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  • Be more of a producer than a consumer

    Today, we live in an extremely materialistic world, where we are programed to be a subconsciously obedient consumer from a young age onwards. You’re exposed to a few hundred marketing messages on average each day, and most advertisers try to convince you to buy things you don’t need to impress people you don’t like with hard-earned money from a job you may even not like.

    But there’s more than that. Productivity has risen dramatically in the past two decades. An average worker creates more value than ever. Nevertheless, wages aren’t going up, they are remaining steady or even decreasing. All of the benefit (or extra profit, if you want) goes to employers or business owners. That’s why rich people are getting richer, and poor people are getting poorer.

    Productivity and wages

    It’s true that an average inhabitant of the world can afford more and more material things. The material abundance has never been as high as it is today. But the profoundly sad truth is that the material status isn’t improving because wages and productivity are higher, but because it’s much easier to access debt. People enslave themselves to debt more and more, just to afford another thing they probably don’t even need.

    Household debt vs savings

    Being an obedient consumer

    There are many reasons and motivators why you should buy something new. Because you get the instant good feeling of gratification, because you deserve it since you work hard, because you’ll feel a little bit better about yourself or other people will notice you more, because a new thing will bring short-lived excitement into your life, and so on.

    It’s so easy to spend money. Your hard earned money is just an electronic figure. Your fastest connection to that figure is a piece of plastic; doesn’t even feel like a real money. Just some numbers. You see something you like. You just swipe your plastic and you feel a little better for whatever reason.

    You don’t have enough of your own money? No problem. You have a few more decades to live and you’re going to work hard, for sure, and earn some money. Lenders know that, and they want a piece of your future earnings. That’s why it’s so easy to borrow money and just buy something you want. With a single signature.

    A big screen TV you can’t actually afford. A fancy nice car. A big modern home. Dozens of shoes and coats and other clothes. Vacations you haven’t taken for so long and you definitely deserve. A big expensive latte. Restaurants and drinks and parties. There are so many options to spend money, and it doesn’t matter whether you actually have it or not.

    You can swipe credit cards and take more and more debt until reality kicks in. The easier road sooner becomes hard. The good short-lived feeling of owning something new becomes a long-term catastrophe; because debt means slavery. Possessions you cannot afford destroy your freedom and your potential, and sooner or later your health and relationships as well, because of all the stress. The more things you buy that you cannot really afford, the longer your jail sentence is, the more enslaved you are.

    One of the problems is that things are rarely as they seem. Maybe your neighbor has a bigger house than you, drives an expensive car, wears expensive clothes, has a nice motorbike and I don’t know what else, but in reality, he may be an enslaved person working a job he hates just to pay the debt he owes. The material things are just his short escape from reality.

    We buy things we don't need

    Having material things in life doesn’t really mean neither wealth nor happiness. Almost anyone can go to a bank for a consumer loan to buy a few fancy things and enslave their own future. But sooner or later, you don’t own things anymore. They own you. Your freedom goes away, your happiness goes away, and all you do is work hard to pay off the debt. Everybody earned money except you. Remember: if you don’t know who the fool in the room is, you’re probably that fool.

    The easiest way people see for getting out of a financial hole is by earning more money. But sooner or later, they realize that more money is rarely a solution for poor financial management. You just can’t buy more financial discipline. That’s why most lottery winners go broke soon after winning the money. You must financially discipline yourself, no matter how much you earn. Because money follows management.

    Don’t try to only look rich, work hard and be disciplined to really become rich. Buying stuff on credit means slavery. Living a modest and frugal life and not spending money like crazy, especially not by taking debt, means freedom. You have more choices and more choices mean more freedom. You have more options to pursue your dreams and the things you really want in life.

    The opposite is also true. The hard road becomes much easier with time. If you save money, you’ll become a winner sooner or later. Because a free cash flow will allow you to become an investor, a business owner or lender. Cash in your bank account will give you more options and possibilities.

    Shopping and getting poor

    Being an innovative producer

    The large majority of people are consumers. Most of them afford their lifestyle by taking debt. They enslave themselves and limit their options. But logically, this planet has another type of people – the ones who are selling the products to this majority. These are the people with a completely different mindset. They’re called producers. They’re driven by the force to innovate, to produce to solve problems and to create beautiful shiny products and services that provide value.

    Every one of us has the capacity to innovate, create something new, provide value and produce different products and services. Every one of us has a much greater potential than to just go to work, take debt and spend money as the easiest way to escape reality and its challenges. Not everyone is made to become an entrepreneur, but you can also become an investor, sole proprietor, freelancer, you can produce and sell stuff in your free time, partner up etc. There are numerous ways of becoming a producer.

    You can break free from being only a consumer by becoming a producer as well. The sooner you switch sides, the sooner life becomes easier. You get more ideas, you see more opportunities, you’re more immune to all the advertising messages, and even more importantly: the will to create and contribute awakens in you. Switching from a consumer to a producer mindset can be one of the greatest things you do in life. First you produce and provide value, which makes you rich, and then you consume. Producers get rich and consumers go poor. That’s a fact.

    Think about providing value to the world. See yourself as an innovator, entrepreneur, businessperson, visionary, creator and producer of added value. See yourself as an investor and business owner. Instead of spending money, invest money, save money and produce.

    You can even take being a producer to a totally new level. If you have a consumer mindset, you only think about what you’ll buy for your spouse on Valentine’s Day. Producers prefer to think about what they can sell on Valentine’s Day. They see millions of spenders who just want to buy stuff as proof of their love.

    Consumers buy things in shopping centers, producers sell them. Consumers buy products on TV, producers sell them. Consumers borrow money to buy stuff, producers lend money. Consumers buy things for every holiday and special occasion, producers see special occasions as opportunities to sell things to needy people.

    Think about all the needs people have. Think about how you can provide value to the world. Think about how you can solve problems for people. Think about all the business ideas you have; and if you don’t have them, brainstorm. Think about your dreams and talents, and how you can monetize them. Think like a producer and a creator of value.

    “You look at the world, when you buy a sandwich or a beer; you are a consumer where you trade money for a certain type of good. I think money is fundamentally an exchange of value. So, how can you be the guy that produces the value so that people can use that to give you the money? When you see that way, then you kinda see the matrix. That’s the biggest switch you probably have to make.” Terry Lin, Baller Leather, Your Own Way Out Interview

    Changing from a consumer to a producer mindset

    Changing your mindset from being a consumer to being a producer is not an easy job, but it can be done. Here are some tricks that are going to help you change perspective.

    Whenever you want to be an obedient consumer, do the following:

    • Whatever you buy, multiply the price by ten. That’s the actual cost of your purchase. If you were to invest that money, that is approximately how much money you’d make in twenty-five years with an average return on your investment.
    • Everything you buy doesn’t only cost money. It also costs you your freedom, your space in life, your future and the number of your choices. See how you’re enslaving yourself with every purchase, especially if you’re buying things on debt.
    • Whenever you get a paycheck, Pay yourself first. Have a savings account and put some money aside for your future. See it as part of your expenditures and consumption. Feel instant gratification when you save money. Whenever you see your neighbor’s fancy car and feel bad, look at your savings account and it’ll make you feel better instantly.
    • For bigger purchases, wait two to three months, don’t make impulsive decisions, especially not for big purchases. If you still need the new thing, maybe you should buy it, but rather not. Time will curb your consumption desires.
    • Rather than buying things you won’t use in a few weeks’ time and that only start collecting dust, live a minimalistic life. Remove all waste from your life.
    • If you really have problems controlling your expenditures, find a spouse with better money management habits than you. It will be a good influence on you and you’ll be able to save much more money.

    Tricks to acquiring a producer mindset:

    • Become a smarter consumer, educate yourself, compare prices, understand taxes and the monetary system, read financial statements, become financially educated. Try to see everything you buy as a business deal with room to negotiate.
    • Read investing and business books, as this will motivate you to save more and to produce more value for the world; besides learning new things.
    • Spend more time with investors and producers. Join business or investor clubs, make new friends, and go to conferences.
    • Invest in yourself, unless you don’t think you’re a good investment. But you are. Leveling up your skills, upgrading you mindset and having a better life strategy is the best investment you can make.
    • Have a long-term approach. It takes years to change your mindset, to learn new skills and to really become a producer and then produce something of real value. The good news is that you only have to be right once with the right product (to get rich), but you can’t just switch sides, it’s not that easy. You must learn about the markets, you must develop new skills, expand your social network, and so on. The learning curve is long and takes a lot of effort, years of hard work, but it’s worth it. Not only because of a better earning potential, but also because of the feeling that you created something and contributed to the world.
    • Start creating something small and try to sell it. Maybe you can start with selling things you don’t need at home. Try to identify small opportunities for making some money. Make your first dollar, then ten dollars and continue like that.
    • Go to the Arab part of the world and practice bargaining and negotiating. Most people feel uncomfortable negotiating and getting the best possible price. If you can’t do it, partner up with someone who can.
    • Make sure your spouse understands your goals and supports them. If you try to save, invest and produce, and your spouse only wants to spend and consume, things will not work out very well. Besides investing into yourself (you), your spouse is the most important choice you make in your life.
    • Think about what else you consume that’s unnecessary, like news, TV, unhealthy food etc. Try to see your time and energy as precious resources you can either waste or invest wisely.
    • Try to think about how to create products with real value. If you want long-term success, you need to create value that people really need and respect. Try to build products you’d proudly put your name on. Don’t try to just to make a quick buck or scam people.

    My friend Robert Rolih wrote two reports that are great if you are new to investing:

    Specialreports1

    That’s also what I do. I’m not rich (yet) but my material status is improving every year. I drive an average car (which I even downgraded a few years ago) and I live in a small but cute flat I can afford. I spend as little as possible on clothes. I don’t buy any unnecessary stuff. I try to live as minimalistic of a life as possible.

    I have a spouse who knows how to save money and she motivates me to spend even less. She is a really good influence when it comes to money. My major expenditures are investments into myself (books, seminars, MOOCs…), healthy food, technology and sports. All that I see more as investments than costs.

    Seven years ago, I wasn’t even close to being careful with my money, because of my false mindset. That’s changing for the better every year; especially by reading books and socializing with the right people, and it feels so much better. Still, I’m not obsessed with money and I value relationships and doing good much more than financial benefit.

    I see myself much more as a producer than a consumer. I produce things I’m good at, things like writing articles, doing workshops, managing complex projects and delivering consulting work. I’m just in the process of switching from producing value for the local to the global market, while my plan is to also create some products so I can progress from only trading my time for money to also having some passive and portfolio income.

    It may take me the next decade to really do it, but I have no problem investing into the process and trusting it. Despite all that, I really enjoy what I’m doing. It’s not only about the final event, the path alone pretty much has the same value and importance.

  • Free your mind with your own digital brain

    In order to innovate, create, improve yourself and enjoy life to the full, you need to be as free as possible. You need to be as free as possible on all four levels – physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual. Freedom simply means that you have the power to act, speak, or think as you want; and as you’ve probably figured out by now, we are more often slaves to ourselves than to anything or anyone else; at least as long as you don’t do anything that would be so stupid you end up in prison.

    On the physical level, flexibility, balance, strength and endurance bring more freedom and options. The better your take care of your body, the freer you are from being a slave to yourself. You can reach higher mountains, dive deeper into the oceans, have sex in more positions, do more sports, and so on.

    On the emotional level, cognitive distortions can be the ones keeping you in an emotional prison. Negative thinking very much correlates to negative feelings and negative emotional states. All four levels (body, mind, heart and soul) are connected, and more freedom on one level means more freedom on other levels.

    On the spiritual level, freedom means freeing yourself from expectations, attachments and fear. The greater your capacity for love is, the freer you are. You free your spirit when you realize that having a good trip is better than just arriving. You want to have a trip full of joy, happiness and bliss.

    On the intellectual level, you need to free your mind. One way of freeing your mind is taking control of it. There are only two options: either you control your mind, or your mind controls you. If it controls you, you’re on autopilot, which often leads to cognitive distortions and other mental errors. The best way to take control over your mind is to practice meditation.

    The second way of freeing your mind is getting to know yourself better with reflection. With regular reflection and by analytically thinking about yourself, your environment and your situations in life, you bring things that burden you from the unconscious to the conscious mind. The best way to do regular analytical reflection is to keep journal, and we’ll talk more about that later.

    The third way to free your mind is keeping your brain as unburdened as possible with unimportant things. There are several ways for doing that. One is to keep trivial decisions to the minimum. You have a limited daily cognitive ability, and every decision, thought or worry takes some of that ability away. Entrepreneurs like Mark Zuckerberg and the deceased Steve Jobs even go so far that they wear pretty much the same thing every day, just to keep more cognitive power for decisions that are more important than choosing clothes. You should automate as many things as possible, from what to wear, what to eat and so on.

    Another very useful way is to have your own “digital brain”. With a digital brain organized in the right way, you can free your mind from irrelevant information, you can store things for reference, write down ideas and so on. Not only do you have more cognitive power to allocate for the things that really matter, you are also much more productive and creative; because you don’t lose your ideas, you can find your references really quickly and connect different pieces of information better.

    Don’t get me wrong: having a digital brain doesn’t mean that you become lazy; you just don’t burden your brain with information that isn’t important in a certain moment or with an information overload. There is no way you can create if you only consume. Nonetheless, it makes sense to work hard on your intellectual capabilities. Reading, doing mental exercises, making new yet unknown connections, thinking out of the box etc., are all things that increase your intellectual capacity.

    Your digital brain

    Your digital brain is nothing more than an electronic system for note-taking, brainstorming and archiving.

    The structure of your digital brain should be pretty simple. You should write down or save everything you don’t need in a certain moment but may need someday, save your ideas and, of course, keep everything that helps you to organize your daily life. Below are the things you should store in your digital brain at the least.

    Journal, thoughts and reflections

    The first and most important thing you should keep in your digital notebook (brain) is your journal, especially if you don’t want to keep any paper and want to have everything digitalized. Keeping a journal could mean two things. The first one is actually keeping a journal, meaning writing down what you’ve experienced throughout the day, where you’ve been, who you’ve met and so on. Maybe someday, you’ll want to show that kind of a journal to your kids.

    But an even more important journal type is a journal of your daily thoughts and reflections. It’s about analysing and getting to know yourself, reflecting on your decisions and what’s happening to you and so on. It’s about becoming more aware of your beliefs, values, perspectives, thoughts, mood triggers and so on. Regular reflection is the best way to free yourself from emotional and intellectual burdens as well as to get to smart work, because you become more strategic, proactive and less reactive.

    The good thing about keeping a journal is that you can always go back, look at your epiphanies, cognitions and thoughts, and re-reflect on them. It’s how you grow and improve.

    Here are some types of documents you should keep in your digital brain:

    • Reflection journal – As mentioned, it’s a journal about you, making the unconscious conscious, understanding your motives, desires, frustrations and other psychological traits.
    • Emotional accounting – It’s about keeping a table to rationalize your cognitive distortions. You simply draw a three-column table, where the first column is the automatic negative thought (“I never do things right”), the second one is the type of cognitive distortion (overgeneralization) out of the ten different types mentioned before, and the third one is your rational response (“Not true, I do a lot of things right”). Keeping everything in one place helps you see how you’re improving.
    • Your life strategy – Your thoughts about your life strategy, from your investment and money strategy to your traveling plans, developing competences and so on.
    • Your optimal environment – Keeping thoughts about the people in your life, the situations you face as well as an analysis of your environment, such as your country, macro-economic trends, your office and home.
    • Minimums and maximums – It’s about setting limits in your life, the minimums and maximums you should achieve to keep the balance and different areas in life in check (for example, the minimum amount of times you should exercise per week or the maximum amount of time you should work on average each day).
    • Desired outcomes – Whatever you do, you should start with an endgame in mind. That’s the list of outcomes you want in life, how you’ll achieve them, what could go wrong and how you’ll adapt and adjust your strategy.
    • Personas – It’s a technique that can help you clarify what kind of people you want in your life and the kind of organizations you want to function in.
    • Personal improvement strategy – It’s a list of where and how you want to improve yourself and when you’ll do it. It’s not only a list, but a document with an important life strategic value. This is probably the most important list in your life and has a deep reflection benefit.
    • Personal SWOT analysis – It’s a good tool for identifying your strengths and weaknesses, and can help you make your personal improvement strategy.
    • Traditional journal – It’s also good to keep a regular journal, into which you write about things like what happened to you on a specific day, where you’ve been, what you’ve seen and what you’ve learned. You can just write a few bullet points in your reflection journal.
    • “Thankful for” and “proud of” document – The two documents you should definitely have in life is a list of things that you’re really proud of in your life, like your achievements, strong personality traits, good deeds and so on, and a list of things that you’re grateful for.
    • Other thoughts and reflections – You can also keep all other types of personal documents and your thoughts, like quotes, positive affirmations, messaging archives, personal e-mail archives, dreams, associations and everything else that strongly impacts your life.

    Cloud computing

    Tasks and lists

    The second thing you should keep in your digital brain are various lists. You don’t want to try to remember everything, and you don’t want to torture your brain to recall everything you have to buy in the grocery store or be mad because you’ve forgotten something. If you help yourself with lists in your daily life, you’ll have much more cognitive power at your disposal.

    Lists also help with one more thing, if you write them correctly. They help you with not feeling overwhelmed. The right way to do it is to have all kinds of lists that free you from anxiety and a feeling that there’s too much to do. You only keep one list (or board), showing what’s in process (to-do list) for the following week. With an approach like that, you try to focus on one weekly or bi-weekly sprint, and you try to live in the moment more.

    Here are some lists you should keep:

    • Your vision list – It’s a big list of everything you want to experience in life. It feels good when you look at a list that shows what you’ve already experienced in life and what else you want to live to see. It empowers you and helps you focus on the positive.
    • Your “maybe someday” list – There are some things for which you aren’t sure whether you want to experience them in life or not. You can keep a “maybe someday” list to prevent burdening yourself too much with all the things that exist in the world. If one day you decide that you want to experience something from this list, you put it on your vision list, if not, you delete it.
    • “Not to do” list and distractions list – You should keep a list of things you know you won’t do or don’t want to do in life. It’ll help you stay focused and say no more easily.
    • Being a minimalist list – It’s a simple list of things you don’t need anymore and plan on giving away, selling or dumping. If you don’t do that as you go along, you can keep a list and then do a cleaning every three or six months.
    • Reading list and wish list – A good list to keep is a list of books you want to read in life. Make sure that you cross a book off the list every two weeks, or at least one per month. You should also keep a list of things you want to buy and have. But think twice before making purchasing decisions.
    • Your shopping lists – Simply a list of things you should buy the next time you visit the grocery store.
    • Daily/Weekly To-Do list – You can have a to-do list, but I recommend visualizing your tasks with a Kanban board. If you don’t want to have a physical board in your life, you can keep it electronically. One way to do it is with a software application like Kanbanery. The other ones are notebook applications that also have post-it notes integration.
    • Other lists – You should keep all other kinds of lists in your digital brain, for example a weekly home cleaning and maintenance schedule, gift ideas, things not to forget, things to do with your spouse etc.

    Business and other ideas

    Your digital notebook should also be your brainstorming tool. You can get your business and other ideas (like ideas for blog posts, for example) randomly throughout the day and when you do, you should write them down immediately. We can quickly forget ideas, even if they’re really good. So make sure you write down every idea you get, bad or good. Noticing and identifying your ideas throughout the day will also improve the quality of your ideas in the long run.

    The second way is to take time and brainstorm. You should do that regularly, at least on a monthly basis. It’s how you keep your creative muscle strong. Having good ideas is an important part of success in life. The good news is that everyone is creative, you just have to practice enough.

    Here are two additional resources:

    Mind maps and summaries

    As you reflect on yourself, you should also reflect on the things you read, listen or see. For example, after reading a really good book, you should go through your highlights again, making a summary or a mind map of things that fascinated you the most. You’ll get much more out of it and you can go back and refresh your knowledge anytime. I do mind maps in the Mindjet MindManager and then save them in my digital notebook.

    Notes

    You should also keep notes in your digital brain, all kinds of notes. Notes from team and client meetings, classes, phone calls, sales visits, all other types of meetings, the conferences you attend and so on. The good thing is that you can send a note to all other parties involved to confirm everything you’ve agreed on. It’s part of good communication and it helps keep clarity.

    What you can also use are templates for different kinds of meetings or activities. For example, you can have a business meeting template. The purpose of a template is to first maximize the value of the meeting, making sure that the subject is clear etc. as well as to prepare and share the minutes faster.

    References

    You should also keep all different references and resources in your digital brain. The webpages you like, infographics, blogposts, articles etc. Things you’ve read and want to keep, things that you may need again someday and so on. I call my reference notebook Intelbox and I keep all kinds of useful information and good ideas in it.

    Documents and archive

    Last but not least, your digital brain should also be your document archive. You want to keep everything in one place, systematically organized and easy to find. It’s good if you can digitalize everything and keep a no-paper policy. I know it’s not always possible, especially when it comes to the government, but you should keep things on paper to the minimum. You should digitalize as much as possible.

    Since your archive will become bigger and bigger as you go through life, it’s really important to have things organized from the very beginning; you should also do regular cleaning and organizational updates. Your archive can be the place for storing your personal documents, business documents, bills, medication and medical records, etc.

    It’s also good to have different information you only need sometimes in one place, for example the tax ID number, clothing size, different home measurements (window size, quadrature…), manuals, and so on. You can also keep important phone numbers, insurance policy, a “what to pack” list for traveling and so on in your notebook. There are numerous ways of using your digital brain.

    Advanced uses of your digital brain

    Thanks to technology, applications are becoming more and more powerful. With multiple users, sharing abilities, extensions and synchronization across applications, there are many advanced ways of using your digital brain, either all in one application or with different applications synchronized.

    Here are some examples of using your digital brain in an advanced way:

    • Tracking your time
    • Tracking your finances and investments
    • Keeping a digital rolodex (scanning business cards and keeping contacts in one place)
    • Your weekly menu and different recipes
    • Tracking your calories
    • Your fitness and sports journal with a plan and tracking progress
    • Writing blog posts or your own book etc.

    Recommended applications

    I use the following applications to keep my digital brain:

    • Evernote – Evernote is an extremely powerful and popular notebook tool. It gives you everything you need to organize your digital brain. You can encrypt sensitive data, it’s synchronized across all devices and keeps a copy in the cloud, you have an extensive app market with a post-it extension, for example, and so on. There are also many templates available.

    You can easily enter data, for example capture websites, e-mail documents, synchronize applications, and so on. You can directly scan documents into Evernote, you can make audio notes, save pictures, easily share notes you write down and so on. There really is basically everything you need to keep your digital brain structured and organized. I strongly recommend it.

    • Dropbox – I keep almost everything in Evernote, except files. For my files, I use Dropbox, where I have a directory Intelbox and in it, all the different files I may need as a resource or reference one day. From free eBooks to presentations, papers and other materials. By using Dropbox, you can easily access and view files from all the devices you have. Sharing is also very easy.
    • Google Inbox – Another important part of my digital brain is my e-mail client. I keep an archive of my e-mails in my Gmail account. I try to keep it as clean as possible and I try to write a minimum amount of e-mail. I use the Inbox application, which really keeps things with e-mail productive and simple.
    • Other applications – I also use some other applications as part of my digital brain, for example Pocket, Mindjet Mindmanager, WordPress and Twitter. And I must not forget IFTTT, for keeping things as automated as possible. There are many other specialized apps on the market, but I recommend you to keep things as centralized as possible. Evernote is a good place to start.

    If you’re interested in organizing your digital brain with Evernote, here are some recommendations for further reading: How to organize Evernote for maximum efficiency.

     

  • How to get business ideas

    It’s true: having a good business idea is a tiny part of success in business. Much more important elements of start-up success are finding a sustainable and scalable business model and execution, together with a superior strategy, resilience, building a winning team and so on. Nevertheless, a good business idea presents the beginning of everything. It’s the first step you make. It’s the spark that ignites your fire and fuels your vision and everything that enables you to engage other people and resources.

    Getting a good business idea is also usually a process, not a single event. That’s where most people make the wrong assumption. Ideas are rarely a one time “aha” moment. In most cases, it takes a lot of testing, experimenting, thinking, changing, reshaping, pivoting etc. of the initial idea to get a really good business idea. The event we want is always preceded by a process. Today, the process of developing a business idea is usually done using the Business Model Canvas or Running Lean Canvas.

    But still, you have to start somewhere. You need an initial business idea, an idea that draws you in so much that you’re prepared to work hard on it and test different assumptions to see if you’re really on to something. Thus let’s look at different ways of how to get an initial business idea.

    Industry insights

    The important fact is that you usually don’t come up with a good business idea. You notice a good business idea. And the best way to notice a business idea is at your daily work in your industry, where your domain expertise lies. You can identify problems your company’s business partners have, from suppliers to distributors and customers. Many new businesses start when someone proposes an idea to their boss and the boss rejects it. The person knows it’s a good idea, and so they open their own business.

    • Think about how the company you work for could be 100 times better
    • Think about the new things that customers want in the industry you work in
    • Think about problems in your industry
    • Think about trends and the next big thing in your industry

    Choose an industry and do research

    If you don’t like the industry you currently work in, go through a list of all potential industries and find the one you could add most value to. Select the industry for which you know you’d be most passionate about. Do research on the chosen industry. Brainstorm ideas. Maybe change your job and start working for a successful company in the chosen industry to learn and collect industry insights. There’s usually a big gap between how you think an industry works and how it really works. Thus real life experiences are always very important.

    Your current network

    Analyse your social and professional network to come up with a business idea. Your network is the most valuable capital you have when starting a new business. So maybe your idea should come from your network. The contacts in your rolodex are your potential business partners and clients.

    • To whom in your network would you sell what the easiest?
    • Who could you invite to become your business partner?
    • Who in your network has really good ideas; who is creative and ambitious?

    Build your network

    If you don’t have any friends, coworkers or acquaintances to start a business with, it’s maybe time to expand your social network. New beginnings in life usually also mean new people. Thus don’t be afraid to open yourself up to new social connections and new opportunities. With positive vibrations and the right attitude, the right people will come into your life. Go to Meetup and find the next event you can join and network.

    • Go to business events and meet new people
    • Go to tech events and meet new people
    • Go to industry or other events and meet new people

    Your personal problems

    Think about the personal problems you’re facing in life. Good business ideas are usually solutions to real life problems. The idea behind business ideas is to make our life easier. To make us more productive and connected and safe.

    The good or bad part of everything, depending on how you look at it, is that every new product on the market usually not only solves a problem but also brings a new set of problems. Think of the personal computer. It brought many advantages into our lives, but also many new problems. Thus the problems will never end, neither yours nor those of other people.

    • Think of problems you’re currently facing and what product would solve them
    • What problems were you facing in the past that were hard to solve?
    • Which products or services would make your life much easier and cosier?
    • How could you use new technologies to solve your personal problems?

    Your personal sins

    As you’ve probably figured out already, we don’t buy products only to fix our problems. We also buy products because of many other needs we have, many of them only psychological. We could also say that we buy our products because of our sins. If we look at the seven deadly sins, you can see the correlation very fast.

    Pride forces us to buy a fancy car, envy to buy the same outfit that a Hollywood star has, wrath to buy a violent video game, sloth to buy a sauna belt instead of going jogging, greed to buy a lottery ticket, gluttony to eat everything on the menu in a cheap fast food restaurant and lust to pay for dating sites.

    Good companies are supposed to get you laid (sex/socializing), made (power/reputation) or paid (saving/earning money). You can see that this concept is very closely connected to our sins. To sum up, we buy many products because of our irrational needs. The fact is that we live in a very materialistic world.

    The third angle of how you can look at this is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is portrayed as a pyramid with the largest, most fundamental levels of needs at the bottom and the need for self-actualization at the top. Pyramid has six different types of needs. The most basic ones are physiological needs, such as air, water and sex. Then we have safety needs, such as personal and financial security. Next ones are needs of love and belonging to family, friends and spouse. Then self-esteem needs come into play, giving a sense of contribution and value. The last one are self-actualization needs.

    • Think about which products you buy because of your sins
    • Think about which products you’d you because of your sins if they were available
    • What do your body and emotions need the most and doesn’t exist yet?

    Problem solution

    Other people’s problems and sins

    If you don’t have any real problems or sins that could be good grounds for finding a new business idea, help yourself with other people in your life – from closest friends to strangers you observe in the cafeteria. The idea is to notice something that nobody has really noticed before from the business idea angle. You have one mouth and two ears for a reason: to listen to people and come up with the next big thing.

    • Be curious
    • Ask Questions
    • Listen
    • Observe
    • Be emphatic

    Products and services that suck

    As any human being, you also probably use many products and services. And you’re unsatisfied with many of them or they even piss you off. You see many ways for how you could improve things and make the world a better place to live. One way to come up with a business idea is to find a product you like but you see many improvements that would make the product 10 times better. Don’t ignore the fact that established businesses usually win in the saturated market, but there are also always newcomers who shake things up a little bit. Maybe it’s time for you to shake up a chosen market.

    • Which product or service could you do 10 times or even 100 times better?
    • Could you make something cheaper, smaller, larger, quicker, longer, more attractive …?
    • Could you make something available to more people?
    • Could you make a high-end product affordable for mass market?
    • Could you combine two products together?

    The skills and talents you have

    Think about the special skills and talents you have. Maybe you could build your business idea on that. Maybe you have really good consulting skills and you can start a consulting business. Maybe you are a very sporty type of person and you could do a personal training or fitness app or something similar. Many people start their business based on their skills, special talents or educational background.

    • What are currently the best opportunities in the field you studied in?
    • Do a personal SWOT analysis and think about the skills you could build your business on.
    • Do you really excel at something that’s sellable?
    • Can you make any awesome products with your talents?

    Merging experiences from different industries

    If you have many skills or experience form various industries, what you can do is take a solution from one industry and carry it over into a new industry. Or, for example, if you have #-shaped skills, you can join two of your skills together to come up with a new idea. You know, if you’re bodybuilding in your free time and coding is your occupation, you can make a fitness app and so on.

    • Is there an idea you can take from one industry and implement it in another?
    • Do you have two totally different areas of expertise you could join into one idea?

    Hobbies

    Same as for your skills and talents goes for your hobbies. Many people get business ideas from their hobbies and things they love to do in their free time. Make a list ofyour hobbies or hobbies you think you’d like and analyze if there are any business opportunities.

    Just be careful, because real monetization potential must exist. Many business that are treated like hobbies pay like hobbies. That means nothing or close to nothing. Make sure there’s a very strict distinction between your hobby and business if you build your business based on a hobby.

    Research work

    Many new business ideas come out of research work. Google, for example. It’s not easy to find an idea with strong core competency and an unfair advantage. Years of research and development with commercial potential can be a great intellectual property to build business on. Of course there are other challenges, like how to do technology transfer etc. But more and more research institutions have technology transfer offices that make sure that transfer is legal and fair.

    • Could you develop a business idea with the research you did for your Bachelors/Masters thesis or doctoral dissertation?
    • Do you know anybody at research institutions you could connect with?
    • Do you know any scientists doing research that could be commercialized (professionally in cooperation with technology transfer offices)?

    Evolution and thinking about the future

    Close your eyes and imagine how the world will look in 10, 20, 50 and 100 years. The gadgets you will have at home, the transport you will use, how you will work etc. Try to imagine all different details and things that currently aren’t possible.

    Think about evolutionary (linear) changes that will happen and how things will get better step by step (super smartphones for example) and about revolutionary (rapid) changes that will completely reshape the world (for example a phone integrated in your pinky finger).

    • The best way to predict the future is to create it. What products do you imagine in the future?

    Convergence

    When thinking about the future, think about the devices that will merge together. Like ten years ago, you had a mobile phone, a camera, a compass etc. Today you have everything in a smartphone. More and more devices are converging. In the future, we will have smart watches, smart clothes, smart everything that will be connected to the internet. This kind of thinking may inspire you for a new kind of device or service.

    • What devices or services or other ideas could you merge together into a new idea?

    Brainstorming

    Brainstorming

    Your potential to create new ideas is like a muscle. The more you train it, the more ideas you will have. First you need to keep your mind open. You know, because a mind is like a parachute, it only works when it’s open. You need to be focused on new opportunities. After having an open mind, you need to constantly brainstorm new ideas. You will become better and better with time.

    But no matter how good you become, there will always be dozens of shitty ideas when you brainstorm; yet among the shitty ones, a golden one will be listed sooner or later.

    • Always have a pen and paper with you. Brainstorm at least 20 ideas every day.

    Piggyback

    Maybe coming up with your own idea is not really your forte, but you still have the potential to be a good business person. An important part of success is to be honest with yourself and know what strengths and weaknesses you have. Today, it’s business teams that win, not individuals. Thus nothing is wrong if you start searching for people who have good ideas and partner up with them.

    • Do you have any friends that can come up with a business idea and you could join them?
    • Could you join any groups for meeting meet people with good business ideas?

    Get inspired

    Another thing you can do is to look for inspiration. Good ideas mean nothing but making new connections or finding better ways to do things. Below you can find ten different types of sources that can inspire you to come up with a good idea. You can also find many links to help you out. Start browsing, researching and brainstorming. Sooner or later, you will come up with something that will set you on your new course in life. Because if you’re reading this blog, you are a winner.

    Trends

    Future trends are especially important for inspiration. By knowing the trends, you can also analytically decide for the most perspective industries. Here are some sites that analyse trends and predict the future:

    Social trends

    With all the social networks, social trends are becoming more and more important, especially for ideas in culture, media and everything that’s built for the masses. Thus you can get easily inspired by browsing different social trends.

    Magazines and articles

    Magazines can be a good source of inspiration. Articles, ads, interviews, you can find a lot of content that can spark your new business idea. Specialized and hobby magazines can especially be a great help. On top of that, browsing magazines is also relaxing and fun.

    Business idea lists

    You can find many business idea lists online. They’re usually not revolutionary business ideas, but definitely something you can start with. Especially if you aren’t looking for hi-tech ideas, but something you can start cheaply, easily and quickly.

    Product sites and lists

    One thing you can do is browse different product sites and lists and think about how you could improve products. It’s a great way to brainstorm. You can also brainstorm on how to merge two products, how a product could be used in a totally different industry and so on. You just have to keep your mind open.

    Product inspiration sites

    It’s the same with product inspiration sites. The listings on product inspiration sites are only more diverse and you can find many products that aren’t on the market yet or never will be. Product inspiration sites are not only good for triggering your thinking about the future. Many unconventional products can also force you to think more outside the box.

    Affiliate and CPA networks may also be a source for inspiration:

    Copycats

    Much like you can copy products, so you can copy start-up ideas. It’s not the best way to start a business, but it is one possible way. Many European entrepreneurs copy American start-ups in their own country. For example, you now have numerous Groupon clones in every country. Other start-ups may also be a good inspiration for you to improve something, merge something or do it even better in a different kind of way.

    Franchises

    Franchises are a very popular way of opening your own business if you don’t have your own business idea. Franchises can also be a great source of inspiration for starting a business. You can look at successful franchises and think of the ways you could also start a similar business, not necessarily your own franchise, but the business as business.

    Patents

    You can also browse patents to get good business ideas. Patents are, of course, protected intellectual property, so you risk a lawsuit by copying them. The idea is not to copy patents but to ask yourself about the kind of problems the patents are solving and then finding new, better solutions for them. Patents can be a good source of inspiration.

    Groups and forums

    Last but not least, one thing you can do is to browse online groups and forums. The idea is to identify problems people are facing, services they’re not satisfied with and so on. If you have an online group of people with a problem and you come up with a good solution, you can very quickly test your idea. The best ideas are the ones solving real problems. You can find many people complaining on the internet. Present them with a solution. Maybe that’s a good start for you.

    I wish you all the luck and creativity possible to come up with the next big thing. I hope you have found many useful resources in this article that will help you to get business ideas. And don’t forget: ideas are a mere beginning. Building a scalable business model and executing it are much more important and harder things to do. Nevertheless, you have to start with a good (or even bad) business idea. It’s the first step towards your more creative and exciting future.