January 7th, 2010 | 
Author: This is one of the main mistakes we have all made!
If you want to build a successful and profitable business, online or offline, you must create value, and one of the easiest ways to see if your product/service creates value is by evaluating whether or not it solves a real problem or addresses a real need.
Sometimes people get so excited about their ideas, their new MLM or Home business that they forget to perform this major reality check.
Some of you might remember this and some of you are too young. But look at this example back in the 90’s……
Motorola in the late 1990s illustrates this point perfectly. Around that time, the mobile market was in development, and service operators around the world were fighting to claim the increasing number of mobile users.
Most mobile networks, however, were using base stations that could cover a small area. Such technology obviously limited the range where operators could offer their services.
In order to address this limitation, Motorola tried to develop a network that would cover literally the whole world. It looked like a great innovation, and the management team was enthusiastic about the idea that people would be able to talk anywhere from the Sahara Desert to the North Pole. They thought that this would definitely create value for the customers.
The project required an investment of 7 billion dollars and it involved 88 satellites that were placed into orbit around Earth.
After the network was in place, they started selling the services. The handsets were large and clumsy, ( like caring a brick, I had one)
because they required a more complex technology. They were also selling for $3000 apiece, and call charges were incredibly high. But hey, those devices would allow users to communicate anywhere in the globe!
A couple of months later, once the novelty wore off, people started to realize that there was not such a strong need to make calls from a remote city in Sarah or from an island in in the Pacific ocean, after all. But it was already too late. Motorola not only missed the sales expectations by far, but it was also forced to keep paying the maintenance of the satellites, which amounted to 200 million dollars, monthly….
Motorola invested in what its managers thought would be a promising innovation, but there was no customer need to be met or problem to be solved in the first place. In 1999 they filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 11.
Before starting your website, MLM, service or business, make sure it will solve a real problem or address a real customer need.
If you need help to identify problems and customer needs, take a look around and see what people are
complaining about, want to make money from a home base business, what products or services they ask for but are unable to find in the market, or getting results and so on.
Tom Crabill
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Russ Alman
