“Part of the challenge of being an entrepreneur, if you’re going for a really huge opportunity, is trying to find problems that aren’t quite on the radar yet and try to solve those.”
-Sean Parker
Every true entrepreneur has one key ability — they are able to identify a problem and turn it into an opportunity. That’s the mindset that one man in China adopted when he solved a simple problem for people who need a bathroom handy.
I mean, have you ever seen a Chinese toilet before? The key here is to master the squat.
Like a mirage in an urban desert, the elderly entrepreneur turned his private bathroom into a public bathroom, charging 2 yuan ( $0.33) to go “number one” and 5 yuan ($0.82) to go “number two.” That’s a rather small price to pay for dignity, but in a society where bathrooms are few and far between, it beats having to watch people dump their business on city streets and in alleys.
He also marketed his bathroom on local streets.
Amateur, but effective.
But when you read stories like this about hundreds of children having to share a single school bathroom where lines can grow up to 200 antsy children, it’s easy to identify the extremely high demand for something that’s so very low in supply (and quality) and offer a solution that your bank account will probably thank you for.
And that’s a lesson entrepreneurs everywhere should keep in mind. Having a good eye for opportunity is key, but when you are able to solve problems and serve the masses, you kill at least two birds with one stone and financial success always follows.
Hey, even a geo-location app to find the nearest public restroom would probably make a killing in this country, so someone just needs to figure it out and make it already.
