If you are a serial entrepreneur, finding your next big thing is often a trivial process. You need creative methods, such as lucid dreaming to help you discover lucrative business idea. In fact, the same thing is also experienced by every entrepreneur; business ideas come and go, but the lucrative, potential ones are hard to find.
Your “eureka moment” could come when it wasn’t expected. However, you can’t wait like Sir Isaac Newton’s apple to hit his head before he shout the legendary “Eureka!” and discover about gravity. Today’s business world is fast paced, and waiting for an apple to fall down from a tree to hit your head is no longer feasible, in my opinion. You need to get out of your comfort zone and start finding business ideas – the lucrative ones, of course.
To do so, you need to think creatively. You need to develop the ability to slice ideas and find the all important core that has all the chances to succeed. How to hone your business ideas-finding skills to allow you get a step closer to your “next big thing”? Here are some ideas for you:
1. Skim business books, journals, magazines
You need to read business resources in such a way that you’ll get the big picture to help you discover an idea or two. Reading 1,000-page business book takes a long time, and entrepreneurs don’t have time (or if you are someone like me, I am too lazy to read books in their entirety. I love to discover new ideas and learn new skills, but even a 40-page book turns me off – I speed read and skim.)
You need to find how to read a book fast and get the gist in full – Google for it to find out more.
2. Practicing Lucid dreaming
Have you watched Leonardo diCaprio’s Inception movie? It’s a movie about a group of people who are able to enter someone’s subconscious mind to plant an idea in his/her head. It’s not an easy movie to watch, but I imagine that what lucid dreaming looks like.
How being able to consciously discovering new ideas in your dream sound to you? It’s not for everybody, but some well-known scientists and inventors are inventing and solving problems via lucid dreaming, such as Friedrich Kekule and Elias Howe to name a few.
3. Talk with your competitors
Sure, brainstorming with your colleagues and mentors will always beneficial. But do you know that some of the best ideas could come from your competitors? Of course, they won’t share any trade secrets with you – but meeting and talking with them in trade expos, business networking events, etc. can give you and idea or two.
People are usually relaxed in a casual event – they tend to blurb some facts about their business simply because people generally like to rant. Rants can give you ideas on how to solve the issues – your competitors’ rants can be your fuel to find a business idea to solve the problem and/or better your business.
4. Teach and mentor others
I gain better understanding and discover lucrative business ideas as I help others to solve their problem – this is the case for teaching and mentoring others. By sharing what you know to other, you let yourself hear what you said, and you also learn as you teach in the process; therefore I blog and writing articles, despite like what some said, my writing skills are sub-par :)
So, do you want to discover a lucrative business idea? Share what you know and start teaching and mentoring others. You don’t have to be paid to do so – knowledge is free and sharing free knowledge can get you more benefits – for free; a win-win situation for all.
5. Sit down and do nothing but creative thinking for 5 minutes a day
I understand that we as entrepreneurs are busy people. However, you need to spend at least 5 minutes a day to do creative thinking. I’m not an expert in this, but doing so helps me discover fine business ideas.
Why don’t you try to spend even 5 minutes a day, sitting in your office doing nothing but thinking about your business; how is it going? What are the current issues of your business? What are your customers complaining about? What bug you when walking into your business premise? And many other things pop in your head.
Ideas are just ideas, unless…
…you do something about it.
Ideas are different from execution. Having great business ideas in your pocket won’t guarantee your success. You need to execute your ideas via business plans to see how your ideas fare. Remember, just like in the game of basketball, you’ll miss 100% if you didn’t take any shots. In business, the same rule applies.
So, go discover lucrative business idea and start working on it – it’s a package and shouldn’t be sold separately.
Ivan Widjaya
Finding lucrative business ideas