Where To Get Great Ideas

As I said earlier, it’s vital to explore all of the possibilities that your hobby presents. Often the greatest ideas won’t be immediately apparent, which is why we need to have some sort of strategy for unlocking them.

By far the most difficult way of coming up with ideas is to sit down with a blank piece of paper and try to think of things.

My favourite methods are:

• looking for ideas while enjoying my hobby
• brainstorming
• readers’ letters.

Looking For Ideas While Enjoying Your Hobby

By far the easiest, and I believe the most enjoyable way of getting your creative juices flowing is to get out there and throw yourself into your hobby.

But rather than just enjoy yourself I want you to think about what frustrates you most about your hobby. You see, very often the best business opportunities lie in what we don’t like about something.

But why did it take us so long to get this simple tool?

I’m convinced the reason is that those who manufacture dog leads never actually walked a dog themselves, because the only person who could have come up with such a product is someone who has long suffered the frustrating limitations of the traditional dog lead.

Again, just like the modified dog lead, the reason these tools became overnight successes was they were designed by people who gardened, who believed their favourite pastime could be made more enjoyable and less painful by adding a few thoughtful modifications to the original products.

So ask yourself:

What’s the one thing you find most frustrating about your hobby?

The ‘thing’ needn’t even be connected to your hobby. For example let’s say you’re a keen walker and you find the maps you’re using difficult to store comfortably when you’re walking, or hard to keep dry in the rain.

For an entrepreneur this type of problem represents opportunities.

• You could design a map that suits the particular needs of your hobby, and either publish your own maps or approach map companies with your ideas on how their product can be improved, and offer your services as a consultant.
• You could come up with some sort of carrying case that makes it easier to store maps and read them in the rain.
• If one is already available elsewhere in the world you could apply to the manufacturers for a distributor’s licence to sell the product here in the UK.
• If it’s already available in the UK, you could investigate buying the product wholesale and maybe offering it as one item in a mail order business.

Brainstorming

Brainstorming is another way of coming up with fresh and innovative ideas. In its simplest form it involves you sitting down and writing down every idea that comes into your head on a given subject. It doesn’t matter what you write down, as the objective of the exercise is to ‘storm’ the right-hand side of your brain – the creative side – while ignoring any signals from the left-hand side of your brain – the side that deals with logic and order.

Although an extremely effective way of generating ideas, if you’re new to this technique it might take you a little time to get used to it. So don’t be despondent if it doesn’t work for you. Stick with it and I promise it’ll pay dividends.

You may find the following ‘rules’ and techniques helpful, but do whatever you’re comfortable with and fairly soon you’ll reap the rewards.

‘rules’ For Brainstorming

Techniques For Brainstorming

Readers’ Letters

The readers’ letters section of your hobby magazine and the online forums and message boards for your hobby websites are fantastic places to get new ideas for your business.

Browse through them and you’ll start to see common moans, usually directed at manufacturers and suppliers who are perceived as failing to satisfy their customers’ needs. It’s a great place to find out what others are thinking and what people would really like to buy.

Most large businesses work on economies of scale and will only introduce a product or service if they’re sure there’ll be a large enough demand to justify full-scale production. Often this reluctance creates an ideal opportunity for a creative entrepreneur to hop in and plug the gap in the market.

In my own gardening business I regularly read online forums and the letters in gardening magazines and have found it to be enormously helpful when planning marketing campaigns and finding out what customers really want.

But beware of sharing your top tips with anyone else. A couple of years ago a reader of a sailing magazine I subscribe to submitted a simple solution for safeguarding an outboard motor against theft. To his surprise, and I believe understandable annoyance, he later saw an exact replica of his device on sale at the Southampton Boat Show. When he enquired further about the origins of the product the salesman told him his company had got the idea for the product from a reader’s tip in a sailing magazine.

The company in question is one of the largest in the world and is selling thousands of these gadgets worldwide without paying a penny to the original inventor.

If you are developing a prototype product you should look to have it patented to stop this from happening. To do this you’ll need to get specialist advice from a solicitor who deals with this sort of thing.