Editor’s note: This article was first published in August 2016; the description of Virgin as a group of more than 400 companies and of Virgin Atlantic doing very well reflects that time, and Virgin Atlantic later needed a rescue during the 2020 pandemic.
When looking for competent employees, a company manager will tell you: “I like people who don’t bring me problems, but solutions.” The best kind of entrepreneurship, on the other hand, could be summed up in one phrase, the one Richard Branson has used to build a group of more than 400 companies: “Find problems and create solutions.”
Branson explains that most people get worked up when they run into a problem, when a company treats them badly or when they pay for a service that turns out to be dreadful. Instead of spending time getting angry, Branson spent his time thinking about how that service could be improved.
“Every time I have started a new business, it has been to solve a problem I have often come across personally,” Branson himself says in his post on the Virgin website.
When he was building Virgin Records, Branson spent a lot of time on planes travelling to meetings, and he was always annoyed by the airlines’ terrible service. He also heard the complaints of many, many other customers. Instead of ignoring the problem, Branson launched his own airline, Virgin Atlantic, which is doing very well today.
(See: 9 tips from Richard Branson for entrepreneurs)
“I found it frustrating to see how banks use hidden charges and jargon that only confuses me and other customers, so we created our own bank, Virgin Money. I love keeping fit, but I thought gyms were missing something, and we ended up creating Virgin Active, where people exercise, socialise and spend time.”
The best businesses start with a customer need that the existing service is not meeting. For one thing, it is not an innovative business where you have to test whether the public will accept it, because the public is already accepting it despite its flaws. You simply have to fix those flaws and solve the problem the sector is not solving, and the public will thank you for it.
When an entrepreneur named Claire Hoyt decided to build an empire in the organic baby food business, she did it because of the concern she herself had for her children. She started at home and ended up creating Big Dipper Baby Food, a company with revenue in the millions.
BabyCakes was also born from a simple question: “Why can’t people with gluten allergies enjoy the traditional sweets and cakes everyone else does?” And the gluten-free market became a very profitable niche.
So the next time you run into a problem, put the entrepreneur inside you to work, because you could have a business opportunity right in front of you. You just have to find the solution.
See also: 13 businesses and professions that profit from millionaires
Featured image: EEJCC, CC0 1.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
