Playbook 01

Pick the right problem & customer

Pick the wrong problem and no effort later can save it.

The question this step answers

Which problem, for which customer, is worth building a business around?

First principle

The quality of the problem caps the ceiling of the business. The best problems are ones you actually understand — painful, frequent, and already paid for. Start from your unfair advantage, not from a tool or a technology. Where you know more than others is where you begin.

Key steps

  1. 1

    List the pains

    List every pain you have seen firsthand in your work, life, and network. Do not invent them. Write the ones you have actually witnessed.

  2. 2

    Score them

    Score each pain on four axes: intensity of the pain, how often it occurs, willingness to pay, and your own edge. Keep the high scorers.

  3. 3

    Name one customer

    Name one specific customer, not "everyone." The narrower the better — narrow enough that you can picture who they are and where they work.

  4. 4

    Write the pain in their words

    Write the pain in the customer's own words. If it comes out as jargon, you do not understand them yet.

  5. 5

    Confirm it is a painkiller

    Check whether this is a painkiller or a vitamin. A painkiller hurts if unsolved; a vitamin is nice to have. Build only painkillers.

Do

  • Start from the domain you know best and open with your edge.
  • Pick a narrow customer, narrow enough to name.
  • Talk to real people and hear what they actually say.
  • Prefer problems that are painful, frequent, and already paid for.

Don't

  • Start from a technology or tool and force-fit a problem.
  • Try to serve everyone and move no one.
  • Fall in love with the idea and ignore the counter-evidence.
  • Build vitamins — things that are nice to have but skippable.

Copy-ready prompts

Pain scoring table

You are my business coach. My field is [your industry/role], and the people I deal with most are [the group around you].

Do three things:
1. Based on my field, list 10 real pains I may have seen firsthand.
2. Score each pain in a table on: pain intensity, frequency, willingness to pay, and my personal edge, each 1 to 5.
3. Pick the 3 with the highest total and explain why each is more painkiller than vitamin.

Use plain words, no jargon.

Name the customer in one line

The direction I want to pursue is [your direction]. Help me narrow the target customer from "everyone" to one very specific group.

Output:
1. Three candidate narrow customer profiles, one sentence each (who they are, where they are, how they solve this today).
2. For each profile, one sentence describing the pain in the customer's own words, no jargon.
3. Tell me which one is most worth starting with, and why.

Acceptance signals

  • You can say in one sentence which customer it is and what their pain is.
  • Someone already spends money or time on this problem.
  • You have a real edge here that others do not.