67 – Developing Business Ideas

Today I want to talk about your business, the business you may have, may want to start, and what opportunities are out there today. Really, more the purpose of how exploding the capabilities and the opportunities are. Really, how to find your business success or your next business idea. Can you find a problem and turn it into a business? That’s really what it’s all about.

Success in business starts with the idea. While you have much to do, it must be something that is solid.

Think of nothing more than you go into Starbucks, and you get the little spill sticks. How many times before they had spill sticks to stick into a coffee cup, or if you forget them, you’re in your car or something else, and there’s a little bit that spills off, or it spills on to your hand when you’re walking around? That’s all a tremendous business that somebody found, and saw: “I can have this little thing called a spill stick, stick it into a cup, and each and every cup,” and every Starbucks around has a little package of those to give out to anybody.

Of course, I always want to put a little bit of caution, there, because: Because something is a problem for you doesn’t mean it’s a problem for somebody else. When you take a look at something, and think of an issue, you also want to look at: “Who is affected? Who does the problem really harm/hurt, or would like the solution? And how big is the marketplace for that solution?”

You can’t have a solution somebody can’t pay for, not unless you can reinvent how it’s done in such a way that it lowers the cost to make it marketable. Then define and decide who’s the market. We’ve always discussed the demographics of the market. Today, most people talk of an avatar coming out from the internet days, and the emoticons, etc. Same thing, same concept. The only thing that’s sometimes is done incorrectly is they talk of an avatar, as if you’re going to have one person. It sounds good, but most products are differentiated across some demographic groups.

Start out with one. Find out, though, what others might be affected, because there most likely is more than one marketplace that really your product suits very, very well. It may be just multiple age groups, maybe mostly 35- to 44-year-olds, but it turns out that 25- to 34-year-olds are very heavily invested into the same thing, maybe because they want to mimic the people who are slightly older than them. Notice it’s not just notifying and noticing that they want that product, but they want it because they’re mimicking something of a slightly older age. That affects how you position the product.

So, you identify what problems people are having. It’s obvious in the one I just mentioned, spill sticks with Starbucks coffee. There’s also other things. Take the GPS. The GPS now, and this is more modern obviously, because we’re talking about not only GPS, but getting into mapping, and then linking it into your reminders. So all of a sudden, when you’re pulling up to the grocery store and your list of groceries that you want to buy pops up. Why? Because it was in your reminders, the GPS found it. Just you’ve created something where the applications are talking to one another.

Keep in mind you don’t necessarily have to know how to do all that programming. That’s where you have, as I mentioned in a previous episode, your virtual team, your virtual company. There’s a town nearby that you go to for a variety of different things, and as you pass over the bridge, or under the bridge, or over the river, whatever it is – all of a sudden, the list of errands pops up for all the different things that you need to go see in that town or take care of in that town. So your lists are right there on your phones.

Things are constantly being created, invented that are new that are taking advantage of the new and different technologies. Of course, we’ve seen Facebook and Twitter have been around for a while, and now we have Instagram, Pinterest, and Snapchat,