The Orange Frog…

I have been working on my latest business idea for most of my life. I just didn’t know it. Apparently, my business development plan started in kindergarten. Very strategic of me, right? I was diagnosed at an early age with Color Vision Deficiency. Some people simply call it colorblindness, although that is not quite how it works for me. I can see many of the same colors most people see. I just see some of them differently. Sometimes very differently.

My first indication that there might be an issue came in kindergarten when my teacher gave us a picture of a frog and told us to color it. So I did and colored it orange. Now, before you judge five-year-old me, I would like to point out that I thought I had done a spectacular job. Apparently, the teacher did not share my artistic vision. She thought I was being a little smart aleck. Which, in fairness, may have been a reasonable assumption based on the following many, many years of evidence. But this time I was innocent.

Eventually, someone figured out that I wasn’t trying to launch an artistic movement featuring orange amphibians. I actually saw the color differently. To this day, I still maintain that an orange frog looks perfectly reasonable. I am willing to debate this and I am not willing to concede (unless you’re my wife or my kindergarten teacher reading this).

As I got older, I began discovering just how much of our world depends on color. Traffic lights, maps, charts, art, clothing, warning signs, electrical wires and, apparently, frogs. Most people probably don’t think very much about color because they don’t have to. If someone tells you something is green, you look at it and think, “Yep, green.” I look at it and think, “Are we absolutely sure?”

Clothing became one of the biggest challenges. By high school, I had become very aware that certain colors were supposed to go together and certain colors were absolutely not supposed to go together. Unfortunately, nobody had bothered to provide me with the secret decoder ring. So getting dressed occasionally became something of an adventure. I could confidently walk out of my bedroom believing I looked fantastic, only to discover that apparently, I had dressed myself during a power outage. That uncertainty followed me into adulthood.

In fact, one particular incident happened when I was in college. At the time, I was working as a legal assistant for an attorney. One day she called me at the last minute and told me she needed me at the courthouse. I needed to deliver some documents and then remain in the courtroom so I could run documents back and forth as needed. This was exciting. I was going to court. There was just one small problem. I needed to dress appropriately. So I did what any independent, mature college student would do. I called my girlfriend. She is now my wife, so apparently the experience did not frighten her away. I stood in front of my closet and described what I had available. She listened patiently and told me exactly what to wear. Perfect! Except for one tiny detail. The colors I described to her were not necessarily the colors that were actually hanging in my closet. She was coordinating one outfit. I was apparently assembling another.

I got dressed, looked in the mirror and thought, “Professional.” Then I went to court. When I arrived, the attorney looked at me. Then she looked at my clothes. Then she looked at me again. She took the documents and told me that, as it turned out, I really didn’t need to stay in the courtroom after all. Well, that was disappointing. I had been looking forward to seeing what happened in court.

Later that evening, I saw my girlfriend. She took one look at me and solved the mystery. I didn’t match. Not even close. In fact, according to her professional assessment, I looked terrible. Suddenly, I understood why the attorney had decided that my courtroom responsibilities could be completed somewhere outside the courtroom. Preferably somewhere without witnesses.

As life went on, this became a regular concern. There were job interviews. business meetings, weddings, receptions and special events. Any occasion where I wanted to look professional came with that little question in the back of my mind. “Does this match?” My wife became my personal wardrobe consultant. Sometimes she would help me choose what to wear. Sometimes she would lay my clothes out the night before. Sometimes I would hold up two things and ask, “Does this go together?” For her, it wasn’t a big deal. For me, it was frustrating. I wanted to be able to make that decision myself.

Then something happened recently that I never expected. Technology finally caught up with my closet. I stumbled into an opportunity to solve a problem that I had been dealing with virtually my entire life. I created an application. Yes, me! The guy who once got in trouble for coloring a frog orange now has a technology application that evaluates colors. I appreciate the irony.

It’s called ColorMatch Assist. Check it out, it’s cool!  https://colormatchassist.com/

I can stand in front of a mirror, point my phone at myself and take a picture. I can also take a selfie or upload a picture of an outfit. Within seconds, ColorMatch Assist evaluates what I’m wearing. It tells me whether the colors work together. More importantly, it tells me why. If something doesn’t work, it gives me suggestions for what I can change. I can make the change, take another picture and try again. The entire process can take about 10 seconds. I can even save the outfits that work so I have a gallery of combinations I already know look good. Which means something rather remarkable happened. After all these years, I can finally match my own clothes. No wife required (Well, for that particular task.) I have been married long enough to understand that there are approximately 4,782 other things for which a wife is still required. But this one I can finally do myself.

And I have to tell you, that feels pretty darn good. What makes this even more exciting is that I didn’t just find something that helped me. I built it. I saw a problem and I found a solution. And then I realized something else. I can’t possibly be the only person with this problem. There are other people with color vision deficiency who have stood in front of a closet wondering what goes together. There are also plenty of people without color vision deficiency who simply want an objective second opinion before walking out the door. Suddenly, something that had frustrated me for most of my life had become an opportunity to help somebody else. And perhaps that is the part I am most excited about.

I think there comes a point where we stop wanting to borrow someone else’s dream and start building one of our own. It is exciting, terrifying, exhausting and somehow, it is still worth every minute. For me, that dream happened to begin with an orange frog. Who knew?

So, what does this have to do with running an online business? Well, I’m glad you asked!

Sometimes the best business opportunities don’t begin with a brilliant business idea. They begin with a problem. Maybe it is something annoys you, frustrates you, takes too much time or something makes life unnecessarily difficult.

And instead of simply accepting it, one day you ask a very different question, “Is there a better way?”  In my case, I was my own customer. In fact, I was probably the best customer I could have had because I understood the problem intimately. I didn’t need a focus group to explain the frustration to me. I had decades of market research hanging in my closet.

Sometimes we become so accustomed to the problems around us that we stop seeing them as problems. We simply accept them as part of life. But what if we didn’t? What if the thing frustrating you today is something thousands of other people are frustrated with too?

What if solving your own problem could eventually help somebody else? You never know when the opportunity will present itself to solve something for yourself that could ultimately become a solution for other people. And yes, maybe even a business.

Five Reasons We Should Stay Open to the Possibilities

1. Problems often reveal opportunities. A problem isn’t always just an obstacle. Sometimes it is information. It is telling you that something isn’t working as well as it could. Instead of immediately asking, “Why does this keep happening to me?” try asking, “Is there a way to make this easier?” That second question can take you somewhere completely different.
2. You may already understand your future customer. If you have personally experienced the problem you’re trying to solve, you have something incredibly valuable. Perspective. You understand the frustration and you understand the questions. You understand what someone actually wants the solution to accomplish. Sometimes your first customer is staring back at you in the mirror. Hopefully wearing matching clothes.
3. Technology keeps creating possibilities that didn’t exist before. I couldn’t have built ColorMatch Assist when I was in kindergarten. Mostly because smartphones hadn’t been invented. Also, because I was busy coloring frogs incorrectly. Today, technology gives ordinary people access to tools that would have seemed impossible only a few years ago. That means ideas that couldn’t realistically become businesses before might suddenly be possible. The question is whether we are paying attention.
4. Helping people is still one of the best business models. Businesses can become complicated very quickly. Traffic, conversion rates, analytics, automation, algorithms, etc. Before long, you need three computer monitors, four spreadsheets and possibly a therapist. But underneath all of it is something remarkably simple. Someone has a problem and you help them solve it. If you can genuinely make someone’s life easier, better, faster, less confusing or more enjoyable, you have created value. And value is where good businesses begin.
5. You don’t have to know where an opportunity will lead before you begin. This might be the biggest lesson for me. I didn’t spend my childhood thinking, “Someday I am going to build a technology application for people with color vision deficiency.” I was just trying to figure out why everyone kept insisting frogs weren’t orange. The opportunity came much later. Sometimes we want the entire path mapped out before we take the first step. Life doesn’t usually work that way and neither does business. Sometimes you simply take the next reasonable step, learn something and then take another.

Think about the things you regularly complain about. There may be some useful information hiding there. What takes too long? What is unnecessarily complicated? What do you constantly wish someone would invent? What do your friends complain about? What do your customers keep asking for?

You don’t need to turn every inconvenience into a business. If that were the case, somebody would already have created an app that automatically puts the toilet paper roll on correctly. Actually, somebody should probably get on that.

But becoming curious about problems changes the way you see them. Instead of only seeing frustration, you begin looking for possibilities. And that mindset matters.

Because opportunities rarely arrive at your front door wearing a name tag that says, “Hello. I am your next business idea.” They usually look like work, inconvenience, frustration or something you have been dealing with for years. Sometimes decades. The trick is recognizing the opportunity when it finally presents itself.

Of course, having an idea is only the beginning. You have to learn, you have to test, you have to make mistakes and you have to change things. You have to discover that the brilliant feature you were convinced everyone would love is apparently only loved by you and your mother. Then you adjust. You don’t need to have everything figured out before you start. You just need to be willing to start, pay attention, learn and keep moving. And sometimes it helps tremendously to have people around you who are doing the same thing.

That is one of the reasons I continue to appreciate being part of the Internet Profits Academy. Building an online business can be exciting, but there are moments when you wonder whether you’re moving forward or simply rearranging digital furniture. Having training, tools, a plan, coaching and a community of people working toward similar goals can make a tremendous difference. The Internet Profits Academy provides a place to learn how to take an idea, develop it and move it toward an actual online business. And now there is even a free option to join, which means you can get inside, look around and begin learning.

Your next opportunity might already be sitting right in front of you. You just haven’t recognized it yet. Mine was hanging in my closet my entire life.

Have you ever had a problem that made you think, “There has GOT to be a better way”? Maybe you found a solution. Maybe you turned it into something bigger. Maybe you’re still waiting for someone to invent it. Leave me a comment below and tell me about it. I’d genuinely love to hear what problem you’ve solved, what opportunity you’ve discovered or what idea has been sitting in the back of your mind waiting for you to finally do something about it.

And if you happen to believe frogs are orange, please mention that too. I could use the support.

And finally, when I told my wife about my business, she said, “I’m glad you finally invented something that can tell you whether your clothes match. I’ve only been doing it for free for more than 30 years.”

“Your big opportunity may be right where you are now.” — Napoleon Hill

“If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door.” — Milton Berle

And of course, a few VERY BAD Dad jokes:

I told my friend that every problem has a solution. He said, “What about procrastination?” I said, “I’ll get back to you.”

Someone told me to seize every opportunity. Apparently grabbing someone else’s dessert does not count.

Until next time, STAY FRESH, Friends!