Use The ‘See-Solve-Scale’ Framework To Turn Any Idea Into A One-Person Business In 2026.
This book holds the answers to everything you need.
He felt broken.
After numerous stops and starts, he thought he had finally found the idea that would make money. But after 3 months, he still hadn’t made a single dollar.
But that’s not the worst part.
He had bet everything on this idea. When it failed to generate results, he felt embarrassed and burnt out. The worst part? When he told me about it, I could see this coming from a mile away.
But when I tried to warn him, he ignored my advice.
Sometimes, you have to let someone pursue their own path and learn their own lessons. During our latest conversation, he finally came clean about how everything was going.
He was losing money. Fast. He was scared.
I recently read Professor of Entrepreneurship at Brown University, Danny Warshay’s book:
See, Solve, Scale: How Anyone Can Turn An Unsolved Problem Into A Breakthrough Success.
This is a book that my friend could have used to avoid his situation.
Let’s start with how this book can help you…
Entrepreneurship is a structured and routine approach to solving problems.
Entrepreneurship sounds sexy.
The word evokes a strong image of a lonely visionary who develops a world-changing technology in their garage and shapes the world by bringing it to market overnight.
But that’s not really entrepreneurship.
That’s the Disney-induced version of entrepreneurship that stops talented people from taking action. They make for great headlines and movies.
But that’s all bullsh*t.
Entrepreneurship is a methodical approach to solving complex problems. It’s a structured way of thinking that brings novel solutions to complex problems faced by a specific group of people.
That’s really it.
Anything more is an attempt to dress entrepreneurship up.
By that definition, we are all entrepreneurs. We’ve gone through our whole lives solving problems. Big and small. Simple and complex.
We first learned how to:
Walk.
Write.
Speak.
Comprehend.
These are extraordinarily complex skills that we’ve solved for ourselves.
You must first be an entrepreneur of your own life before you can become an entrepreneur for others. Solve your own problems. And then sell that solution to others. Congrats, you’re an entrepreneur.
As Dan Koe once said:
If you solve a problem in private, it’s called self-improvement.
If you solve a problem in public, it’s called business.
Entrepreneurship is boring, complex, and filled with obstacles.
But here’s a 3-step structured process for being a solopreneur.
Step 1: Seek to understand a REAL problem, not what ChatGPT tells you.
Last month, I sat down to eat lunch with a solopreneur in Bangkok.
Over a plate of vegetarian Pad Thai, he told me he was building an AI App targeted at event management for ex-pats.
He sourced foreign developers who were cheap and hardworking.
He had investors interested in supporting the app.
On paper, he had everything.
Just one problem: He didn’t have a problem to solve.
He had a solution in search of a problem.
Rather than doing bottom-up research, he decided he wanted to build an event management app and then tried to find customers for it.
He never talked to any ex-pats.
He never attended any events through other apps himself.
“I just did my research on ChatGPT and Google,” he told me.
But that’s like the tail wagging the dog.
He was so married to his solution that he didn’t want to pivot, despite early testing with real customers that didn't validate a clear problem to be solved. He felt stuck and thought that I could help him.
Why? Opportunity costs.
He had already sunk 3 months and $10k into developing this App.
If ChatGPT or Google can spit out this information, it can provide it to everyone else. There’s no competitive advantage. Your competitors can see the same trends and statistics, and even perform the same analysis.
But when one method becomes abundant, another becomes scarce.
Anthropologists study cultures by fully immersing themselves in the culture. They don’t judge. They don’t try to change anything. They simply become part of the tribe and observe what’s happening around them.
That’s the approach solopreneurs need to take.
Instead of becoming an armchair anthropologist, speak to real people. Observe the problem in its natural habitat. Stop looking at screens. No AI prompt will tell you the problems of the world. You’ll get more data from first-hand observation than what ChatGPT will tell you.
Marry your problem, not your solution.
Step 2: Now, SOLVE the problem in the simplest way possible.
My solopreneur friend made a 2nd deadly mistake.
He made his solution:
Complex.
Expensive.
Complicated.
Any changes to his product required weeks of effort and payment to developers. Even if they are cheap, these costs add up. Especially at the start when you’re constantly iterating.
So, do the opposite.
Once you’ve talked to real customers who experience these problems, make the solution:
Easy to test.
Cheap to build.
Simple to iterate.
You want to fail quickly and cheaply.
Create a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) to test and validate assumptions about your solution with real customers. Nothing else matters but getting feedback and real-world data.
Everyone’s got a perfect business plan until they encounter a real-world customer.
The magic happens in the iteration.
Almost every big brand iterated its way to success.
Facebook started off as a way to rank the attractiveness of his classmates (Facemash), then evolved into a campus social network (TheFacebook), and eventually became a global social platform.
Slack started as an internal chat tool built for a gaming company (Tiny Speck) while making Glitch, and evolved into a standalone workplace messaging platform after the game shut down.
Twitter started off as a side project inside Odeo (a podcasting company) to post SMS-style status updates (“twttr”), before evolving into a real-time public messaging and news network.
Again: Don’t marry your solution. Marry your problem.
You need to be open to changing your solution to better solve your customers’ problems.
At this stage, you want to be resourceful rather than needing resources.
Make it so rudimentary you’re almost embarrassed by what it looks like.
Reid Hoffman famously said:
If you aren’t embarrassed by your first product, you’ve launched too late.
Remember KISS: Keep it simple, stupid.
Step 3: Build a SCALABLE version
Scaling is a paradox.
You need to do the unscalable activities to build a scalable business.
Taylor Swift is a master at this approach.
She frequently does unscalable things:
Singing at fans’ weddings.
Handwriting letters and sending surprise gifts to fans.
Inviting small groups of fans to private listening sessions in her own home.
She’s also been doing this for over 15+ years.
But solopreneurs misunderstand scale.
I’ve got so many people asking me a variation of:
How do I create a digital product to create passive income so I don’t have to work?
That’s like asking:
How do I start benching 100 kg at the gym with no prior weight training?
You need to establish something before it can be scaled.
Before creating software, start by offering it as a service.
Before creating an AI bot, start by doing it manually.
By starting with the unscalable, you can learn deeply about the problems clients face. You’ll be able to validate assumptions.
As Henry Ford once said:
If I asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses
If you scale too early, you risk scaling the wrong thing.
Many of the best software companies started as agencies, then pivoted to software once they had a streamlined process and a clear understanding of their customers’ problems.
This is the path that:
Basecamp was a design agency (37 Signals) before pivoting to become a global project management platform.
Palantir offered consulting alongside their software as a defence contractor before becoming one of the most powerful data companies in the world.
Think big. Start unscalable. Iterate to scale.
Let’s end with this…
Entrepreneurship is simple to start.
But hard to execute.
You can start a business in an hour, but spend a lifetime mastering it.
The only steps you need to take to get started:
Step 1: See
Step 2: Solve
Step 3: Scale
Repeat.
👉 Build your PROFITABLE six-figure one-person business while you work a 9–5 corporate job (Even if you have kids or a mortgage). If you want my one-person business growth system, I’ve created a FREE email course for you to get started
