Maybe you’ve had enough. The last straw has been identified. The camel’s back is broken. You have taken the bold leap to quit your job, and go out on your own. Bravo! Maybe you haven’t left your old life just yet, and are busy exploring options for where your career might lead to next. Or maybe you dream of having your own company one day and want to know where to begin.

It all starts with an idea.

You might be a naturally creative person and have a banquet of ideas around the clock. If this is the case, then ideas are not your problem, but finding gold is (this post may help you). If you have the urge to start a business, but don’t have an idea yet, here are some things to think about that could help:

“Just be yourself”

If you have spent several years in an existing, fulfilling career working for someone else, it might make sense for you to continue doing what you do, but within the context of your own business. Only consider this option if you really enjoyed your previous job – starting a business takes effort, you need to be excited about doing what you do! Jobs that work well for going on your own will generally be jobs that you can perform on your own, and don’t require you to assemble a support team of specialists to keep things going. You may even have a few co-workers who might like to join you on a new adventure. Depending on your current work contract, might even be able to take a few loyal customers with you to get your client list and word-of-mouth started. 

The only caveat when going out on your own is to discover just how much extra work is involved with running a successful business. You might be excellent at what you do, but there are other cogs to the machine that need to keep turning – ones you never even knew were spinning. You might have to do a part-time course or two and teach yourself very quickly how to do basic accounting, marketing, customer management, debt collection, tax etc. You may also be able to outsource some of these functions to others, leaving you free to build your business.

You don’t have to be original

Not every business is unique. The vast majority are complete clones – no creativity required. Yet they are still viable and productive money-printing businesses. How many tax practitioners, web designers, freelance designers, software designers, hairdressers, restaurants, plumbers exist in the world – yet each of them represents a successful business on their own. This is because people will always need certain services, and by offering that service, you might naturally become a better option over a competitor simply due to your prices or location. You don’t need to innovate much, you can just copy the existing business verbatim. This can be a very simple way to start your own business - replicate success by copying what is already working. Of course not all the details of the business you want to emulate will be visible from the outside – you won’t know their financial situation, how they acquire customers, or what their internal procedures are, but there are ways to find out some of this information. You can start with an internet search. You can try out their service as a customer. You could strike up a conversation with the boss, or be honest and take him/her for coffee to ask for advice or mentorship. You could even intern for a while to learn the ropes. The good thing about starting a business that you know exists already is that you won’t have to prove there is a market for what you do. The only obstacle, apart from learning how that business works, will be to take market share away from your competitors, which might be challenging if there is high customer loyalty, client stickyness, a great location or price.

Same same, but different

An evolution of the above concept, is to take an existing business that clearly works, then change one aspect of it. Your business will be “Like x, but y.” Here are some things you might want to try changing:

    • Revenue model - free tier / lower price / monthly subscription / success-only fee / commission / bundled-in product.

    • Target market - high value / low value / professionals / work-at-home Moms / pets / retirees / students / a different country.

    • Means of delivery - online / home delivery / value-add.

    • Client acquisition - online / customer referral / content strategy / opt-in at checkout / white-label / insurance.

• Production – automate it entirely and produce it for a dime, or make it bespoke, hand-made, organic, authentic, ethical, fair trade, biodegradable and generally ultra-special (with a high price tag to match).

Your new twist could open up a whole new market, or by implementing automation, could create more value and drive down costs. Businesses that follow the “Like x, but y” principle are often easier to pitch to investors because the model is easy to understand. Investors will still have tough questions for you (oh yes!), but at least they are not staring at you confused from the very beginning.

You've got 99 problems

The last source of great ideas is your own life experience. What sucked today? What do your friends complain about the most? How could you make their lives easier? How can you cut out complication, reduce time, save money, or just hand over the problem entirely to someone else? People will gladly pay for that. Products and services that save time and money are universally easy to sell and will attract loyal customers (if you can actually deliver).

Once you start paying attention to the problems in your daily life, activate your entrepreneurial mindset and see them instead as opportunities, you may find that there are many ideas you can write down. Open up your phone and keep a list as you go about your day, returning to it later on to think through in more detail. Next time you see your friends or family, strike up a conversation by asking how might they imagine X working better. You might not have to go very far to find some great ideas!

WARNING #1: When you find a great idea – please Google it before you get too excited and book a domain name. The world is big. Other people are smart too. Somebody somewhere has probably thought about this. Don’t be discouraged if they have, you can always tweak the idea in another direction to make it unique. If you see the exact idea already exists and their market share is significant, don’t Hulk-smash your chair against the wall with rage, you will come up with more great ideas soon, I promise. Creativity is a muscle – it will grow with practice.

WARNING #2: Not everyone thinks like you. What you think is a problem / opportunity might not be so for other people. You might be the only person excited about your idea. Test it out on friends and family, then complete strangers, who don’t care if they make you go home and cry.

Problems in my own life were the seed of creation for three of my own businesses so far. In my latest business, an online tax robot, I was able to experience the original problem of struggling with my tax (gave me great insight into what sucked, how badly, and how it could be better) and also build the solution (I’m a geeky computer programmer too). It was a gift that the problem was my own, because I then intuitively knew how to improve the product over time, to create a better and better solution for me. I was also able to use the same words and phrases (however incorrect they were) when creating the initial marketing campaigns, because I was the target market for the product, so they resonated well. Trying to solve a problem that affected somebody else, but not myself, would have been much harder and less likely to bear fruit.

If none of these ideas appeal to you, you can just pull a Bill Gates move - take someone else’s product and sell it way better than they ever did. It worked out Ok for him I guess.