idea development

How do you successful entrepreneurs come up with your ideas??

I have no problem taking action at all, but it seems I am focusing too much on the business idea to get it going. I realize I have to help others through a service, product, arise emotion, make them feel better and so on which I have completely embedded in my head.

I decided it should be an internet based business preferably with systems so there is no inventory, shipping, and so on as I am currently taking home roughly 18,000 a year.

I was wondering if there was a system you go through to develop your ideas or a certain method. I am constantly thinking throughout the day of problems I have or others have and find it hard to come up with something.

I will admit that as each day passes, I despise the system I work for and so badly desire to run my own company.

So ultimately, how do you come up with your ideas?? do you stumble upon them?? develop them through a process???

Stop trying to think of problems to solve and start observing the ones you, or the people around you, are actually experiencing daily - those ones are where you'll find your gold.

[QUOTE=Jonleehacker;112069]Stop trying to think of problems to solve and start observing the ones you, or the people around you, are actually experiencing daily - those ones are where you'll find your gold.[/QUOTE

I agree. I feel as if Im going nowhere however until I come across a solution. Is there anything else someone such as yourself would act on or do until that idea did hit home??

I work at the home depot so I am looking for problems but ironically these people are coming to the home depot to purchase an item for their problem. I understand Sam Walton sat in his car outside of stores observing people to see what they were walking out of the store with. Would you recommend putting myself in a situation similar to Sam Walton?? Observe people interacting rather then thinking??

I find that my most viable ideas are ones located in my interest. I think it's more important to have a company mantra, or "stickiness," than to just find a need and fill it. This way the company doesn't just rely on one idea. For example, GM is in the transportation industry, not the internal combustion powered car industry. GM is adapting to the current climate by introducing electric powered and hybrid cars.

Big companies aren't stupid either, they expand when they see opportunity. There are individual niches that blue chip-type companies don't care about, so there may be opportunity there.

But what works best for me is thinking about my interests and then developing ideas that can better them. For a while I was trying to reinvent the wheel, but some of the most successful entrepreneurs (Michael Dell, Henry Ford, etc) didn't invent the product they sold - they just did it better.

I enjoy helping people through analogies, so here it goes-

Finding an idea is not that hard. What is hard is when you put on binoculars and search everywhere for ideas. You keep looking and looking but nothing seems to make sense. Here is your solution- Stop looking through those binoculars and look what is in front of you. Be observant of everything that you do during the day. Every thought, word, and action. Listen to people and yourself. Don't say "I need to find an idea" say "Hmm, every problem that I encounter today has a solution. Let's see how I can tackle these problems."

Thanks for your input everyone. Much appreciated!!





My only concern is, in the meantime I want to be as productive as possible. I would think real esate is a good way to go until I do find my idea. I imagine many of you choose an assortment of methods for generating wealth, so why not multi-task in terms of wealth and helping others right.

Again, thank you all!

Start doing something in a niche you are passionate about. Just start an online business, heck, start s blog even. Then as you go along you will see new opportunities, you will learn new things about niche and most importantly yourself . Stop trying to be perfect and just do something!!!

Everytime you come across something that makes you say "damn that sucks" stop and think a bit more about it. Chances are, if it sucks for you, it sucks for a million other people that may be willing to pay for a better way.

Short answer- find a market that has low-competition/high-demand/with weak competitors and has commercial value, aka the "money keyword", thankfully there are tools to find these.

When going for an e-Biz, it's all about starting with a good foundation and knowing how revenue is achieved:

For some it's an e-Store with drop-shipping, for others it's affiliate marketing and then there's the info product sellers(who usually depend on affiliates to help build their business).

What they all share in common is- they need to have a market defined as "a group of people with the ability/intention to pay", markets are usually defined online through search keywords, i.e. "underwater kick boxing". Upon finding this you need to drive traffic to your site, there is either organic which costs little to nothing money-wise, but a lot time-wise, where you build the quality of your website to rank highly for your targeted keywords and build traffic OR paid, which is usually through Google Adwords or the newer Facebook Demographic PPC, both of which involve more money and less time, but still a good amount of it in addition to focus to be profitable. Next up is building a loyal community/converting this traffic into sales, usually through a drop-shipping product OR affiliate offer. Then the final step is finding what the people want and will pay for and having your product to sell which means welcome to the Fastlane