- If you wanna start your own business, the very first most
important part of the process is just deciding what
business you wanna start because you can't move forward with it and you cannot grow your business at all until you make this decision. So in today's video, I'm
going to share with you exactly how you can do that whether you are stuck because
you have too many ideas and you just can't pick which one is best or you're stuck because you
don't have enough ideas. This video is the second episode of our free series, "Small Business 101." If you are currently in the process of building your own business, then make sure you are
subscribed to the channel and you have notifications turned on so you can find out when
each new episode is released. So first of all, you
just need to understand that there are three
different kinds of businesses you could start: service,
product, and digital product. Service businesses provide
services to their customers. So maybe you mow people's lawns, maybe you design websites, or
maybe you cut people's hair. Then you've got product businesses. These are the most common
types of businesses we're all familiar with,
businesses that sell products. This is Walmart. This is Amazon. This is every seller on Etsy. And then you've got
digital product businesses. These are businesses that sell products, but they're digital products. So this is something like Netflix. It's also a website like Udemy. And it's also every independent
course seller online. So if there's a blogger who
makes a course about something, they have a digital product business. Now that you understand your options, you need to generate your business ideas. So to do this, you just
need to make three lists. The first list will be
of types of activities that you enjoy doing. So let me give you some examples here. It might be that you
enjoy talking to people or you enjoy spending time alone. Maybe you enjoy writing or filming, speaking on a stage, or
working with your hands. Maybe you enjoy working
indoors or working outdoors. So these are all different
types of activities, but they're not specific activities. They're specifically about
how you enjoy working, what you enjoy making, or how you enjoy interacting
or not interacting with people. The second list will be a list
of interests that you have. These could be things like gardening, chess, photography, animals, you name it, any sort of topic you're interested in or hobby that you enjoy doing. And then on your third list, you're going to write
down skills that you have. These skills could be things
you're masters at or not. Don't be afraid to write down a skill because it's too small. There could be things that
just come naturally to you, like maybe you are naturally
a very patient person or a great communicator or a good writer. Or there could be things
that you've been trained in, like maybe you have been
trained in the culinary arts or in photography or in graphic design, just anything that you are skilled at. Once you have these three lists, you're going to mix
and match between them. So for example, you might
look at your list and say, "Okay, so I enjoy talking to other people and I have an interest in houseplants. And then a skill that
I have is photography." So then what you can do is think about how you can combine those into a business or a product idea. So maybe you could provide
classes where you teach people about how to take care
of their houseplants, or maybe you could make videos about how to take care of houseplants, or you could take photos
you've taken of houseplants. So you don't have to combine something from all three categories necessarily. You're just going to be combining from at least two categories. This process is going to help you come up with lots of great business ideas that are a good fit for you, your personality, your
interests, and your skills. Now beyond the ideas that you come up with through this process, if
you need even more ideas, I put together two different lists that you can download for free. The first one is a list
of service business ideas, so these are services you
could provide to customers. And I included in there
the average annual income of people who provide these services. And then second, there is a list of a hundred different
digital product ideas. Now when you download this
list, you might see idea on it that is just a perfect fit for you, but it also can just
help to open your mind to all the different options that are out there for digital products so that you can think of
more ideas on your own. Once you've come up with some great ideas, next, you are going to rank those ideas. So I want you to rank each
of your top business ideas on three categories. First of all, your excitement for the idea because honestly, building
a business is a big project and it's going to require
a lot of your energy and commitment and a lot of motivation, so you need to start a business that you will really love building. So rank each idea between 1 to 10 on how excited you are about the idea. Second, rank each idea on how much value it will
provide to other people. Again, rank it from 1 to 10. And the idea here is the more value your business idea
would provide to people, the higher of prices
you'll be able to charge and the more money you
can potentially earn. Third, rank each of your business ideas on how much interest
you expect other people would have in it, because
we need to make sure that you're starting a business that is something that
other people actually want so that you can easily get
customers and earn money. Now later on in the process
of building your business, you're going to validate your product idea and make sure it's
something that people want. But here, I just want you to take a stab, make a guess at how much you
think other people will want it to help narrow down your ideas. Once you've rated each
of your business ideas on each of these three categories, then I have one more
exercise that you can do to help figure out with
even more certainty which idea is really the best. So this is a visualization exercise, and what you're going to do is you're just going to
imagine what a day in the life of running each of these
businesses would look like. Because here's the thing, different businesses require
different types of work, different types of effort, and they also can be much more demanding or much less demanding. And so, for example, in my business, I work just about 20 hours a week and I get to do some
really creative things that I love doing, but that's
not what everyone wants. Some people want to work 60 hours a week and have a huge team under them. So you just need to think through what a day in the life of
each of these different jobs or businesses would look like, what it would demand from
you, and if that's something that you are really
interested in doing long-term. Once you've gone through
this whole process to generate business ideas and figure out which are
the best ideas for you, you're going to have to come to the point where you pick a business idea. This is where a lot of people get hung up because they're trying to find the one right answer to this question, what business should I start? But the truth is there
isn't one right answer. There are many different business ideas that would be a good fit for you and you could be very successful at. So don't try to find the perfect answer. Just choose one of your business ideas, one of these ideas that
you've already figured out is a good fit for you and try it out. Three months down the road, you
will have a much better idea whether this is something you
want to continue to pursue and work on building, or if
you wanna scrap your idea and try something different, But just by choosing an idea and then starting to work on it, you're going to put yourself way ahead of where you are before
you make that decision. Your future self is going
to really appreciate that you took the initiative, you made a decision, you
started working on it because a few months from now, you will either be in the process of building the business of your dreams or you will have figured out that that's not the right idea for you and you'll be able to
cross it off your list and move on to trying something else. Either way, you're going to
be ahead of where you are now. As I mentioned earlier on, if you need even more business
ideas, I am here for you. I've got two lists of
lots of business ideas that you can download for free with the link in the description, so make sure you check that out. Also, this is episode two of our "Small Business 101" series. If you are currently in the process of building your own business and you want to get access
to the entire series, then make sure you're subscribed and you have notifications turned on. Next week, I am going to be showing you how to write a very simple
business plan in just an hour. This is going to give
you a lot of clarity, make sure that you have a plan, and make sure you know where
you're actually trying to go. So next week, I'll see you back here, same time, same place, for that. (gentle upbeat music)
