Often entrepreneurs have no shortage of ideas for businesses, the challenge tends to be how they plan, execute and stick with their chosen business idea.
However, there are a group of people that are uncertain about what business they should start.
You may be reading this today filled with desire to start your own business, to call your own shots and build something BIG – but you haven’t a clue where to start.
If that sounds like you, then let’s share some insights from the businesses we started and drawing on the experiences of the hundreds of businesses we have worked closely with inside InfoMarketer’sZone over the past years…
What Business Are You Destined To Grow BIG?
The challenge when you are looking to get a handle of the best business idea for you is to combine:
- Your passion and interests
- Your experience and skill
- Commercial demand/desire
- Overall market size and growth potential
- Ultimate make-up of your business
Each one of these is critical to how effective you will be in building your own business.
Without passion or interest, your upward potential will be stifled.
Without considering commercial potential of your actual business idea and focus leads to a hobby rather than strong business.
Ignore future planning and you will end up with a business that takes on a life of its own and will almost definitely end up in a form or place where you are not happy – at that point you have created your worst nightmare instead of your best dream.
Finding Your Ideal Business Idea
There are at least 3-steps involved in finding or assessing business ideas and types when you are looking:
1. Match your passion with desire/demand
There are no two-ways about it, ALL of the top businesses are driven by two very important factors: passion/drive and a strong desire/demand in the marketplace.
Sure, you can go off and pick a niche market that has high-potential (let’s say diet and fitness at a macro level) and even dig in and find some specific opportunities within that niche market – but if you don’t have a passion or interest in some aspect of the diet and fitness market – do you really believe you will succeed?
You may achieve some limited success by pushing products and services into that space, but you will have neither the energy nor the attraction required to drive that business to the big leagues and will certainly not be in a place to stick with that business for the years it will take to make it really fulfill your overall vision.
However, if you choose sales training because you have a passion for learning how to sell and commit to constantly over-achieving in that space then you will be both motivated naturally each day, you will gain an understanding of the market that is deeper than your competition AND you will stick with it because you love it so much anyway.
Make sure you are passionate about your market and what you can offer to that market as well as disciplined enough to find the BIG commercial demands and desires.
2. Think BIG
Perhaps the biggest mistake we see from people who work with us over at InfoMarketer’sZone is TINY thinking.
People join believing that launching a $27 ebook in the area of dating (just one example) makes a business.
Think about how you will reach $1M within 3-years…what does your company look like? What products and services will you offer? What will your team need to look like? What other areas might you go into when you achieve that level in your business?
We especially see this from professionals and service providers – graphic designers, counsellors, trainers, speakers, consultants, freelancers, etc… who believe their service IS their business.
Trouble is, when they project out 3-years, 5-years or more, will they be able to grow into a $1M, $5M or $10M business consulting or freelancing on their own?
No way – not a chance.
Same thing with the person who comes in with an idea to write a single book or ebook and yet has aspirations of making Millions of dollars…
Certainly, you may START with your own service or consulting business.
You may START with a single ebook.
However, your vision must be much bigger than that and you need to start day-1 with that vision so you can direct your energy, creativity and effort toward reaching that much BIGGER goal.
3. Don’t Get Stuck In Today
There’s no reason to stick with what you know or what you do today.
Certainly, if that is your area of passion and you have knowledge, skills and experience to bring to the table – that’s terrific.
For most people though, there is at least one other area of passion in their lives that once tapped can lead to amazing things happening in their lives.
For example, we once helped a fitness trainer who had run a line of 20+ fitness clubs for 20-years completely change his market toward the mental performance enhancement field.
Although he was passionate about helping people live healthier lives, he was burnt out and saw the mental aspect as the critical piece of the puzzle – so that was his NEW passion and where he headed with renewed vim and vigour.
When you are driven, passionate and excited, your path to becoming knowledgeable gaining expertise is much shorter and far more fulfilling.
Don’t be afraid to charge off in a new direction if you know deep-down that’s where you want to spend the next 3-5 years of your life.
For us, each of our 3 businesses came directly from our passion for that area, a drive to gain a deep understanding of the market, uncovering biggest gaps/commercial desire and then developing differentiated offerings into those markets with a 3-year plan to roll-out combinations of products and services building a small, focused team to help scale the business.
The goal is big, the passion level is massive and working the plan is so much fun…we have already won – it’s all bonus from here.
