Become The Top Expert On A Big, Expensive, Problem

It's hard to make a great living if you focus on small problems

I once struck up a conversation with a freelance travel writer.

He was tired of writing about countries like France, Spain, Turkey, Italy, and Thailand. He kept pitching his editors to more obscure locations in Africa and tiny islands in the Pacific. And he kept being refused.

His editors knew a simple truth. Their readers didn’t want to know more about places they were unlikely to visit. They wanted to know more about the places they already intended to visit.

I think about this story often when I see consultants developing services.

The services often don’t match what a organisations really need.

Fortunately, there is a solution to this.

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Why You Need To Focus On Common, Costly, Problems

Focus your efforts on solving common, costly, problems.

Focus on the six to seven-figure problems.

If you can build a reputation for tackling challenges which cost organisations a considerable sum of money, you’re probably going to be ok.

• An underperforming sales team is a seven-figure problem.

• High staff churn is a seven-figure problem.

• A failure to properly share useful information is a seven-figure problem.

• An inability to retain customers and clients is a seven-figure problem.

• Migrating a CRM without any downtime is a seven-figure problem.

• Becoming environmentally sustainable is a seven-figure problem.

• Preventing hacks and cyber-security attacks is a seven-figure problem.

• Restructuring a business is a seven-figure problem.

• Improving efficiency and reducing waste is a seven-figure problem.

You get the idea…

Try to align what you do to problems which:

1. A lot of organisations encounter.

2. Organisations spend considerable time and resources.

If you don’t begin with a big audience market to serve, it’s going to be hard to sustain a consultancy.

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Become The World’s Leading Expert On A Persistent Problem

I’d suggest if you’re just getting started to pick a really big problem and become the world’s leading expert on solving it.

Learn everything about the problem. Discover how others have solved the problem. Become the single greatest source of knowledge on solving the problem.

The typical employee can’t spend the next month learning every possible thing about a single problem. But you can.

You can invest more time into understanding the problem, and the causes of the problem, and build the biggest collection of solutions to the problem than anyone else ever has.

Then you can sell your solutions to others.  

Interview 25 People In The Industry About The Problem

The best thing to do here is to set up calls with others in the industry to learn exactly how they approach the problem. 

Try to understand: 

• How big of a problem is it for them? 

• How are they solving that problem today? 

• What would they do differently if they were starting again? 

• What are the precise words and language they use to describe and communicate that problem?

• What are the real root causes of the problem? 

Try to probe as deeply as possible into understanding the problem and past solutions.

For example, if someone mentions they hired an external vendor to help solve the problem, find out who the vendor was, what they liked about them, and any advice they have for working with them. Notice how this is the kind of information which is impossible to find on Google? That’s exactly the quality of information you need to offer. 

You’re going to offer clients a level of knowledge on a particular topic no one can match. Whenever anyone has that kind of problem again, your goal is to become the de-facto service to solve that problem. 

Believe me, once you’ve spoken to 25+ organisations about a single problem, and understood how they solve the problem, you will be one of the top experts in the world. No one else will have the time or commitment to explore the problem as you.

Better yet, those 25 people are also likely to be the folks who might hire you in the future - or at least people who might offer referrals or testimonials for your service. 

There is one more important question to ask in your calls too.

How much would an organisation have paid someone to solve the problem for them? 

Don’t ask if they would’ve paid, that doesn’t help you. Ask how much they would’ve paid. This gives you a good sense of what value they assign to the problem (and whether they even consider it a problem which can be outsourced.

A quick aside here is when you are identifying the right problems to solve. Make sure they are problems which:

Consider this your R&D - the critical stage you have to go through to develop your services.