You’ll meet two kinds of people in your life, one who will be full of opinion, and the once who will give you advice. The former will only tell you to start a business even if it’s small, and the latter will teach you the basics of how to find good business ideas and actually start it.
Hence, it’s not hard to start a business, but finding the right industry is one of the toughest task. Not choosing the right kind of industry is often the sole reason a business goes broke. This is the reason why many people think twice before starting a business…
So, in this post, I’ll list down the 10 ways you can find unique business ideas that make good profits.
(1) Attend Business Conference
Establishing connections can catapult your business from nothing to making $10,000 per month within a month. The secret is to attend business conference. While some business conference are restricted, you’ll find some business conference that are free to attend. That’s what you should look out for. You don’t have to be expert in anything, neither you need to have any business.
You can build contacts with people and also setup partnership businesses if you’re a good talker and find someone with similar interests. So, if you haven’t attended any business conference yet, do it as soon as possible. Even if you’re an introvert and suffer from anxiety, talking to new people and exchanging your ideas will help you come out of that mental issue.
(2) Reverse Engineer Successful Business Models
Reverse engineering a successful business is nothing new. It has been happening in the past, happens today, and will happen in the future too. Unfortunately, there’s a thin line between reverse engineering a business model and outright copying a business. While taking inspiration from a successful is one thing, copying a business can land you in legal troubles.
For example, Uber has many competitors, and all of them have pretty much the same business model. Lyft is one great example. Does that mean Uber can sue Lyft? No! Because Lyft has just taken an inspiration, not copied the entire business.
(3) Use AI-Based Idea Generation Tool
AI has entered every aspect of our lives. And, trust me, AI is here to stay… While researching about this topic, I found out AI-based websites about generating business ideas. Of course, you won’t get super unique ideas every time, but still after doing some more search with the service I found out it was pretty good.
Are you overly excited? Before you jump right in, I’ll stop you right there. Why? Because, similar to you, many people are using AI to generate so-called new and unique business ideas. If that’s the case, does that mean using AI for business idea generation doesn’t work? Well, here’s the secret: Combine business ideas from AI business generation tool and come up with new ideas.
(4) Read Past Failed Businesses
You have reverse engineered past business ideas. Now, it’s time to read about businesses that have failed in the past. Unfortunately, we only get to know about successful business, but not the once that have failed miserably. But, I would recommend you to read more about why businesses fail that how to make a business successful.
Because, in most cases we learn more from failures than success. Nowadays, YouTube has many good videos about failed business and why they failed. You can either watch those videos or read articles from reputed websites. If you ask me, Coldfusion is a good YouTube channel if you want good quality information.
In the end, I would ask you to read both the success and failure to create a good balance between your business life. Why, you would surprised to learn how read about business success and failures can help you in your personal life as well…
(5) Avoid Seasonal Business
You might have seen some businesses earning money all around the year, but some business only make most of the money at the end of the year. Please try to avoid such businesses. The risks are way too high. Why? Because seasonal businesses don’t always guarantee you huge money.
One example of such business is website flipping. Website flipping is quite a profitable small business idea, but the risk is huge. Because after working for, let’s say, a year, if you website fails to sell for a good money, then you’re done for. This sentence my frighten you, but I HAVE HAD SUCH EXPERIENCE.
I have learned the hard way, hence I would never want you to experience the harsh life. Try to invest in business that actually helps you make money regularly, not just make money from few months…
(6) Avoid Customer Dependent Business
Among all the points I have listed till now, finding a business that does not completely depends on customers is hardest to find. Because, every business needs a constant stream of clients or customers to earn a profit. But, there are businesses that aren’t completely customer dependent.
Try to find such business if you can. Highly customer-dependent business always suffer from uncertainty. One mistake and customers live your business and bankrupt it. I’ll reveal a secret now… Majority of the customer dependent businesses are passive. It automatically keep earning money.
(7) Avoid Highly Technical Businesses
In an old video Peter Lynch talked about how he made huge money investing in Dunkin Donuts rather than investing in a highly-complex chip business. I would recommend you to read One Up on Wall Street to get the idea about how Peter chose businesses to invest. If you don’t know who Peter Lynch is, this is how Wikipedia starts explaining about him: As the manager of the Magellan Fund at Fidelity Investments between 1977 and 1990, Lynch averaged a 29.2% annual return.
Pulling and average of 29.2% for 13 long years is an insane performance. It’s even better when you know that between 1977 and 1990 the stock market went through two big crashes. All throughout his life, Peter avoided investments in technical businesses. So, unless you absolutely know what you’re doing and all the risks involved, avoid any highly technical business.
(8) Business That Solves A Common Problem
At the end of the day, every business that has existed in the past, or a business that exists today solves some kind of a problem. Or else why would people buy anything? A business runs on the sole basis of solving issues for people.
Most of the things you bought till date helps you solve your life problems. If you think buying something for entertainment does not solve any problem, then I would recommend you experience a week doing nothing. You’ll be bored to death.
(9) Read Business Books
Read business books, watch YouTube videos of successful people like Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates. One thing that I have found common among these people is that they read A LOT. Warren Buffet goes a step forward and recommends reading 500 pages everyday to become a good investor like him.
Well, you don’t have to force yourself to read 500 pages everyday, because it’s not always possible, but you sure can read at least one book every month. Eventually, as your reading speed increases you’ll automatically start completing a book within a week.
(10) Test Ideas On Small Scale
Great! You’re now ready to find unique business ideas and also start one. But before you go, here’s one thing I’ll ask you to do. Start small. Don’t go big right from the beginning, because no matter how deep your research is, any business can go bankrupt for some unknown reason. People lose most of their money when they are blind for money or success.
Hence, it’s better to start any business small, and eventually increase investment when profits increase. This is small and simple recommendation, but trust me, in all these years, I have seen many business going from $0 revenue to $10,000 within a month, and also the opposite.
