How to become an entrepreneur How to find a good business idea (2023)

Having a solid, growth-oriented foundation for a business or entrepreneurship is great—but now what? You probably need a desk, an internet package, some apps and of course a business idea to get started.

The problem? Good business ideas are hard to come by.

How heavy?nine out of tenStartups fail.

And while there's a lot of talk about how people who lead make or break a deal, your idea matters. Even with the right mix of entrepreneurial skills, you probably won't succeed without a good idea.

Ideas are where everything starts, and to become an entrepreneur you need to find a promising business opportunity and know if you can break the 9-to-5 routine permanently.

If you are aware of the challenges and still determined to do sopractice entrepreneurship, use the tips and strategies in this chapter as a starting point for your own business ideas.

In this chapter we talk about:

• Imagine your ideal working day
• Find a problem to solve
• How to choose between a product-based and a service-based company
• Selection of your profitable business idea

Let's go inside.

Start selling online with Shopify now

Start your free trial

1. Imagine your ideal work day

The first step is to sit down and imagine your ideal day at work five years from now. How is this helpful? Well you would be surprised how many peopleare not in loveabout their work or the number of people who shared their desire for a location-independent lifestyle, but actually don't want to spend time away from their family. You certainly don't want to end up in the same boat.

Those

The purpose of this exercise is to let go of any ideas you are already attached to and ask yourself - what do I really want from entrepreneurship? This will help you find the best deal to start in order to feel fulfilled.

Do you want to finish the day's work before noon? Where do you see yourself living? Essentially, you are creating a roadmap in terms of what your work life will be like.

Since we want this to be inspirational for you, we've listed all the possible questions you might be asking yourself at this point in an Excel spreadsheet.

[To mark]You can access and fill in here, along with the other templates and worksheets in this e-book.[/To mark]

Answer any questions you think are relevant. This way you can better visualize your ideal day at work and see if the business ideas you have in mind match what you want for your work life. Throw away the ones that don't line up because they won't make you happier.

For example, if you cannot live far from home, the idea of ​​becoming a travel consultant would not be viable. This is because travel consultants are known for their authentic and genuine knowledge of different travel destinations, and that comes with visiting these places.

2. Find a problem to solve

Now that you have a rough idea of ​​your ideal workday (and some business ideas), it's time to find a problem to solve.

Regardless of your skill set, product genius, or sales and marketing prowess, your success as an entrepreneur ultimately depends on ittheir ability to solve problems.

It's not just any problem, it's a recurring one. Something your target audience has to deal with all the time and wish there was something that would make their life a little easier.

Random question: Have you ever spent a lot of time searching for and trying out invalid, expired or fake coupon codes when shopping online?

The founders of Honey, a Los Angeles-based browser extensions startup, had the same problem andcame up with a solutionThis made it easier for shoppers to find qualifying coupon codes before checking out. To date, Honey has raised $40.8 million in funding and the browser extension has been downloaded more than 5 million times across FireFox, Safari and Chrome.

So, a good way to expand your list of business ideas is to find problems that require solutions. Below we share some tactics that really produce solid results.

Use Quora

Quoteis a hugely popular Q&A site that lists questions from different categories, making it easy to spot patterns.

Within Quora, you can subscribe to different categories or follow Spaces (communities and collections organized by common likes and interests) to find dozens of questions related to your niche. It's almost as if your target group's problems are being served to you on a silver platter, waiting to be solved.

To startQuote, enter a keyword related to your interests/passion in the search bar above. In the example below, we searched for "water sports".

Quora will present you with a list of topics related to this niche. Your next step is to find patterns in your results and then find solutions.

In the example above, we identified a pattern that gave us a business idea. One of the people asks if there are any out-of-water exercises that can help a person recreate the benefits of surfing.

While there are many such exercises, a contractor could easily market sling training bands for these.demographic🇧🇷 You could ask a supplier in China to make these bands or contact a dropshipping supplier for this purpose.

Another interesting aspect of Quora is the Related Questions feature. Whenever you click on a question, Quora will take you to a separate page listing related questions in the sidebar.

You can search these questions to identify additional trends, which eliminates some research.

Once you've identified some valuable patterns in each category, start thinking about possible solutions. Repeat this process until you have 20 or more business ideas from Quora.

Monitoring:Write down any ideas you get from Quora in a journal. Do the same with the ideas you left behind after imagining your ideal work day. This makes them easier to remember and ensures you have a list ready to review.

Search the comments section of popular websites

On popular websites, the comments section is often full of questions from people who regularly visit those websites. Sometimes these people want to know more about what an article is about, and sometimes they have interesting questions for the site owner.

Here's some advice so you don't waste hours searching the sites, reviewing each article and realizing that many of them didn't receive any comments:

To useBuzzSumoor any other similar content analyzer to find the most popular posts on a website.

The results presented by these tools are a list of the most popular posts on a website based on social media engagement. If the post has a lot of shares, it usually has a featured comment section as well.

In our example, we searched for popular posts on Social Media Examiner, one of the most popular online social media magazines in the world.

BuzzSumo returned a list of the most popular blog posts from Social Media Examiner. As we predicted, they have a lot of reviews.

You can replicate this strategy by researching a popular website in your niche and going to the comments section of the most shared blog posts.

While you might not be able to generate as many good business ideas as possible using Quora, you might find a gem or two to add to your journal.

3. Choose between products and services

You have some ideas about your personal desires and some problems that need to be solved.

Now let's narrow the playing field a little further: Choose between starting a product-based business or selling commercial services.

The main difference between the two is that product-based entrepreneurship involves the sale of a physical item, while business services are intangible. Both ways can be very profitable, and there are manysuccessful business peoplewho have managed to become millionaires with companies based on products and services.

But as with anything, there are pros and cons that you should consider before getting started.

Starting a product business

Starting your entrepreneurial journey with a product business can take more time. If you choose to maintain your own inventory orTake the dropshipping route, you are ultimately responsible for the quality of your products and deciding what to do with returns.

In addition, the R&D costs of developing a product from scratch can be quite high (prototypes for innovative business ideas can costover $100,000!).

Those

But product companies aren't all bad.

When you launch a product, you build or buy it once, and if you're successful, you can make money by selling the same product as many times as consumers want and keep looking for it.

Also, it's often easier to convey the benefits of a product and the impact it can have in a short amount of time. If you have bad posture and buy a posture corrector, for example, you will know within 15 minutes if the product works for you.

There are a fewsuccessful business peoplewho earned their living by selling products. However, you need to be mindful of the logistics and be prepared to jump over some hoops.

Starting a service company

Starting a service business can be easier in some ways. For one, you don't have to invest as much money upfront as you would with a product deal. Online services like freelance writing and graphic design only require a computer, internet connection and skills.

Put simply, you can take your capital and put it into marketing instead of stocks, spreading the word and raising the money.

Those

However, you may find it difficult to explain your service to potential customers. In fact, the audience you are speaking to may not be able to visualize what you are doing. You can counteract this by highlighting how your service can save you time and money, but even then, you may often need to restate your value.

Also, a lot of your success depends on you, so you'll be striving to grow your business revenue, not someone else (or anything else).

Depending on where you want to provide a service, an office and small team may be required to make this possible. start andwork outside of your homeit usually means less hassle and growth with a team of freelancers if you can get it.

Business Ideas for Ecommerce Entrepreneurs

Now that you are aware of the differences between product-based and service-based companies, how about exercising your imagination?

While you probably already have good business ideas in your journal to work on, you may have missed certain business opportunities that are in demand, easy to start, and fruitful.

To make sure you don't miss out on viable ventures, we've created a huge list of50 online and face-to-face businessesthat you could take off as an entrepreneur.

We also categorize each idea by business type (whether it's selling a product or a service). As you review, keep in mind that some of these ideas can be implemented online from the comfort of your bed, while others require setting up a physical storefront or presence to interact with customers in person.

Start selling online with Shopify now

Start your free trial

4. Choose your most promising business idea

The final step is an integral part of the overall four-step approach as it is here that you identify the best company to start with. The ideal company is one that meets the following criteria:

Profitability: can get a good return on your investment

You want to pick an idea that has the best chance of becoming a cash cow for you. We've done lots of exercises to find an idea that fits well with your interests and passions, but of course you have to balance that perspective with feasibility.

Possibility: It is easy for you to carry out

This is crucial if you plan to start or build a side job, or if you don't want to invest in resources for now. If that's the case for you, then prepare for disaster if you decide to do something that requires a lot of capital upfront. For example, if you are looking for private lessons, you can do thatStart an online businesswhere you give lectures via Skype. This would require less capital than starting with an offline gym.

Interest: Matches what you like

Preferably it should be something you can see yourself working on for at least years to come, so your idea should be something that not only makes money but also something that you enjoy.

Take the top 10 ideas you generated in this chapter and organize them into three lists:

1. more to lessprofitableideas
2. more to lesspossibleideas
3. more to lessInterestingideas

Then look at these ordered lists to see which ideas rank high in all three categories.

Those

At the end of this process, you should have at least a few business ideas that you can actually work on tomorrow if you want.

The next chapter is about validating your business ideas so you don't waste time and money bringing something to market that nobody wants.