GUIDE: How To Get A Winning Business Idea Going PART1
Hey everyone,
welcome to this second post on business ideas and development.
However, I didn't expect the first post to become that popular.
Basically, this is the stuff I teach my coaching clients. Especially when they have no idea how to get something going and feel stuck in life.
So this is actually PART1 of the guide. And the first post is PART2. I've edited the titles so it will make more sense :)
Click here to access PART2 of this guide!
Right, with that said, let's get started!
This guide will take you through the steps needed to find your passion and skills, and how to use them to create your perfect business idea.
Are you one of the 90% who lives the ‘deferred life plan’?
The name Deferred Life Plan comes from a book called The Monk and the Riddle written by Randy Komisar. This book really struck a chord with me and I believe it’s a must read book for every entrepreneur.
In essence the deferred life plan consists of two steps. Do what you have to do, so you can then do what you want to do. This is basically how over 90 percent of the world population lives. Most of us have been brought up by believing in a deferred life plan, right?
First you go to school.
Then you find a job, get a promotion, get a better job or you go back to school to get a better job.
Then you can increase your income, retire and THEN finally you have the time to do the things you really want.
Now I see something wrong with this, do you? I lived this life for quite a number of years, and most of my friends and family still do.
This quote in the book sums it all up for me:
"There is the most dangerous risk of all, the risk of spending your life not doing what you want on the bet you can buy yourself the freedom to do it later. "
There’s two key words in this quote. The risk of spending your life not doing what you want on the bet, you can buy yourself the freedom to do it later. So basically you’re placing a bet with your life if you live the deferred life plan. How can you know what will happen tomorrow?
I don’t want to sound morbid, but your life might end tomorrow.
So why gamble with it?
Why spend your entire life doing something you don’t want in the hope that later, once you’re older, you can actually do the stuff you want.
Why do this?
Why not follow your #passion right now and stop working in the job you hate.
Time is the only resource that matters in our life because that’s the only thing that will run out. So use it wisely.
When I say follow your passion, don’t confuse it with drive. Drive and passion are not the same. Passion pulls you towards something you cannot resist. While drive pushes you towards something you feel compelled or obligated to do.
For example, I always dreamed of travelling the globe, experiencing new cultures, meeting new people and basically seeing the wonders of the world. But as I was taught by western society, I believed I had to work an entire life to be able to do it. So I started a career in IT as I always had a fascination for networks and all that stuff anyway. I ended up becoming a network and security engineer. You know, Cisco stuff :)
Now I had a good job with a decent wage and loads of benefits but I still had to push myself out of bed every morning to go to the office.
(I lost my mind regularly, especially when they made me go do installations on semi-finished warehouses, but I digress...)
The difference with how I get up now couldn’t be any bigger. I wake up automatically around 6am and I can’t wait to start working on my business. I get pulled towards it instead of having to push myself towards it. I’m following my passion by living in Asia, experience this culture change that I longed for and creating a meaningful business in the process.
So don’t confuse passion with drive.
Think about what you really want. Define your personal success and don’t let your success be defined by other people’s definitions of success.
Let me ask you something.
If your life would end suddenly and unexpectedly tomorrow would you be able to say you’ve been doing what you truly care about today?
Think about it. What would you be willing to do for the rest of your life? And what would it take to start doing it right now?
Think about this. Sleep on it..
Let it sink in…
You might think that this has nothing to do with getting a business idea going.
But the reason I brought all of this up is to change mindsets.
Sadly enough we are conditioned in a certain way. Through education, upbringing, media, and even just the people you spend time with.
So if we can disrupt that way of thinking, we open our minds to a vast number of possibilities!
The dictionary describes a career as a job or a profession that someone does for a long time.
We associate careers with prestige, success, and advancement.
A calling is defined as a strong desire to spend your life doing a certain kind of work. Or even stronger, the work that a person does or SHOULD BE DOING!
A calling is associated with self-expressions and personal fulfillment. But the dictionary is still calling it ‘work’.
So that means we put a monetary value on our calling. A calling can never be a calling if it’s not making you money.
I do not agree with this statement.
What if I told you that a calling does not have to equal to a career?
Let’s face it. We live in a consumerist society.
This money mindset often causes us to look into the financial consequences of absolutely everything, especially of how we spend our time. We’ve been taught to believe that we should all try to make money doing what we love. If your passion doesn’t lead to a big paycheck, it’s viewed as a waste of time. This regretful situation causes many people to abandon their passion for a more “practical” path, which ultimately leads to regret.
Some people will be able to turn their passion into a career. But for others the path is less obvious.
In this post I’ll be showing you how to look differently at your skills and interests, and find clarity on how to turn a passion into a business idea.
Every person on this planet has a unique excellence. A individual brilliance.
This is the one thing that comes naturally to you. I’m sure you have something you’re really good at, which seems perfectly normal to you. It seems so normal, that you don’t even realize you’re so good at it. This is your unique excellence.
You can find it where your strengths, interests & passions, and your personality overlap.
I’ll be showing you a system to discover what yours is, and how you can use it to your advantage in creating your dream lifestyle.
Your interests
Taking a deeper look into your interests can help you in multiple ways:
It can give you clarity about the industry you want to be in, or about the people you want to work with.
It helps you to find your passion, and gives you an indication on how to run your business.
First thing to do is to brainstorm all your possible interests. Subdivide your interest in these 3 main categories.
- subjects
- activities
- causes
Subjects can be anything that’s static. Cats, astronomy, technology, health, and cars are good examples.
Activities are things you like to do. Running, gardening, traveling, things like that.
The last one is causes. These are things you feel compelled to do. Things you feel strongly about.
For example, saving the rainforest, animal welfare, helping the poor.
Write down everything that comes to mind. Even if they do not seem relevant. Also, don’t think about a business idea at this time. Just write down the stuff you’re interested in without thinking about any opportunity it might bring.
Afterwards, write down the emotion that comes up with that interest. Really dig down to find the root of the joy it brings to you.
Your strengths
I see strengths as qualities you have, not skills you learned. It’s something that comes natural to you and doesn’t require any effort. What’s more, it’s something you most likely enjoy doing. And that makes your weakness something you don’t enjoy doing. Most of us have been brought up in the Western education system, which is heavily focused on trying to improve your weaknesses, instead of focusing on your strengths.
Here's a duck... Don't be a duck!
In 1940, a story was written by George Reaves called Animal school:
Once upon a time the animals decided they must do something heroic to meet the problems of a “new world” and they organized a school. They had adopted an activity curriculum consisting of running, climbing, swimming and flying. To make it easier to administer the curriculum, all the animals took all the subjects. The duck was excellent in swimming. In fact, better than his instructor. But he made only passing grades in flying and was very poor in running. Since he was slow in running, he had to stay after school and also drop swimming in order to practice running. This was kept up until his webbed feet were badly worn and he was only average in swimming. But average was acceptable in school so nobody worried about that, except the duck.
The story goes on with other animals, but I think you get the essence of it.
Does it sound familiar? Sounds an awful lot like the modern #education system to me.
So don’t be the duck.
Focus on your #strengths and not on improving your weaknesses.
When you are using your strengths, it’s easy to stay focused on the task at hand. It feels like you are making an impact and accomplishing something.
You feel authentic and true to yourself.
This is what it means to use your strengths.
So how do you find your strengths?
Your personality and disposition also play an important role in this process.
But who am I to tell you about yourself... What can I tell that you don't know already?
Well, nothing basically. But I can help you understand how your character and traits affect your success.
Think of someone you know who is successful – how do they act or behave? What are their traits? Do you think this helped them succeed? How do you compare? What characteristics of yours do you think affect the way you achieve?
Which takes us to #personality tests. There's a whole range of them out in the wild.
And while opinions on the effectiveness of these tests vary wildly, it will give you a better understanding of what makes you tick.
These tests are by no means intended to put you in a certain category or tell you how you should behave and feel. They will just help you understand yourself and your actions.
The 3 main personality tests I advise you to are:
The big 5
Herrmann brain dominance
DISC assessments
Your qualifications
This is an easy and obvious one. Your qualifications are the things you have learned during your professional or educational career.
These are things you invested a lot of time in.
Write all of these down too. Then look at your results. You should now have a complete picture of yourself on paper. What kind of personality you have, what your strengths are, what your 'normal' response is in any given situation, and what skills and qualifications you have.
Once you have all of this, proceed to PART2 of this guide. There we will start getting business ideas on paper.
PART3 will handle the vetting and validating of your business ideas.
Well written and good advice! Thanks for sharing. I liked this quote a lot:
Hey @pachenko, thanks for the comment. That quote is powerful indeed. But most people still live like that though. I hope I can get some people to see differently with this post!
Oh and make sure to check PART 2 and PART3 as well! :)
I like the duck story.
Thanks! I should start using more gifs though, that duckling is amazing
This is exactly what I am looking for in a previous post. Thank you. I am reading this from a cafe on a tablet and therefore can't give everything a go from the guide but I am confident spending the time in following you advice will help me better understand myself. Having thought about your comments, the problem for me, and probably many others, is the inability to free my thinking to a point where I can really explore/identify my actual strengths over perceived strengths. It's really tough to get to the krux of the matter. Do you offer some other form of eliciting the answers needed to progress to the next pahse of the guide like a live questioning foru m or similar?