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Starting up a business is super easy these days, starting a business website takes only a couple of minutes. Business resources online seem to be limitless these days so you just have to sit down and strat.
It seems to be fast and easy but…
Only a few people succeed in there venture. Why?
This easy to enter business environment is the problem in itself because many people are trying and only the handful of new entrepreneurs are succeeding.
In the past, you needed one of the two things either a good business idea, ether hustle like crazy and win the game by working twice as hard as your competitor.
Today you kinda need to do both, because there is only a handful of successful business ideas left and environment, and access to information made business environment even more competitive.
So how to Come Up With a Business Idea, that will help you build your successful business?
Choosing a niche for Successful Business Idea
Before starting to think about the business idea you have to understand that there is basically two main niches of business today.
First one
It’s the sexy business that you are probably thinking.
Sexy business is a type of business that is fun to have and run, an example would be a coffee shop. It would be definitely fun to have a place where all your friends could hang up and you would sell them coffee and cake, and make money at the same time but…
Sexy business ideas usually are not successful ones, because everyone is thinking about them and usually completion is crazy, plus usually those business opportunities are developed and entering the market in the already well developed niche is really hard.
I don’t say that sexy business idea doesn’t have the potential, what I am saying is that it’s super hard to enter and usually the majority of entrepreneurs would fail at those types of businesses. And when you are starting out you want to lower your chances of failure to the minimum.
Second niche
The second niche is the unsexy business that has big potential. It’s those business ideas and niches where usually you wouldn’t think at the start.
They are not usually that cool and fun but those are the business opportunities where you can find success because not a lot of entrepreneurs think about them and even less of them start to pursue those businesses.
That’s what makes them unique and easier to enter.
Like the other day, I saw a banner for wood nails and later investigated how that company is doing, it turns out that this small company has a turnover of over 30 million dollars and they are only selling wood nails. That definitely not a sexy business to start but you see my point.
I don’t say you to look for unsexy business ideas, I only want you to show that sometimes it’s better to investigate ideas that don’t seem to be that exciting in the beginning.
Start with WHY? approach for business
The most successful companies in the world have a strong vision, mission, and goals in mind. They know their values and they make big business decisions based on those values.
They not only know what they do, or how they do it but they know WHY they do what they do.
I think understanding this can have a huge impact on your business venture and help you choose the niche that you are pursuing. If you have a big passion for something or passion to change something, go after it. It only increases your chance of success in the long run.
Simone Seak made a talk at TED about this topic and I strongly recommend watching it.
Finding problems to solve
Great multimillion dollar business ideas are constantly around you, the only thing you have to do is to see them, but how?
Find the real life problems that surround you, your friends or even the company that you are working at right now.
Solving problems or improving current solutions is the way to go.
Have you ever saw something and thought that you could do it better? Have you ever bought something and find a bunch of flaws in that product and couldn’t understand why they didn’t solve those problems?
Those could be the multimillion dollar business ideas that you are looking for.
Look at the Airbnb example below. They simply needed money for rent so they started a blog with listing and build it up to 10 billion dollar business.
These types of successful business ideas come up from everyday life and seeing problems that surround us every day. If you see problems or know how to improve current solutions to those problems that could be your successful business idea.
You can even look into the future and try to find problems and solutions to tomorrow’s problems.
The world is constantly moving forward and new problems (opportunities) are just piling up, so look at what you can do to solve those problems and grab those new opportunities.
Improve today’s business ideas
If you are running a business you have to know that everything is constantly changing and your business has to constantly adapt to the world we are living today.
Problem is that businesses usually don’t adapt and they become stagnated and here comes the opportunity for you to create better product or solution.
Established companies simply don’t look too much into the future and you can create an improved solution to the same problem and win at there own game.
Look around at the businesses that you like and think how could you make them better.
You can make something cheaper by using the new technology or simply optimizing the business.
You can improve the product and enter new markets or new audiences with that product.
Simply design or improve already successful products.
The most important thing that you have to look around and just start.
Get things done cheaper, faster and better.
Don’t forget about services too. Those business ideas are really attractive because you can improve them really fast. Also service business is easy to enter and you can start immediately as a freelancer.
You can improve current services by making them faster, cheaper or better.
Everyone wants to get MORE – FASTER and CHEAPER so that could be the advantage you have over the over competitors.
But be careful and investigate before, if you don’t change anything only make your services faster, cheaper or better.
Companies that already exist also constantly trying to make their services cheaper, faster and better and you can run up into some business problems if you don’t do your homework.
Turn your passion into a successful business
We all have hobbies and passions that we love so why not to turn them into business?
There are tons of benefits of doing that. Not only you will do what you love but you will already know a lot about that industry and that can be the edge you have over your competitors.
This also can have its downsides. I ran up into this problem myself by losing passion about my hobbie simply because I was working with it all the time.
The Bottom Line: How to Come Up With a Successful Business Idea
There are tons of tips and tricks on how to find successful business idea but the most important thing is to follow your heart, don’t do want you don’t want to do even if it seems like a great idea.
You would probably need to work really hard to make your business successful so find the niche that makes you happy and motivated to pursue.
I would also recommend watching this video from Standford University Lecture where Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator, and Dustin Moskovitz, Cofounder of Facebook, Asana, and Good Ventures are talking about how to start a startup.
They are talking about business ideas and there’s tons of good advice in this video and I think it’s very valuable if you are planning to start your business.