Marshall Brain's Blog

Since I wrote the article How to make a million dollars I have received quite a bit of email. One of the most common questions goes something like this: "I would really like to start a business, but I do not have any good ideas. Where can I find some good business ideas to get my imagination started?"

The simplest thing to do is this: go to a good bookstore or a library or amazon and look for books/magazines containing business ideas. A good bookstore will have 10 "entrepreneur" type magazines on the shelf, and a dozen books full of "home business ideas", "small business ideas" and so on. Look also for magazines dealing with franchising opportunities. Scan through books and magazines like these for ideas. That will get you started.

You can do the same on the web. There are hundreds of web sites that discuss business ideas. Go to Google and type in something like "small business ideas" or "franchising ideas" or "getting started in small business" and see what you discover.

If you have an office of the Small Business Administration in your area, they may have a library. Stop by and talk to them. They also have a web site.

I started this recently:

Making money on the Web

The idea is to help people get their web ideas off the ground. It is an ongoing project. It will help you to get some ideas for web sites.

Look in your area and see if there is an entrepreneurial organization. Where I live (Raleigh, NC) it is called the CED (The Council for Entrepreneurial Development - http://www.cednc.org/). They have meetings, tours, seminars, classes, etc. You can often get ideas by talking to other people who are starting their own businesses. Go to the meetings and start talking to other entrepreneurs. If you have no idea what to say to people, try this, "What kind of business have you started?" Ask other entrepreneurs where they got their ideas, how they got their businesses started, what roadblocks they faced, how they overcame them, and so on.

In other words: Cast a wide net and see what you catch...

Here is another common question: When can I possibly have time to start a business? This is the important thing to keep in mind:

If you have a job, you spend less than a third of your life at work.

During every week of your life there are seven days. In those seven days there are 168 hours. Let's say you spend 50 hours a week at work. That leaves 118 hours outside of work for you to do anything you like. Choose to use those hours to work on business ideas.

Simply carve out a 20-hour slice per week -- 20 hours is only about one-sixth of your available free time. You will be AMAZED at what you can accomplish in 20 hours a week if you focus your attention on your business.

This quote from the Yarn Harlot is so appropriate:

"I neglect housework rather fiercely," she says. "That helps, it frees up a lot of time. I'm going to clean up when the kids leave."

You can read her whole story in the YarnHarlot case study. Realign your priorities, in other words.