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Watch out Tooth Fairy, the Idea Fairy is on their way!
Key points
- Great business ideas aren’t magically gifted to you by the Idea Fairy — you have to actively find your ideas.
- Not all ideas — or even most ideas — will be good. It will take more work to analyze and test your ideas to find the potentially profitable ones.
- Get involved in testing your ideas. Research the industry, ask questions, do some trial and error. Eventually, you’ll find what works.
Many of us have the fantasy of coming up with the perfect idea, starting a business — and quitting that 9 to 5 with the overbearing boss. No more micromanaging, no more salary haggling, no more commute.
But before you quit your job, print up business cards, and build a website, you need an idea. That one, perfect idea.
Right?
Not exactly. According to personal finance guru Ramit Sethi, one of the most common things aspiring entrepreneurs get wrong is the assumption that there is one perfect idea — and that it will just miraculously come to them (perhaps with a little lightbulb flashing over their heads?).
“The assumption is ‘I’m waiting for a magical idea to fall down from the sky.’ And that’s not how it works,” Sethi said in an interview with Business Insider. “If you want to start a business, you find an idea. And it’s not the perfect idea; it’s one of many.”
There’s no magical Idea Fairy
We’ve all heard the stories. “I was washing the dishes, then bam, I had this great idea. A year later, I’m a millionaire!”
Does this happen? Maybe, rarely. Is it the way most entrepreneurs get started? Definitely not.
But this pervasive misconception has stymied many an aspiring entrepreneur. “I want to start a business, but I just don’t have a good idea!”
This is a complaint Sethi has heard time and again. In fact, he says it’s the number one reason entrepreneur-minded people don’t start a business. (The other? Lack of time. Which Sethi says is just an excuse for not prioritizing your business. But I digress.)
Everything about building a business takes work. And yes, this includes finding the idea behind the business in the first place. It takes active effort to come up with business ideas. Brainstorm, research, analyze. Sethi’s favorite advice? Idea mapping.
Idea mapping 101
So, what’s idea mapping? It’s a form of brainstorming that involves analyzing your skills and experiences to potentially find a profitable idea.
“You start off with a broad set of ideas of what you might be good at,” Sethi explains. “You get out a piece of paper and a pen, pull it out, write some stuff down — you don’t have to be perfect, you just have to get started.”
The first list you should make is of your skills. Do you speak another language? Write it down. Do you know how to paint? Yep, write that down, too. Maybe you’re really good at organizing — you guessed it, write that down. Don’t underestimate your skills; things that you may think are commonplace or easy for everyone probably aren’t. Write them down.
Next, consider the experiences you’ve had. As Sethi describes, this could be anything, regardless of how profitable it may seem at this point.
“This could be things like traveling abroad and backpacking in Europe for 30 days,” he said. “Awesome, write it down. It doesn’t matter if you can turn it into a business — just write it down.”
Lastly, look to the challenges you’ve overcome. Did you pull yourself out of credit card debt? Great, write that down on your list. Were you laid off and had to switch industries? Perfect experience for your list.
Test, rinse, and repeat
Sethi says idea mapping is the first stage of finding your idea. The next step? Separate the good ideas from the bad. And there will be many, many bad ideas.
“Let’s start off by saying most of are not good,” he admits. “It’s fine if these ideas are bad. What we want to do is test them. Slice and dice them to find a profitable idea.”
For Sethi, this process involves doing a lot of research and asking a lot of questions. For example, when he first got interested in personal finance, he realized the space was already pretty crowded. What he needed to figure out was where he could fit in.
To find his opening, he talked to friends and family about their own personal finances. What did they hate? What did they struggle with? What did they wish they could instantly change?
From those questions, Sethi built his now-flourishing personal finance business. But, he says, you can apply the same method to just about anything.
All of this is to say that you can’t let the lack of a profitable idea be the only thing that stops you from starting your business. With a bit of work, you can find that idea. What you can’t do is sit around and wait for it to find you.
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