Are You Solving a Problem, Or Just Building a Product?
August 27, 2025
I had coffee this week with a very smart, very successful CEO. His business is built on his incredible network; he connects people in a complex, high-stakes industry.
In the middle of our conversation, I asked him a simple, direct question: "When you talk to the people in your network, what is the single biggest, most expensive problem you are solving for them?"
He paused.
His answer was a good one. He talked about creating opportunities and making valuable introductions. But he couldn't name the one specific, burning, keep-you-up-at-night problem that his clients were facing.
And in that moment, I recognized a trap that so many of us, as ambitious founders, fall into. It's the trap of the "jack of all trades".
This CEO has a massive network, a huge volume of connections. But without a deep, almost obsessive understanding of the specific problems within that network, every connection is a guess. He's a powerful connector, but he could be an invaluable problem-solver. The real value isn't just in knowing who to call; it's in knowing why you're calling them.
It's the difference between having a product and solving a problem. And it's the single biggest lesson I've learned in my own journey.
The Gap Between Vision and Reality
That conversation wasn't just a philosophical exercise. It revealed a dangerous gap that exists in almost every business: the gap between the founder's vision and the customer's reality. As founders, we see our product as a world of possibilities. Our customers only see it as a tool to solve an immediate, painful problem.
When we focus on our product's features instead of our customer's pain, we create a blind spot. And in that blind spot, catastrophic, company-killing problems can grow. It's one thing to talk about this in a coffee shop; it's another to see what happens when that gap is ignored in the real world.
A Six-Figure Lesson in Problem Solving
Let me tell you a story that should keep any business owner up at night.
A client of mine had done everything right. They invested in fixing their website, they wired up their forms, they poured money into Google Ads and social media to generate high-quality leads. Their sales team was brilliant, and they successfully closed a huge, high-value deal.
The marketing and sales funnel worked perfectly. The contract was signed. Everyone was celebrating.
Then, the nightmare scenario happened. The handoff from the sales team to the delivery team was a black hole. The customer's excitement turned to anxiety. The promises that were made during the sales process were lost in a chaotic scramble of internal emails. The customer, who was once a huge fan, cancelled the project, wiping out a six-figure deal.
This is the most expensive problem in business. It wasn't a marketing failure or a sales failure. It was a system failure. The "win" for the sales team was a finish line, but for the customer, it was supposed to be the starting line.
The "product-focused" solution would be to install a generic live chat tool, which would just create more noise for their already busy team.
The "problem-obsessed" solution was to go deeper. We architected a hybrid support system that fixed the broken communication channel. Here's what the customer journey looked like before and after:
Before (The Chaos): A new customer gets an automated "Thank You" email and then... silence. After a few days, they send an anxious email asking for a status update. It lands in a general inbox, waits for hours, and then gets forwarded to the wrong department. Their frustration builds with every passing minute until they finally lose faith and cancel.
After (The Clarity): Now, that same customer gets an instant, accurate answer from an AI agent 24/7. If their issue is complex, they are seamlessly and instantly connected to the exact right person on the delivery team who already has the full context of their conversation. The chaos is replaced with confidence.
We didn't just sell them a chat app. We solved their six-figure communication problem and gave them a system to restore their customers' trust.
The 'Gap' Audit: The Question That Unlocks Your Real Bottleneck
The most expensive problems in a business are almost never the obvious ones. A business's biggest growth opportunity is rarely in a new marketing campaign; it's in fixing the most frustrating, inefficient part of its internal system.
I'm going to leave you with the same homework I gave that CEO. Use this simple diagnostic to find the most valuable problem in your own business.
Step 1: Identify the Friction. Ask yourself: "What is the single most frustrating, expensive, or repetitive task that lives in the gap between my teams?" Is it the chaotic handoff from sales to operations? Is it the manual data entry? Is it the constant, repetitive customer questions?
Step 2: Give the Problem a Name. Is it the "Post-Sale Black Hole"? The "Data Entry Tax"? The "Broken Record" problem? Naming it makes it real and tangible.
Step 3: Ask "Why?" Five Times. Once you've named the problem, ask why it's happening. Then ask why to that answer. Keep going until you get to the root cause. You'll almost always find that the root cause isn't a person; it's a broken or non-existent system.
That is your real problem.
Once you can name it, you can solve it. Stop looking for the next product to buy. Start looking for the right problem to solve. That's the difference between being busy and being successful.