Businesses that solve aspirational problems have a huge problem

One thing I painfully had to learn in customer interviews is this:They will often say something to the effect of: „oh my god, I ALWAYS wanted to do XYZ“ where XYZ is your product. It's easy to be tempted to think you found a really valuable problem to solve. They seem to aspire to solve this problem for so long, and now here you are, about to build a great product for them that solves their problem and makes you wealthy. But beware:People’s aspirations are often just that, aspirations.People aspire to many things. We want to become lean, fit, rich, famous, follow a healthy diet, and save the planet. When someone asks us if we want all those things, we enthusiastically say „YES.“ But oftentimes, this is nothing more than signaling our great intentions to others and ourselves. Who in their right mind would NOT aspire to have all those things?Past behavior is more informative than aspirations.Instead of thinking you found something valuable when listening to these types of aspirations, pause. Ask them about their past, not what they aspire to do in the future. How hard did they actually try to become rich, lean, famous, etc.? This type of data is much more informative than talking about aspirational goals.What people say they do and what they actually do are two different things.The chances of people telling you they will do one thing and then ACTUALLY doing it are quite low. Especially when it’s these types of aspirational goals that need behavior change. Changing behavior is really tough and complex. So, beware when somebody’s telling you they’ll do something but their past actions tell you they won’t.Aspirational problems are not the best business problems to solve for.If your business solves aspirational problems, you’re in a difficult position. Chances are your customers either won’t purchase your product or service or when they actually do, they rarely use it (e.g. that gym membership you've been paying for but didn't show up in months). Even if you still manage to build a sustainable business around this, to me it’s questionable whether that’s a business worth building.Curious to hear what you think about businesses that solve aspirational problems? see hubwealthy.com/wealthy