Your Portable Empire: How to Make Money Anywhere While Doing What You Love

Chapter 10. Product Creation

An entrepreneur can become moderately successful doing the same thing that everyone else does. But if you want to be wildly successful, you have to do what no one else has done.

—Tim Gill

Product creation is where the magic happens. The wizard flicks his wand, and—out of thin air—a product appears.

Where can you find product ideas? The trick is to remember that every problem is a product. There are problems everywhere. Once you start thinking like a product developer, you'll see them and welcome them.

What used to be an irritation is now an income source.

Once you've chosen your niche, it's a breeze to find problems. You're looking for problems that cause a lot of pain for a large group of people. That pain is going to make you rich.

Forums are good for this. A web search on "your niche" and "forum," will locate them for you. Hang out (lurk) and see what problems are being posted to the forum.

One of the best ways to maintain your expert status and to come up with new product ideas is to continue learning and growing in your niche.

If your niche is, for example, building wooden furniture, keep learning new ways to build wooden furniture. Experiment with exotic woods. Recreate designs from the past. Learn the most recent innovations.

Note the problems as you run into them. You'll solve them naturally as you learn.

That's where the magic happens.

When you've got a Portable Empire, you're an information merchant. Your thoughts, solutions, and ideas are your stock ...