How to notice a problem worth solving

Let me teach you a skill that quietly changed how I see everything: learning to actually hear what people complain about.

Sounds odd, I know. Stay with me.

Every complaint is a problem someone would pay to make disappear. We just tune them out, because they're everywhere.

So this week, try this. Keep a notes app or a scrap of paper handy, and jot down every time you hear someone say one of these:

"I don't have time to..."   "I can never figure out how to..."   "I wish someone could just..."   "It's such a headache to..."

Don't judge them. Just collect them. From friends, from small business owners, from that overwhelmed 30-something at your old company.

Within a week you'll have a list. And here's what you'll notice: some of those problems are ones you could solve in your sleep. The exact thing they find impossible, you find easy — because you've done it a thousand times.

That gap — between their headache and your "of course" — is where every bit of income after 45 begins.

A friend of mine, a retired teacher, kept hearing younger parents say "I can't get my kid to read." To her, after 30 years, that wasn't a mystery. It was a Tuesday.

She started helping a few families. It grew from there. She didn't invent anything — she just finally listened to a complaint she'd been hearing for years, and realized she was holding the answer.

If you want to see how people turn a noticed problem into a real second income, I've broken it down step by step below.

Go Check It Out Here For Yourself:

— Richard