We all know the story.
An ordinary man has a brilliant idea.
He starts his own business and goes on to become a millionaire or even a billionaire.
This one single instant changed his life forever - and all just because of a simple idea.
Understandable, that now many people would like to have such an idea!
If you would like to run your own business and have no idea where to start, how should you begin?
How can you find the one business idea that will transform your life from rags to riches?
Obviously at the beginning of every venture there has to be a great idea.
Or at least we are told such a story.
But on the other side, if you ever approached a venture capitalist with your genius idea you find out that they will not be very pleased to hear it.
Instead you will be told that ideas exist like sand in the desert, and so it is the implementation of an idea that counts.
The problem is the idea itself is actually worthless as long as it is in your head.
Too many people run around all day and think they have a brilliant idea.
And the few people who are powerful and wealthy enough to actually invest in a business, are flooded with people banging at their door claiming to have the next “big thing”.
What really creates value in the process is that you do not merely have an idea, but also know how to implement it.
Or even better - to already have first steps of the idea put into a reality.
Investors are thus often looking for a “proof of concept” for your business idea.
This merely means that what you intend to do will actually work.
For example:
I have a wonderful idea!
I want to build an antimatter reactor to create almost infinite energy.
While the idea would be brilliant - there is no current way to make it work.
Even if you can produce antimatter, it is extremely unstable.
Worse than any atomic bomb.
And then there is no technology so far to actually create electricity from it.
You see the idea might be brilliant, but the proof of concept is missing.
At least at the time of writing this.
Thus not every idea you have will be enough to change your life.
So the big question is:
How can you get a business good idea that can actually be realized as well?
Time to get creative
Creativity is not something you are born with.
It is also not something that one person has and the other person does not.
According to the American author Frederic Flach, creativity is not something that just comes out of nowhere.
Instead what really makes people creative is that the brain will rearrange and re-order parts of knowledge that are already there.
And that seems to be the real secret behind the brightest ideas.
A new combination of the existing elements.
It is the combination and comparison of already existing ideas, to let them come together and form something new that will produce new, creative results.
Creativity as you can see is therefore not something magical, but something that can be achieved with constant effort and diligent work.
Everybody can work hard and disciplined if he is only motivated to do so.
And that means we all have the necessary capacity inside of us to find creative ideas.
To activate it however, we have to let our mind wander a little bit and trust our subconscious mind to do its work for us.
According to polls, many people believe that they themselves are not very creative or doubt that they could produce anything creative.
Maybe some people grew up in an environment that did not really support the creative thought process, and certainly a large part of creative thinking gets lost in our school system.
Everything that follows strict “yes” or “no” results, and demands conformity without questioning is poison for creative thinking.
Unfortunately we have to mention here that a large part of our society follows exactly such systems, starting already in ground school age.
So understandably if you have not had any creative thought processes for years, it will demand some overcoming your inner barricade on your part to get back into this way of working and thinking.
It will require you not only to learn, but even more so to unlearn some of the things that are seen as “normal” in our society to get that child-like mentality back.
As children, we all were creative. It is within us.
We need only to get this power back.
Your mind does not produce business ideas just out of the blue.
You have to feed it with the proper nourishment.
And the proper nourishment to produce business ideas can be success stories, books, articles, and almost anything that covers the topic of business at least in a broad sense.
I often had great ideas as some kind of epiphany while reading business books.
But also hiking in nature, going on exotic vacations or travelling in general can help.
Look for anything that can help to stimulate you intellectually and see how it affects your thinking.
After you have fed your brain properly, your next step will be to rest and relax.
That’s right, relax.
Meditate.
Enjoy your time.
Sleep long enough every day.
After a while you will be struck with ideas.
Getting the process to find a business idea into action
As Frederic Flach mentions in his writing, the creative thought process is something that all people are born with and that everybody is capable of.
But it requires two clear steps on your part to make it possible, especially if you were trained to think “straight” for years already.
The first step is to stop judging.
We are trained to judge everything we see :
“I like that hairstyle!
Oh my god she has put on weight again…
Those shoes are horrible!
I hate this song” etc.
Many of us will make such judgment automatically and are often not even aware of doing so anymore because it has just become such a natural part of our daily life.
If you are looking for a new idea, you will have to stop making any judgments at all and just allow different thoughts to be combined and work together.
Whether the idea is good or bad can be discussed later on, for now to start it is just important to let your mind wander and observe the process with a child like mentality.
Think of this process like being a 5 year old kid, what do they do?
They are so curious about the world, they want to explore everything, they won't stop asking you questions and are amazed at everything they see because it is just so damn fascinating.
This is the kind of spirit you will have to adopt when you are hunting for ideas.
The second step is to learn that quantity beats quality.
You cannot do this process with the expectation to find your idea that makes you a billionaire within 5 minutes, and abandon this if it does not work out that way for you immediately.
To really find good ideas, you will at first have to be willing to create any ideas at all - good or bad.
Even the stupid ones.
Write them all down.
Again the part to judge the idea comes later on, for now the most important thing is to create as many ideas as possible, no matter which ideas.
Ideally you carry a list with you 24/7.
You never know when the next great business idea will strike you.
Often I get them when I sleep or when I am on the road.
Sometimes also in crazy situations or conversations.
I always like to keep a list of business ideas on my smartphone, because you never know when an idea might strike you.
Sometimes I have great ideas in the shower, sometimes in the middle of the night, and sometimes when I am driving.
However you want to do it, just make sure that you find a way to record all the ideas that come to your mind.
Many of them are gone within minutes and you can't remember them afterwards!
Sounds crazy, but you will see it for yourself as soon as you get started.
It feels like a tiny window of opportunity, that will be closed forever after you did not act on it right away.
And be willing to produce trash - some ideas will be good for nothing.
See them as part of the process.
They show you are on the right track.
This is supposed to be like that, our creative subconscious brain works in this manner.
But as soon as you have recorded 100 ideas or 200 ideas, your chances of finding the one that will make you a millionaire are already very good.
No matter if the idea is unrealistic or impossible to do at first - satellite communication used to be impossible too, remember that.
And maybe someone will look back and say antimatter reactors used to be impossible too?
Thinking about which idea is good or bad during the process will just hinder your efforts and block the mental flow of creativity, so don't do it and just gather as many ideas as you possibly can.
If you follow this process long enough, sooner or later you will carry a list with you filled with business ideas.
And from 100 business ideas that you gather, 80 might be totally useless.
17 might be a nice ideas but hard to implement.
2 more could be easy to implement but not suitable for your situation.
And 1 could be the business ideas that will change your life forever.
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