve it—and do they feel relieved or frustrated?
- Are you more attached to your solution or to their problem, and why does it matter?
- Which problem could you validate in a single conversation today?
Personalization Tips
- A new teacher lists what students struggle with in remote learning, then asks, 'Which of these is your top frustration?'
- A fitness coach notes that most clients say their biggest barrier is time, not lack of motivation—so programs get designed around this insight.
- A neighborhood grocer asks customers why they shop at competitors and discovers the biggest pain is parking, not product variety.
Running Lean: Iterate from Plan A to a Plan That Works
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