Hitting on your killer business idea
You know you want to start your own business but there’s a real tough choice straight ahead: what exactly are you going to do?
To get some ideas bouncing around, think about:
- Your skills - Artists, writers and programmers have very transferable skills. What skills do you have and how can you use them?
- What annoys you? - What little things annoy you on a daily basis? Can you provide a service or product to make them less annoying?
- Your hobbies - Can you turn your hobby into a business?
- Save time - People are busy, they have no time - give them some by making something easier or more convenient.
- Teach - People will pay for your expertise.
- Convenience - People want things handed to them on a plate. Serve it up
Getting rich quick (you won’t)
There are a lot of Get Rich Quick schemes on the Internet - a lot. If you are willing to part with some money you can easily:
START MAKING BIG MONEY RIGHT NOW!
MAKE THOUSANDS A MONTH FROM GOOGLE ADS WITHOUT NEEDING A WEBSITE!
OWN A PORSCHE LIKE ME BY THE END OF THE MONTH!
And so on, and so on….
Forget about getting rich quick. If you are planning to start up by yourself, realise that it is going to take time and effort to see reward. Of course, some people do make it big really quick, but they do that by having a great idea and knowing how to market it - not by paying out $299 for a ten CD set of tutorials on how to cheat Google Adsense.
The most likely outcome of buying a into Get Rich Quick scheme is that you’ll end up with:
- A Pyramid scheme that you’ll try and offload to your friends, family and work colleagues. They won’t thank you for it.
- Information that you could have got for free if you’d looked.
- Something even more useless.
Home office: The number one threat to getting things done!
Yeah, your kids!
A new home office is going to be a magnet for the little rascals. All that new furniture to investigate and just what is Mummy/Daddy doing in there all the time?
Even once your office is established and you’ve been working from home for a while, your little one is going to be wanting to pop in all the time to update you on how they’ve managed to stick a whole pencil up their nose and can you guess what Elmo is doing today?
Some rules are needed. Make sure your home office has a door and lay down this simple rule: if the door is open they are allowed in, if it’s shut, they’re not. It works. Make sure the door is open now and again so they can come and see you - having a break with them when it suits you allows you to go undisturbed when you really need to be.
Going one better than just having an open/shut door: why not create a big picture to pin up outside your office to show them when it’s OK to come in? Something like a smiley face for when it’s OK and a sad face when it’s not.
So, you want to start your own business?
I’ll start off with a question:
Why?
Have a think about it and define your reasons for wanting to start out by yourself.
You’re not alone in thinking about starting your own business; the person in the cubicle next door has probably thought about it too, and Sally from down the hall and Bob from accounts. The point here is: they’ve only thought about it. With some focus and hard work you can turn your thoughts into a business and make yourself different from all the Alices and Bobs.
That’s why I asked you to have a think about why you want to do it. Got some reasons? Tired of office politics? Want to be your own boss? Want a better work/life balance? Want to avoid the commute by staying at home? I’m sure you’ve got your own.
Once you’ve got your reasons, write them down. Set them in stone and make them official. Write them on a piece of paper and pin it up or save a document to your hard drive - it doesn’t matter - now that you’ve defined your reasons you have something to motivate you to take the next step and not be another Bob or Alice.
Launchy gets your Windows apps moving
Launchy is an application that lets you forget about your Start Menu, your desktop items and even Windows Explorer. It’s the quick way to launch applications, bookmarks, music files and documents using just a few key presses.
On the face of it, Launchy doesn’t sound that impressive - doesn’t sound like it actually does much. But once you’ve got used to hitting Alt+spacebar to launch it instead of using Explorer or the Start Menu to find things you will soon warm to it.
So, how does it work? When you press Alt+spacebar a small screen will pop-up that lets you enter the name of the application, mp3, document, whatever you want to launch. And the best bit: you don’t have to type the complete name of the the thing you want to run; Launchy looks at what you are typing and offers suggestions.
Using it becomes second nature in no time. A great little app.