Unlocked: I want to start a business but I have no ideas

Unlocked: I want to start a business but I’m out of ideas for 2024

We meet two groups of people when it comes to starting a business or a company.

First, some people want to start a business or a company and have no idea.

Second, some people have too many ideas and don’t know how to choose just one idea to focus on.

Which camp do you fit into? 🤔

For this post, we’ll give you practical answers on what to do if you fall into either scenario.

Let’s start with the first one.

Recommended: 5 tried and tested passive income ideas

I want to start a business but I have no ideas

Here are the tips we would recommend if you want to start a business but are out of ideas.

Tip 1: Decide your areas of interest

The first thing you should do is start with your area of ​​passion.

Passion is something you care about. Simple.

What interests do you have? I usually say goal to write about five passions or different things that interest you.

e.g. your interests (or passion) might be vegan food, baking bread, running, watching movies, personal finance, etc.

Tip 2: Find out what you’re good at

Talent follows. Here are the key questions:

• What are you good at?
• In your daily work, what skills do you use?
• What skills do you use outside of your day job?

Make a list 📝 of them by answering the questions above. A goal at least five talents or the skills you have.

e.g. Your skills could be teaching, writing, coding, painting, social media.

Tip 3: Combine areas of passion and talent

It’s time to combine your areas of interest with things you’re good at.

For example, I’m passionate about baking, but I’m good at using social media.

In my mind, a good starting point would be to bake and share the finished pastries on social media.

This will create interest as people have an obsession with baking in this country.

If you can take people on the baking journey, you can build an audience.

This could then lead to monetization through brand sponsorships or even the creation of specialist baking classes.

Another example is if you have a passion for vegan food and have a talent for writing.

This could lead you to create a blog in the food niche.

Actually, this is kind of like how we start The Humble Penny, except I had no writing talent lol.

I just wanted to do it to discover my creativity. Feel free to join our free blogging course here to learn.

Tip 4: Evaluate your ideas for demand

There is no point in thinking of a business or side idea that no one is willing to pay you for because there is no demand for it.

So it’s great to assess what you want to do about demand using easily accessible online tools.

For example, Google Trends is great for seeing how often people are searching for specific keywords related to a business idea you want to explore.

But the main thing I want to share with you is the sweet spot of choosing an idea at the intersection of passion, talent and demand.

If you’ve done this exercise and are stuck and can’t come up with an idea, pick one from our list of the 50 best spin-off ideas that can make you £1,000 or $1,000 a month.

Tip 5: Validate your business idea

To show that your idea has potential for success, you will then need to validate it.

One way to do this is to create a mini version of whatever you are going to offer and see if people will pay you for it.

For example, if you were to start a business making cakes and teaching people how to do it, you can validate your idea by seeing if someone will pay you for your cakes.

It could be that you baked for birthdays or special events to see if someone would book you.

Another example is if you are going to start a side hustle offering mentoring services, you could create a waiting list for your services to see if anyone signs up when you promote it.

To confirm the validation of your idea, you want a strong expression of interest or payment from a number of people.

Ideally, these people should not be your friends or family members.

Recommended: Free tool to create a waiting list

I have so many ideas and I can’t choose one

If you’re that person who has too many ideas 😅 and can’t pick one, here are five questions for you to answer.

The answers to these questions will help you narrow down your business idea and choose one.

Let’s say you have three ideas and you’re having trouble choosing one:

• Idea 1: Baking
• Idea 2: Blogging
• Idea 3: Training

Are you wondering, “how do I choose which idea to pursue?”.

Here’s how to do it. Our goal is to determine which idea will get you the most yeses.

Recommended: 5 Signs You’ll Be Rich 10 Years From Now

Question 1: How much money do you want?

So the first question is, how much money do you want to make doing this thing?

Let’s say you want to make £3,000 or $3,000 a month.

For Idea one, can baking cakes make you £3000 / $3000 a month?

If the answer is no, be realistic and move on to the next idea.

Can starting a blog do it for you? It certainly can, but it will take time to get there.

So we can call it a, yes.

Can he train and do this? Absolutely. Exceptional!

So, now you have come up with two possible ideas – Blogging and Coaching.

Question 2: How much effort are you willing to put in?

Next question, how much effort do you want to put into side hustles?

This is based on what you want to do, not what is required. A great distinction.

The effort you want to put in can be low, moderate, or high effort.

Let’s say you’re thinking to yourself:

“Hmm, I just want to make the money with moderate effort at most.”

Ask this question in side hustle ideas.

Can the middle effort help you make the side hustle successful?

Yes, probably for baking. But it failed because of the ability to make you the money you want.

Can Medium Effort Help You Make Your Blogging Successful?

Yes, it can only take a few hours a week, maybe up to two to five hours.

Can Medium Effort Help You Make Your Coaching Business Successful As A Side Hustle? Yes.

We aim for the one that will give you the most “yes” to test and refine an idea.

Question 3: How much time do you have available?

Your answer here might be that I only have two or three hours one day one week.

So the question is, will two to three hours a week help you make baking a success?

The answer is no, it won’t.

Will two hours a week you have available make the blog successful?

No, because you probably need one to two hours a day to have a well-written blog post.

So this will cause you to start questioning yourself further.

You could say “If I’m going to do this, I’m going to need more hours.”

Will they help you, two hours a week, in your training? Possibly.

See where we’re going with this?

Recommended: How Andy makes £4,596 a month from a subscription business

Question 4: Do you want to make it a full-time business?

This is a very important question. Want your cake idea to become a full-fledged business? Probably not.

You probably love baking, but do you want to sit in the kitchen, bake the cake and take customer orders? Probably not.

Do you like the idea of ​​passive income? Your blogging will take a lot of effort.

But one day, it could become a business if you take it seriously, get help and learn it right.

Yes, it might be what you want. Or maybe not. You decide.

Next is, do you want to one day do a coaching internship?

Do you want to someday earn an income from group training that can be very lucrative?

The answer here might be, yes, given the low effort for income potential.

Question 5: Will you enjoy doing it?

This last question is by far the most important and most people ignore it in their quest to make more money.

Coaching could make you a lot of money, but will you enjoy it? Yes or No?

Blogging can make you a lot of money, but will you enjoy it? Yes or No?

The same goes for baking.

You can see what we did there.

Although these scenarios are hypothetical, the answers you give will be based on the ideas you consider about yourself.

Repeat the same five questions for your short list of ideas and figure out which idea got the most yes answers.

The goal is to pick an idea and then start working to make it a reality 😀.

conclusion

Hopefully my approach has helped you narrow down the idea that works best for you.

There is so much more I could share with you about getting started and building something for your business or company.

You often feel that the best way besides doing all these things is to talk to someone or have conversations with other people who are also on a similar journey.

Find a suitable community or even find someone you trust, like a good friend, who you might be able to apply some of your ideas to and help you answer the questions.

If you want to run your ideas from me for example, feel free to leave me a comment at the end of the post.

Alternatively, feel free to chat with me face-to-face by joining our member community.

It’s a space for people who don’t just think of side hustles or business ideas, but take action to make them a reality.

We have these conversations every day in our Club at 5am, fortnightly on Coach calls, we’ll have them daily in our private community and monthly in our brains.

What to read next I want to start a business but have no ideas:

What to watch next: How to decide I want to start a business but have no ideas:

I’d love to hear from you in the comments, what are you currently struggling with when it comes to your hustle? Choosing an idea? Monetizing an idea? Comment below 🙂