Find a problem to solve – #1

Auto-generated transcript:Bismillahirrahmanirrahim. Alhamdulillahi Rabbil Alameen. Wa salatu wa salamu ala ashrafil amliya wal kursaleed. Muhammadur Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa sallam. Tasliman kathiran kathiran. From Abadu, my brothers and sisters, the secret of success in life, whether you are an entrepreneur in a business or whether you are an individual doing something on your own, the secret is very simple. Find a problem, solve it, scale your solution, monetize it if you want to. Fourth step. Find a problem, solve it, scale it, and if you want to, if you want to monetize it, monetize it. Make money from it. The Nigerian billionaire and car manufacturer, Innocent Efediaso Chukwuma. I love African names, it's so musical. And a friend of mine said to me, anything which has three syllables is musical. So Innocent Efediaso Chukwuma. In the 19th, 1980s, every businessman in Niniaibi, in Nigeria, was importing motorcycles from Japan and China. They imported them whole, which is fully assembled. Because a motorcycle is bulky, however, a 40-foot container could only hold about 40 motorcycles. This made the landing cost very high. Innocent Chukwuma looked at this and he said, why are we shipping air? I want you to remember this statement. Why are we shipping air? Because this applies not only to shipping, it applies to a lot of things in life. Why are we shipping air? So he instead imported disassembled bikes and then reassembled them in Nigeria and sold them. Now disassembled, you could get 200 bikes in the same container, same 40-foot container. Now while competitors were selling motorcycles for, you know, 150,000 Naira, Innocent started selling for 80,000 Naira. And he was still making a profit. Now once he started assembling bikes locally, he realized that he was buying a lot of plastic parts from outside. Again, he did the math. He said, why import plastic when I can melt it here? So same thing. Why are we shipping air? He opened a plastics factory to feed his motorcycle assembly. That same plastics factory later allowed him to start making car dashboards and bumpers. That's where he started in his car manufacturing business. He didn't wake up one day and build a car plant. He built the components first. Then the car followed. Now many, this happens all the time in all sorts of things. Because many of us, many of us, we are losing money. We are losing time. We are losing opportunity. Because we are shipping air. So the thing to ask yourself is, where in my business, where am I in my life? Am I shipping air? Right? Because if you are, if you are doing something, any process, which does not give you a direct return, then that is shipping air. So think about this and ask yourself, where in my life am I shipping air? And you will find out. In India also, we have several great examples of this, of the principle that I mentioned to you, which is find a problem, solve it, scale your solution and monetize it. If you want to monetize. And that is this company called Urban Company. Now, Urban Company guys, is a classic example of find a problem, solve it, scale it, scale your solution and monetize it. All of us had these problems and we still have these problems. At home, the kitchen sink leaks, the bathroom flush tank, something happens. You want to put a nail in a pipe, you want to put a nail in a place in a wall to hang a picture. But if you simply take a nail and a hammer and you start hammering, then a whole chunk of plaster falls down and now you have an ugly hole in the wall. Your table, your chair, something is loose, it needs to be fixed. You need a carpenter. So you need a carpenter, you need a plumber, you need somebody to knock a nail in your wall. Maybe you need a haircut. And going to the saloon and all of that is a hassle and you wish that you could get a haircut, you could get a barber to come home and cut your hair, trim your beard, give you a pedicure, manicure or whatnot, a massage. Guess what? That's exactly what Urban Company hooked on to. So what they have is a whole bunch of professionals, who are dressed professionally, they are in a uniform. They have been, their antecedents and their background checks have been done. So when you book on the app, the service that you want, this professional then is assigned to you. He comes at a specific time, which you have specified. So according to your convenience, the price is, he doesn't come, he doesn't haggle. You don't have to talk to him. The price is already there on the app and you already have, you have paid the price for the service. He comes, he or she comes and they do the service and then they clean up after themselves and they leave. And all this is done in a very, very nice and efficient professional manner. Same thing, it's just a knocking and nailing a wall. But you are prepared to pay 200, 300, 500, whatever it is, whatever it is for that service, because you are getting that service at the time you want it, which is convenient to you. And it is being done in a neat and good quality style. So there's a great business opportunity. That's exactly what Urban Company did. Sell essential small services, which are difficult to do because they are small. So if you're building a whole house and you want a plumbing company to come and, do the plumbing for the whole house, you will get a plumbing company. But if you have one leaky tap, very difficult to get a plumber. So this is what Urban Company does for you. Sell, they sell essential small services, which are difficult to do because they are small. Now, if you do them to high quality standards, you can charge a premium for them. Another wonderful example of this is ID Foods. Now, you know, Italy, Dosa, Vada, these are all things which we love to eat. And ideally want to eat it every day. This is good tasty food, easy on the stomach, easy on digestion and so on. The problem is the preparation of it. So the whole Italy mix, you need a grinder, you need to grind the ingredients together and do all kinds of stuff. Now, ID Foods comes in between of that, in between that. So they give you Italy, Dosa mix in convenient packaging. That's it. So you get the packet in the grocery store. You come home and you open the packet and you pour the Italy mix into the Italy maker, put it in the steamer. And five minutes later, you have your Italy hot off the stove. Now, interestingly, think about this. They could have also supplied you ready-made Italy and Dosa. But you know, and I know, you buy a Dosa like that, ready-made Dosa. And you, by the time you bring it home, it's like a handkerchief. It's not worth eating. You need the Dosa straight off the stove, straight off the skillet onto your plate. How to do that? Mechanize part of the process, which is the preparation process, not the entire process. And that's what they have done. Later on, they branched into other foods, which are universally popular and eaten daily, but are still cumbersome to eat. And they are still cumbersome to prepare. So it's, you know, like chapattis and parathas and this and that. So they bring it all to the point of the final assembly of its, if I can use the term, where the thing comes straight off your stove onto your plate, nice and hot and fresh. Now, then they, so basically what they're doing is they, they're telescoping the preparation process into the packet. And all you do is open the packet and complete the final stage of preparation. Keeping that final stage in the hands of the cook is also, as I said, a master stroke because that way the consumer can get it hot and fresh. So find a problem, solve it, scale your solution and monetize it. Now it's very important to, to be able to do this whole inventory process. It's very important to do, important to have two things, essential, two essentials I call them. One is curiosity, and the other one is creativity. Curiosity helps you to learn and creativity helps you to create solutions. More about this tomorrow. Wasallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. Wa Nabeel Karim Wa Alaihi Wasallam. Wa Rahmatullahi Wa Barakatuhu.