How to Choose a Great Business Idea
Subscribe to the Podcast to Grow Your Business & Create a Life You Love
Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | iHeart Radio | Pocket Casts
Paul Harris, a lawyer and the founder of the Rotary Club, said, “Ideas have unhinged the gates of empires.”
Think about that statement. Ideas have power. They can build, they can tear down. And in this episode, we’re going to talk about how you can choose a great idea to build your business.
3 Ways to Choose a Great Business Idea
Here are 3 ways to discover and choose a great business idea:
Express your passion
Explore your interests
Explain your expertise
Quote
“Ideas have unhinged the gates of empires.” -Paul P. Harris
Detailed Show Notes
Paul Harris, a lawyer and the founder of the Rotary Club, said, “Ideas have unhinged the gates of empires.”
Think about that statement. Ideas have power. They can build, they can tear down. And in this episode, we’re going to talk about how you can choose a great idea to build your business.
Because, believe it or not, some people struggle with this. They get discouraged because they don’t know if their idea is good enough (which I addressed in an earlier episode). And usually, the best ideas, are right at our fingertips.
So, how can you select a great business idea? I have 3 ways to help.
Express your Passion
One way to select a great business idea is to look at your passions. What are you passionate about?
I know that we hear a lot about passion today, and I think that that’s a good thing. It’s important to consider our passions.
But I also want to make a point that not all passions should be a business. Some passions should remain simply a hobby or something that is enjoyable for recreation’s sake. Something to enrich life. Something that allows a person to escape the "normalness" of every day life.
I think it’s Elizabeth Gilford, a famous author, who has become world known as an author, and yet she keeps her day job.
She has decided to keep her writing as her passion and not turn it into a business. She does not want it to diminish her passion for writing.
Once you put stress on a hobby or a passion, it can diminish your desire for it.
However, there are those who have a passion and that is what they do. That is what they offer us. Their passion may be a skill, hobby, or ability. Passion can be a powerful business.
Some of the most people famous people been people who have been driven by their passion for something.
And it doesn’t have to be necessarily a world-changing type of passion. If it is, wonderful.
If it isn’t, that's wonderful too. You can change someone's world.
Maybe you are the next Billy Graham and your passion is to spread the good news across the world.
Or maybe your passion is something more localized and specific: like camping.
If you’ve always had a passion for camping, and you know the inns and the outs of it, you can share that passion with others. You can learn to package that passion and turn it into your ideal business.
Maybe you’re passionate about homeschooling. We are seeing a resurgence in homeschooling because of the last few years.
Those who are getting started are want to learn from those who have been doing it for the last five, ten, twenty years. If it’s something that you’re extremely passionate about, you can impact families.
You can build a very profitable, and meaningful business. So if you want to choose a great business idea, you may want to start by expressing your passion in the form of a business.
Explore your Interests
Some people have a difficult time nailing down a passion. And to be quite honest, it can be discouraging.
Because they hear everybody across podcasts, across YouTube, and in the books saying, "follow your passion.”
They hear, “use your passion" and they’re thinking, "I don’t know what my passions are!"
"Nothing stands out to me as a passion, and I don’t feel driven that way."
If that is you, let me offer you some hope. You are normal.
There is absolutely nothing wrong if you cannot pinpoint a passion at this time in your life.
I believe it’s important to frame it this way and to look at these other ways to develop great business ideas.
You don’t have to express a passion, try to frame it in a new way and say, “I am going to explore my interests.”
What are your interests?
What grabs your attention?
Are you interested in a particular topic?
What kind of books are you drawn to?
What kind of podcast do you listen to?
Where do you like to go?
What do you like to do?
Ken Coleman recommends looking at your favorite superheroes.
Who’s your favorite superhero?
Why are they your favorite?
What kind of skills or abilities do they have?
What cool gadgets do they have?
What makes you interested in them?
Travel back to your childhood.
What were the things that you would love to do as a child? For me, I would sit down, and I would take a piece of paper and a pencil and I would spend hours drawing.
Or I would spend hours climbing and sitting in a tree. Reflection like this allows us to gain insight into who we are and how God made us.
What would it look like if you were to sit down and take some time and think back through your childhood? Filter through the years and think about when you were five, ten, and fifteen.
What were the things that you were interested in? Write them down, explore them and see if there’s anything there that strikes a chord within your heart.
If you’re not going to be a passion driven entrepreneur, that is perfectly fine.
You can’t be an interest-driven entrepreneur.
There are famous people who started down an entrepreneurial path with an interest. And, along the way, discovered passion because they started by exploring different interests. I did that myself, and I continue to explore different interests.
I feel like I’m a mix between theses because I have many passions and interests. And that may be you as well, and so for us, we have to nail down focus on one thing at a time.
There was a season of my life when I was devoted to vocational ministry. And then there was a season when I was devoted to growing an Amazon and eBay business. I explored these different interests, and gained valuable experience.
When you give yourself freedom to explore that gives you much more experience than the average individual. And they can prepare you for greater success in your next endeavor.
Explain your Expertise
Maybe you don’t put yourself in the passion camp, or interest camp. But maybe you are one with some expertise that others could learn from.
And again there could be a blend of all of these because we are holistic individuals. We are interested in a lot of things.
But when it comes to launching and growing a business, it could be that your golden egg is your expertise.
Expertise could be your golden egg.
What is it that you are an expert at? What is it that you could talk about for an hour with no problem and the average person cannot?
Many of us experience what they called the "Curse of Knowledge". And that is we have extensive knowledge in an area, but to us, it’s just common knowledge. But to others is considered expertise.
It’s good to take an inventory of what we know and ask ourselves, is this something that somebody would like to learn?.
Think about IT work. Recently we had somebody come out and do some IT work for us that is something that I know nothing about.
But this gentleman had this expertise and was able to use that to add to his family's' income and meet their needs. To him computer networking is knowledge, but for me, it's something I highly value.
What is it that you have specialized knowledge in?
What experience do you have?
What training have you been through?
What credentials do you have?
What have you studied?
What have taken for granted that you could use to build your business?
Right now, we are outsourcing some design work. We needed somebody that specifically worked within Figma (design software).
We looked for somebody with that kind of expertise so that we get the best product and service. But to the freelancer, it's becomem common knowledge. But to us, it’s specialized and extremely valuable.
Let’s talk about the homemaker for a minute. I know a lot of you are working full-time jobs you have a career, but we also have of homemakers who listen.
Some of them struggle and ask themselves, "What kind of expertise would I have?" But the expertise you have are many. Homemakers have many skills:
Organizational skills
Baking skills
Productivity skills
Teaching skills
And the list can go on and on
You can help others with a particular area that they would see you as the expert. Where can you get a great business idea?
Express your passion
Explore your interests
Explain your expertise
Remember our quotation for the day:
“Ideas have unhinged the gates of empires.”
Use your idea; not to tear down, but to build something great.