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MenuI'm looking for advice on idea generation. I'm currently struggling on what type of business should I start?
I Iike brainstorming and coming up with ideas, working with slogans and logo ideas. But unsure on what type of business I should start? I was thinking about consulting but please advise.
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Hello! This is a great question, alimena many new self-employed or entrepreneurs face. When I started consulting 10 years ago i started mentoring people in this exact situation - you know you're good, but you feel like your skillsets are diverse and you obviously want to do something productive that generates steady income thus you're unsure as to what path to follow. If this goes un-addressed for too long you'll see years pass by w/no fruitful effort. My background is in strategic marketing - here are my thoughts for you:
First, try coupling your skillsets to a certain industry such as marketing, pr, sales, technology, etc. Are you capable of creating the logos or imagery you propose to someone?
Second, based on whether you can deliver and the industry that best suits you - understand your would be role in the current eco-system. For example I would place your interest into marketing but you see, a logo does not make a brand, a slogan requires clever pitching to be accepted at once, and clever repetition to the audience for it to stick and become a slogan or part of the brand. Why would a company go to a consultant who cannot deliver campaigns but only create words on microsoft or sketch a logo but not create it? Even a graphic artist must go through dozens of variations of the same 'finished' logo before one gets accepted and thats because a miniscule detail makes a huge difference to a client. So a sketch is close to delivering nothing.
Consulting can be a good gig, but you must understand what consulting is - is not just speaking, unless you're amazing public speaker and jargonist. No, sustainable consulting delivers a product in the form of research, theories, thesis, manages others implementing the effort, works side by side the teams they are hired by. So this means that even for logo and branding consulting you must be perceived as an expert in your field, have experts who like you as a human and respect you as a professional. Specially if you want to simply create verbal content and not tangible brand assets.
With that said, on the other hand, let's say that you are able to deliver tangible assets to a company client. Good for you, now lets understand your role in the current eco-system as follows:
You are either a disruptor, traditionalist, softserver, specialist, connector or a soloist. Now, is important that you don't get played by your ego - none of these is above another and even through the distruptor classisification might be of your liking it doesn't mean that you are - you, to me, sound like would fit under the soloist. A distruptor is someone with ton of experiences and abilities to bring all others together under one roof service and deliver a hybrid company - I have done that with Unthink, a hybrid marketing agency that caters to small and new business owners who need high budget services on monthly payments and have gathered expert professionals to work under my model and not traditional lump sum plans for traditional and digital marketing and advertising.
A traditionalist are becoming irrelevant and depend heavily on relations and past authorities in a field. For newcomers this is obviously out of the question and a dying competitive strategy.
Specialists, you could be here, focus heavily and depend on NICHE markets only. These individuals can charge a premium because they offer a single solution to any client and deliver it well because they understand it backwards and inside out. These people are constantly improving, reading, learning and networking and have a pitch crafted down to the T. They depend heavily on connections obviously and patience for their connections to need their services.
Connectors, are networkers, not doers. - you could be here too. They make the connections and hire or subcontract others who can serve.
Soloists are common - these are web devs, programmers, graphic artists, solo-business owners - who have modest growth goals, low cost of living and thus can comfortably build connections and offer a small variety of services which once sold they create and deliver themselves. (if you know graphic design you would be here) These people are not looking to build an agency right off the bat or at all, instead just make a good living doing something they love either as main provider or as a contractor or sub-contractor to clients directly or other companies.
I hope my answer helps you figure out what type of business to start, I cannot give you a direct response because that is a loaded question which answer depends heavily on things only you know. If you would like to chat a bit more give me a call, message me, or google me. Right now, we currently added a yelp account, if you feel like my answer helped me I would invite you to leave a yelp review for me in return :) https://www.yelp.com/biz/unthink-marketing-avondale
Start by finding out what people need. Go to Facebook groups, LinkedIn groups, Quora questions, Reddit forums and start reading about things that interest YOU. That will ensure you're in a space you can stay interested in. However, look at problems other people are having. Think of ways you can solve those problems. Those solutions will help you come up with ideas for businesses. Approach it from the standpoint that you are going to learn and understand before you try to sell. Once you know enough about the problems your potential customers may have, creating something for them to buy will seem much easier.
In my opinion, I would start with an internal audit first.
What are my interests or hobbies?
What group do I hang out with the most?
What industry or niche do I know the most about?
What are my resources?
Who do I want to serve?
Ideas and logos are easy. But they don't make a business.
You need to find a niche of people, discover their pain points, develop a solution to those pain points and then go sell it to that niche. The type of solution combined with the specific market niche you're after will determine the vehicles you use to reach them and deliver the solution.
Conducting the internal audit first will direct you into something you care for and will give you the fuel to carry on later when shit gets hard.
NEVER start a business because you fall in love with a brand you invented.
Every day, I run across people who do just that, putting the cart before the horse. Because of what I do for a living, chiefly these are domain owners who (in the absence of any buyer for their inventory) concoct a website to justify (in their own minds) whatever domain they purchased. Typically these are projects they'd never have undertaken but for the accident of domain ownership.
Project first. Branding second.
Private label products to sell on Amazon.
You definitely want to work on problems that you are very familiar with, as your ramp time to get your business going will be less.
The best article I have read on this topic: http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html
using internet , many people start to use drop shipping because it lower the risk of carrying inventory and if you are good at marketing on line or personal connection, start small by acting as an agent, eg sell piano with major supplier, find them a customer and get paid if there is a sale.
Hi,
Many people out there have the same questions and maybe the same skill set as yours. But first let me first ask you the following. >What are you good at? What do you have a passion for? What do you find yourself doing the most? What do you find yourself doing the most of? What do you enjoy doing the most? Do persons often come to you for advise and do you often pull from the reservoir of info that you have on the matter? How do they respond when you furnish them with the required solution? How does that make you feel?
All these are questions which will help you know where you want to go. I notice your skill sets and yes you could do consulting, but if you are not passionate and sold on it there might be a challenge.
The areas are also marketing tools and also can work for public relations as well.
There is always a market for what you are offering ...set up a platform;advertise, introduce and promote what you have to offer.
Why not register with clarity and offer your expertise advise on this platform.
Related Questions
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How can I validate my product idea in the most cost efficient way possible?
Great question, many entrepreneurs are stuck before launch because of this hurdle. I have helped many individuals turn full time entrepreneurs through succinct consecutive coaching in various industries. Here are my suggestions, but keep in mind they are generic because you didn't provide any details. 1. If you have a prototype or design, re-design it with the intentional focus of removing certain features. Making trade offs are critical and simplify your introduction, pitch, and value proposition as well increase the chances of people being 100% impressed with the limited featured offering rather than semi impressed and focus on what is done wrong. 2. aim for simplicity in your pitch, avoid jargon and create a simple story on how to present the problem solution your 1 or 2 features is offering. - go to older family members for this, not friends or coworkers. 3. go to Fiverr.com and maybe if needed look there for a cheap and quick prototype mockup. 4. create simple landing page to present as if you are a fully working startup. go to www.instapage.com for quick landing pages and if you want a domain go to www.unthinkhosting.com for cheap domains - use code unthink for discount, it should give you some savings there. 5. go to startup weekend events instead of all 3/4 above and just create a simple pitch (under 1 minute) to present your problem and solution idea. if selected you get a team for a full weekend to validate something together. 6. Or create a facebook product page, upload some images (not sales pitches) of problems w/ problem story descriptions... post a lot of those... randomly posting images of your product (already simplified in features) and launch a small budget campaign, say $15.00 for paid advertising featuring your simplified product image, little or not text in the image but with a very short story and solution as header. trust me, is critical that you remove features. If you are not willing to make trade offs, from my experience you are not ready to try entrepreneurship at all. I hope this helps and look forward to seeing you succeed! Humberto ValleHV
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How do I effectively validate an idea for a business with a shoestring budget ?
There are a lot of places where you can try to get validation for your idea. But before you start going to look for these places, get your Buyer Personas (the representation of your ideal customers) in order. If you know who your ideal customers are, then the next step (of finding where they hang out) is easy. You can easily start tapping into your (existing) social network, for example to try to find people to have a conversation with and try to find out if they're really having the problem you're solving. Another place is local meetups, check out sites like meetup.com and see if they're meetup's in your area around the problem you're trying to solve. Go there and start talking to people! Online, online there's million of possibilities to try to find your ideal customers and trying to get a conversation with them, use Twitter search, certain Facebook groups around your demographic, newsletters, things like Quora etc. to find people hanging around and trying to get solutions to the problem you want to fix. (there's a ton of online locations in this SlideShare deck if you need more inspiration: http://www.slideshare.net/jcvangent/doing-customer-development-and-stop-wasting-your-time-startupbus-edition) Don't feel limited by the amount of budget you have, for having conversations with people you don't need a budget, you just need to know where to look to find the correct people to talk to. I recently wrote a blogpost around the subject as well, to give you some tips on how to reach the right people and what to ask them if you want to dig a bit further in the subject: http://inboundrocket.co/blog/stop-wasting-time-how-to-prove-youre-building-the-right-product/. Best of luck!HV
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To make 50k per month, what are some proven online business models? Which niches have good potential for this?
I think you need to think outside the box. You can definitely make 50k a month but someone just giving you ideas is not going to help you. Remember Ideas are just 1% execution is 99%. Find something you're passionate about. Find a problem that people have daily that can be solved. But if you wan't ideas: E-Commerce is going to be really big over the net few years. Helping people increase their conversion rate will definitely make you over 50k a year if you can execute it right.AC
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I'm starting a company this year, but I need a business idea. Preferably in the enterprise software space.
I wrote an answer to a similar question today which you can find here: https://clarity.fm/a/2877 The one flaw to your current process is this premise: "Whereas, if I focused on a good idea the whole process of driving success would be easier." This - from my experience - is simply not the case. I'm working on what I believe to be the best idea I've ever had and it has been absolutely the most challenging time I've ever had in a career full of product challenges. So a "good idea" does not make the process any easier. As I privately advised the person who asked the other similar question: I'd encourage you to define all your own pain points in your life and filter by most pain and also least addressed by existing solutions. Building what you know and what you're excited about building is the best that any of us can hope for. There's no path to greatness that isn't full of challenges ahead. Happy to do a call to discuss further.TW
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What are the best strategies to stop moving from one business idea to the next and start implementing one of them?
I'd suggest doing three things to narrow down the field: 1.Try to sketch the business model for the startup idea http://businessmodelgeneration.com/canvas 2.Get good at doing quick and dirty market sizing of opportunities 3.Check if you are passionate enough about the idea to potentially spend the next 5-8 years of your life in making it successful Based on a collective evaluation of the above three, you might be able to zero in on a few ideas to investigate further (e.g. building a prototype, customer development, etc.)MB
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