6 Great Places for Business Ideas

Bored of the old 9-5, fed up of making someone else money, want more flexibility? Blah, blah, blah. There are lots of reasons that people bandy around for starting their own business. But when you decide to plunge into the icy darkness where do you start to get your ideas from?

Fine if you have an idea. Not so fine if you don’t have an idea.

And you really want your own business, you want to take that plunge into crazy world of 'having your own business', to be an entrepreneur, join the revolution.

Here are my top tips on how to get idea inspiration on starting your own business:

Stress points:

What really winds you up? Have a real good think about this one. When you are out, when you are at home, when you are driving. What really gets your goat? If, like me, there is always something then can you do anything about it? This could be the start of a passionate journey to make something better for you and for everyone.

The obvious:

Turn your spare time hobby into cash! I’m sure you have all seen ads for this, where you can then sign up for a course or another that will show you how to make money doing something you enjoy. Seriously though, you can turn hobbies into cash. That piece of furniture you painted? Turned out well? Did you enjoy doing it? Turn it into a cash by selling it – hey presto your own business.

Turn your skills into cash. Okay, so you are probably already doing this is you are working and we all know that working is generally a much safer bet than having your own business. But what the heck! Those skills that you have, making your employer money, could be turned and may make you even more money. (Word of warning here: Don’t jack in your job on a whim of setting up your own business)

The not so obvious:

The internet. Well, it may seem obvious, but where do you go to get inspiration for starting up your own business? There are a plethora of business start-up websites. You can cruise through these and see what other things people have set up. You can go to trends websites. You can look at tech websites. Here are 5 great websites (in no particular order) for business start-up idea inspiration:

1. springwise.com – ‘Your essential fix of entrepreneurial ideas’. Does as it says on the tin. There are a huge amount of ideas for businesses on this website. They have ‘spotters’ all over the world who find new businesses and report back. You can get a weekly digest and update, you can pay them money and subscribe for even more information.
2. mashable.com – initially all about tech, but there is much much more. Look at their business pages and lifestyle pages for inspiration.
3. enterprisenation.com – a great resource for start ups – but also full of peoples business start up ideas and you may be able to ‘replicate’ these and find inspiration for something that you could do.
4. ft.com – check out their 50 ideas pages.
5. Twitter.com - Get yourself a desktop like Hoot Suite and then start to follow keywords and trends like #startups & business idea – lots of rubbish (it is social media!), but definitely some gems in there too.
6. And a bonus one: trendwatching.com. Trends. Cash in on them. Cash out on them. Sign up to their monthly briefing.

Where would you go for inspiration on starting a business?

Let me know in the comments.