How bad is the problem: creating a vitamin versus a medicine

When you’re brainstorming business ideas, you should think of the actual pain point you are solving for your customers. Are you solving for a ‘need now’ or a ‘nice-to-have’? Let’s think about this for a minute. 

Think about the last time you took a vitamin. How did you feel in the exact moment before taking the vitamin?  How did you feel in the moments after taking the vitamin? 

Now think about the last time you took a medicine like a painkiller. How did you feel in the exact moment before taking it? And how did you feel in the moments after taking the medicine?

Chances are, you didn’t feel much before taking the vitamin, and you probably didn’t feel much after taking it. If you think about it hard enough, maybe it made you feel good because you were doing something for your health, but there was no immediate need to take it. 

But when you think about the last time you took an actual painkiller, you can probably remember how terribly you felt before you took it, the relief you felt when you took it because it was going to take away your pain, and then the happiness you felt once the medicine kicked in. The painkiller provided immediate relief because it was solving for a tangible pain point, one that you could literally feel.  

When you’re building your business, try to identify actual customer pain points. Not every solution will be a painkiller, but solutions that take away a pain will likely be much easier to sell than ones that simply exist. 

So ask yourself this, are you building a nice-to-have vitamin or a life-changing painkiller? 

💡TLDR: Identify customer pain points. Solutions that fulfill actual needs (like painkillers) will be easier to sell than solutions that are just nice-to-have (vitamins).

📖 Exercise: Identify the actual pain point you are solving for your target customer. Think about how you want your target customer to feel when/ after using your solution. Brainstorm solutions you can create that would solve that problem and elicit that feeling. If you already have a solution, think about how your target customers would react to your solution if they were indeed experiencing a pain point. Are there any discrepancies? Ask yourself if you are truly solving a pain point and iterate based on your results.

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