This morning while having coffee I was listening to a pod cast for entrepreneurs by SavvySoloCasts. I got reminded of a marketing message that is really important to those of you who are venturing out into the world of starting a business of your own. One of the guests on the pod cast was James Maduk who shared:

"The first lesson of Internet marketing is: Find the problem first and verify that there are people willing to pay or play to have that problem fixed, before you create something. We all know this lesson, but when we get passionate about an idea, all common sense seems to leave us."

After mentoring thousands of students from my classes I see many who struggle with this process. I agonize about how many hundreds of hours are spent by my students working on solutions for problems that don’t exist. Do your homework before building a solution. If you are in the "Build it and they will come" mindset, save yourself some effort, just take all of your cash put it on the window sill and open the window. The result will be the same, but it will be over in seconds and you can move on with your life.

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