How to know if you actually want something

There’s a step in the user method that’s very easy to skip over. Unfortunately, I think it’s the most important step.

It’s the step where you actually want the thing you’re about to make. Really badly. Badly enough to make it and be happy even if no one else ever uses it.

Coming up with ideas is easy — coming up with ideas that people are actually going to want is the hard part. So how do you do it?

Well, let’s look at how successful founders did it.

First, they wanted something. But not weakly. They wanted the things they wanted so badly, that they often spent weeks, months, or years looking for an acceptable solution. They tried everything. They spent far more time and money trying to get the thing they wanted than it was actually worth.

For example, Susan Petersen of Freshly Picked said, “When my son was born, I really wanted soft-soled baby moccasins for him.” So, like a normal person, she looked for soft-soled baby moccasins at stores, online, etc.

“I couldn’t find them anywhere,” Susan continued.

Couldn’t find them anywhere?

That part is important. If you actually want something badly, you’ll look for it. The harder you look, the more you want it. The more you want it, the more other people will want it, too.

This isn’t to say that by forcing yourself to look for a product, you’ll magically increase demand for that thing. It has to come naturally. You have to want it so bad that you can’t stop until you find it. And when you don’t find it, you have to still want it so bad that you make one for yourself. Not to sell to other people — just for you.

That’s when you know.

This process doesn’t need to take years — sometimes, like in the case of Airbnb, the idea turns into a real thing very quickly. The Airbnb guys built their first website within 24 hours of having the idea.

But the need was very real to them. Their need was simply to make money to pay rent. That was a need they’d had for quite a while.

It’s an even better indicator if you’ve already bought multiple versions of the thing you want, but none of them are quite meeting your needs. That shows that you’re not only willing to spend time, but money — more than should be necessary — to get the thing you want. And again, so will other people.

So, to sum it up in easy to understand bullet points, the indicators that you actually want something very badly are:

• You’ve looked everywhere for it. If you haven’t looked everywhere yet, you don’t want it that badly.
• You’ve bought / tried multiple versions of it (that may not fully satisfy you).
• You’ve at least thought about — and have maybe even started or finished — making it yourself, just so you can finally have what you want.

On the other hand, if you haven’t looked very hard, you don’t want it very badly. And chances are — neither will anyone else.