Thread: Training Yourself to Identify Business Opportunities

Hey Everyone,

I have a quick questions that you all may be able to assist me with.

I realize the brain is a "muscle that you have to exercise", but everyone is different when it comes to identifying that initial idea for a business.

In what ways do you "exercise" your brain and do you have any out of the box suggestions?

I've known people that write down their ideas, no matter what they are, into a notebook or phone (But that's only one way)

Thanks,

-Chase

Think of a business you know and think of ways its flawed. In the beginning you might think of tiny flaws but after awhile you ll have something you can build on. I doubt you lack ideas the challenging part is to put in massive action in your plans. I say think big

Here is a project I used to give to students

Pick a news paper, toss all the adverts
open it to any full 2 pages. place on table stand up.

start reading.

the goal is to come up with a business plan, improvement or some angle before you get to the end of the page.

I did this once as an example. 5 entrepreneur's looked at the same page with me.

not one of them saw a single "business"
I looked, and saw one for almost every article, and 2 for a couple of articles.

after doing this for a couple weeks, they could each see at least 1 opportunity.

the idea is to not get more ideas, since those are almost worthless, but to exercise your brain into recognizing opportunity where ever. later on, when you have a business, you can learn to see where the opportunities lie, and to kill bad ideas fast.

When I read a paper a while back, I saw a leash law was enacted in a town. biz idea, Dog Walking Service.

When I saw that new roads were being put in, a real estate play, or possible contractor? or even a service to several contractors, where you put together a Binder of how to win the bid on that current project, including, a short ver of the requirements, and a short list of who they need to contact directly...

There is a woman who makes almost 2M a year hiring People with doctorates, to come through the energy policies of the US, and sells the reports to large corporations, on deciphering the new policies every year....


Thats just one way to get a work out for the brain....
Hope that helps

Good post Zen. Cmon 200+ views and only 2 replies?

Thank you. this is great. gives me insight on how to identify opportunities and seizing them

Thanks Zen!

Anyone else? I think it will help a lot of people

What I did to think of my idea was to take 30 min and just write down whatever came to my head. I came up with 20+ ideas and around 5 that really looked good, and after looking into each one, decided on the best one.