Jason D. Barr

Obviously, this is going to vary from person to person.  Everyone has different motivations and goals when starting a business.  You may be coming to this decision from what I consider to be a position of strength; you’ve developed a new product (or improved an existing one) or you’ve got connections to provide something that the marketplace sorely needs.  That’s pretty much a no brainer, and you don’t even need to be reading this.  Move on to step two.

However, if you just know you want to get into business for yourself, but you don’t know what to do, I’ll define the way that I came up with the idea for my business.  Take a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle, dividing it into two columns.  Label the one on the left “Skills” and the column on the right “Interests”.  Now, start listing anything and everything that fits into those two categories for you personally.  Yes, you do have skills; don’t sell yourself short.  Once you’ve got a good list on both sides of the paper (at least 10-15, but more is better), start drawing lines between the first item in your “skills” list to all the “interests”.  Connect the two and see what you come up with.

For example, say you’re good at teaching.  That’s a skill you’ve developed to the point that you’re at least moderately proficient in it.  And, on the interest side, you’ve got the outdoors and reading and baseball and biking and cooking and any number of other things.  How does the skill of teaching mesh with any one of these interests?  Could you teach a class on bicycle maintenance?  How about starting a baseball skills camp?  Could you begin to tutor high school kids in a subject you enjoy?

Keep doing this through your whole list, until you matched ever single skill you have with all of your interests.  This should provide you with a good starting point for potential areas where your skills could intersect with something you’re passionate about (or, at least, that you enjoy).  All that’s left is to further develop these areas into something someone would pay you to do for them.  It’s really pretty easy.