How to find your business idea

When I was 6 and started going to school, I already knew what job I wanted to do for the rest of my life: building pyramids. Why did I want to build such things so badly? Because I loved to draw them on squared paper, and I was good at it. In entrepreneurial jargon, in those days I had found my niche: building pyramids all over the world. But then reality busted in and showed me the truth: pyramids hadn’t been in high demand since a long time (thousands of years), so I moved on.

From that particular time on, I learned how hard building a business can be. I remember how difficult it was to find new things I loved as much as drawing those Egyptian buildings yet still wanted to do every day when out of school.

It was freaking hard.

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Business ideas

Starting a business is tough, it’s a long hard slog, and statistically, you’re destined to fail. But getting a business off the ground is only a problem you’ll face if you can come up with a business idea to begin with. I ran my own company for about two years, but it took us three weeks and a lot of ‘meetings’ at pubs to eventually come up with something we wanted to do.

Related: List of small business grants in the UK

Whether you want to make some money on the side, run something when the kids are at school or create the next Facebook, here’s a humongous list of business ideas. To make things a little easier on the eye, I’ve broken the list down by industry/area, feel free to scroll through the lot or skip as you please.

Domestic & household service business ideas

Domestic service businesses are great, they’re easy to setup, cost practically no money, and you get out what you put in.

1. Cleaning company

Probably widely regarded as the most straightforward business to make money from. Get Microsoft Publisher, print off some flyers and put them up in local shop windows and drop them in letterboxes nearby. The costs are minimal, just your cleaning supplies and the ink for your printer. Easy to scale too. Check out our recent interview with the founders of Homejoy, a multimillion dollar cleaning company. (Update: Homejoy unfortunately went out of business between funding rounds and was acquired in a small deal.)

2. Laundry service

Go to big apartment blocks and flyer them. A lot of flats in built up areas don’t have washing machines. You can also partner with laundrettes to offer their existing customer base a ‘delivery option’, simple!

3. Carpet cleaning

Same as above, although a little more expensive as decent carpet cleaning equipment can be pricey, but with that comes a higher barrier to entry so you can charge more.

4. Window cleaning

You get the gist now, print flyers and target your local community. Everybody has windows unless they’re in prison.

5. Pool cleaning

Only do this is you know what you’re doing, you don’t want to be responsible for a swimming pool turning green. Contrary to popular opinion, you don’t have to be 21 and well-built to do this job.

6. House sitting

Pretty awesome job if you ask me, get paid to hang out in a mansion while the owners are on holiday… a fully stocked fridge and a king-size bed, happy days! Now, back in the real world… there’s also a decent market for waiting for deliveries when people are at work. As for how to market, see all the above.

7. Catering company

If you love cooking and can handle catering for the masses, a catering company could be an excellent idea. You can work from home and start small catering for buffets with sandwiches and the such, then scale up to hog roasts. Be careful with this one and make sure you have all the required licenses like a food hygiene certificate.

8. Personal chef

Basically catering without the masses. The wealthy people that live among us are partial to a person chef, somebody that’s just on hand to cook for them morning noon and night. Think catering + house sitting, same rules apply for licenses.

9. Childcare

The perfect business for stay at home parents. If you really love looking after children, then look after other people’s kids while yours are at school. You can become a registered childminder, or even open a day care centre.

10. Painter/Decorator

Take everything I said for a cleaning company, change the designs, job done. You may also need some form of insurance.

11. Gardening company

I worked for a small gardening company when I was younger, it’s great to work outdoors (yes, even in England with all the rain). The great thing about gardening is the results speak for themselves, start working for a neighbour and work your way up to an empire.

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Business ideas

Where does an entrepreneur come up with the idea for his/her business? In practice there are many ways in which the business opportunity and idea is first spotted. As we shall see, sometimes luck plays a big part; at other times there is a role for approaches which encourage deliberate creativity.

Here are some of the main sources of business ideas for start-ups:

Business experience

Many ideas for successful businesses come from people who have experience of working in a particular market or industry. For the start-up, there are several advantages of applying this experience to a new business:

• Better and more detailed understanding of what customers want
• Knowledge of competitors, pricing, suppliers etc
• Less need for start-up market research
• Entrepreneur is able to make more realistic assumptions in the business plan about sales, costs etc
• Industry contacts, who might then become the first customers of the start-up!

All of the above help the business planning process and you could argue that they reduce the risks of a start-up. On the other hand, you might argue that "familiarity breeds contempt". In other words, detailed experience of an industry means that the budding entrepreneur doesn't have a fresh perspective. Someone who is new to a market may be able to exploit approaches that have worked in other industries to make an impact with the start-up.

Personal experience

Many ideas come to entrepreneurs from their day-to-day dealings in life, or from their hobbies and interests. For some of us, frustrating or bad experiences are a source of irritation. For the entrepreneur they might suggest a business opportunity.

It is often said that one of the best ways to spot a business opportunity is to look for examples of poor customer service (complaints, product returns, persistent queues etc). Such examples suggest that there is an opportunity to do something better, quicker or cheaper than the existing products.

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Under £10,000 Business Ideas

A major barrier to many thinking of starting their own business is the perception that start-up costs are prohibitively high. That doesn’t have to be the case! Startups has put together guides on how to start a business idea with less than £10,000 of start-up capital, as well as a rundown of some low-cost business ideas.

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Three stage approach

If your dreams of running your own business are frustrated by the notion that you have to come up with a brilliant new idea, think again. The key is to come up with a business concept that is relevant in today's market to meet customers' needs. The majority of successful new businesses are based on existing ideas, products or services with maybe a tweak or improvement in the offering, thereby creating its appeal in the current market.

We all develop a unique set of experiences in our work and personal lives and this is where we suggest you go hunting for your own new business idea. To achieve this you need to undertake a thorough, logical and well-organised search – including researching the current market – and the ideas will begin to flow.

Our suggestion is that you adopt the following three-stage approach:

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How to get a business idea

There are countless businesses already in existence, so it’s very likely that you won’t be the first person to think of an idea or product. Many talented entrepreneurs waste time and energy trying to think of a unique business, when they should be focusing on how to be better, rather than how to be different.

“Don’t believe the myth that an idea isn’t a good one because there is competition,” says Marianne Cantwell, founder of Free Range Humans. “If it is a good idea there either will be competition already, or there soon will be. Remember Facebook was not the first social network and Google was not the first search engine.”

Cantwell recommends keeping a list of businesses that you find inspiring, then asking yourself how you could put your own stamp on that product or industry. “This thinking will free you up to find more ideas than you imagine, closer than you think,” she says.

Meditate

If you haven’t already watched Headspace founder Andy Puddicombe’s TED Talk, this is a great place to start. Puddicombe explains the importance of taking time to stop and look after our minds, and why this is an essential part of the creative process.

“We are so distracted, we are no longer present in the world in which we live,” he explains. A busy, stressed mind is unlikely to be able to access the inspiration and clear thinking required to come up with a business plan, and build that plan into a reality. Taking some time to clear your head and become aware of the world around you could open up a myriad of potential ideas.

Use your skillset

If you’re not trained in finance, you wouldn’t open an accountancy practice. It’s the same with any business – you’re far more likely to make your idea a success if you focus on the skills you already have. Vicki Anstey, founder of Barreworks, quit her job to set up a dedicated barre studio after discovering a ballet workout technique that revolutionised her body, posture and confidence.

“My background in marketing and advertising gave me the right instincts and skills to turn a much loved hobby into a profitable business,” she explains.

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How to generate ideas

If you’ve taken even the most rudimentary psychology course before, you will know that the brain is largely composed of a cell we refer to as “the neuron.” In a human brain, there are approximately 100 billion of these cells. Connected together, they form a nervous system that is capable of making decisions, sensing surroundings, and issuing commands to our body.

How we think, what we think, and what we’re capable of, are largely a consequence of the connections these neurons have made with one another.

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Where to get ideas from

You want to start a business. Awesome. So does 65% of the 20-something crowd. The fact that you’re on this website, reading this article, means that the odds are pretty high that you’re interested in starting a business.

Just one small thing. You need an idea.

Ideas are where businesses germinate. If you can come up with the idea, the business building part will follow.

Where do you get an idea? Here are five ways that you can come up with an idea for starting your next business.

1. Identify your biggest source of satisfaction.

Any career counselor or job coach will tell you the same thing — ”Find something that you love doing.”

I almost hate to say the same thing, because it’s become so cliche. But here I go. You’ve got to do something that you enjoy doing. If you enjoy what you’re doing, you’ll flourish and so will your business.

What gives you fulfillment and satisfaction in life? Well, you can probably do that — or some variation of it — for a living.

Tim Ferriss calls it a “muse,” which sounds a kind of fairy taile and dreamy. But it works, because it’s built on a solid principle:   “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life” (Confucius)

Here’s how to turn this principle into a business idea:  Figure out how to monetize what you love.

You love rock climbing? How about being a rock climbing instructor?

You find fulfillment in organizing spaces and maximizing workflow? How about becoming a productivity consultant?

You love space travel? Then, heck, start building rockets.

Find out what you love. Do it, and turn it into a business.

2. Identify your biggest frustration.

Think for a minute. What’s the biggest frustration in your life right now?

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55 Business ideas

This article has been excerpted from 55 Surefire Home Based Businesses You Can Start for Under $5,000 by Entrepreneur Press & Cheryl Kimball (2009).

Today, tens of thousands of people are considering starting a home based business, and for good reasons. On average, people can expect to have two and three careers during their work life. Those leaving one career often think about their second or third career move being to their own home. People who have been part of the traditional nine-to-five work force and are on the verge of retiring from that life are thinking of what to do next. The good news: Starting a homebased business is within the reach of almost anyone who wants to take a risk and work hard.

$1,500 or less to start up

1. ACCOUNTANT
Experience, training or licensing may be needed

Create a flier outlining your services. Before you do that, you need to know what those services will be. Do you want to simply do bookkeeping for a small business? A more involved level of accounting would be do actually work up balance sheets, income statements, and other financial reports on a monthly, quarterly, and/or annual basis, depending on the needs of the business. Other specializations can include tax accounting, a huge area of potential work. Service companies like Due.com assisted freelancers with payments. Many owners don't mind keeping their own day-to-day bookkeeping records but would rather get professional help with their taxes.

2. BICYCLE REPAIR

In many parts of the country, this business tends to be seasonal, but you can find ways around that. Rent a storage unit and offer to store people's bicycles over the winter after you do a tune-up and any needed repairs on them. If you want to cater to the Lance Armstrong wannabes, you can have business all year round. These road race riders are training through snow, sleet and dark of night. Some of them work on their own bicycles, but many of them don't, so you can get their business all year. And if you keep Saturday shop hours, you can be sure you will have a group of enthusiasts coming by to talk all things cycling.

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Business ideas

But before we get started, let's clear up one point: People always wonder if this is a good time to start their business idea. The fact is, there's really never a bad time to launch a business. It's obvious why it's smart to launch in strong economic times. People have money and are looking for ways to spend it. But launching in tough or uncertain economic times can be just as smart. If you do your homework, presumably there's a need for the business you're starting. Because many people are reluctant to launch in tough times, your new business has a better chance of getting noticed. And, depending on your idea, in a down economy there is often equipment (or even entire businesses!) for sale at bargain prices.

Estimates vary, but generally more than 600,000 businesses are started each year in the United States. Yet for every American who actually starts a business, there are likely millions more who begin each year saying "OK, this is the year I am going to start a business," and then don't.

Everyone has his or her own roadblock, something that prevents them from taking that crucial first step. Most people are afraid to start; they may fear the unknown or failure, or even success. Others find starting something overwhelming in the mistaken belief they have to start from scratch. They think they have to come up with something that no one has ever done before--a new invention, a unique service. In other words, they think they have to reinvent the wheel.

But unless you're a technological genius--another Bill Gates or Steve Jobs--trying to reinvent the wheel is a big waste of time. For most people starting a business, the issue should not be coming up with something so unique that no one has ever heard of it but instead answering the questions: "How can I improve on this?" or "Can I do this better or differently from the other guy doing it over there?" Or simply, "Is there market share not being served that makes room for another business in this category?"

Get the Juices Flowing

How do you start the idea process? First, take out a sheet of paper and across the top write "Things About Me." List five to seven things about yourself--things you like to do or that you're really good at, personal things (we'll get to your work life in a minute). Your list might include: "I'm really good with people, I love kids, I love to read, I love computers, I love numbers, I'm good at coming up with marketing concepts, I'm a problem solver." Just write down whatever comes to your mind; it doesn't need to make sense. Once you have your list, number the items down one side of the paper.

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