Evan Carmichael walks through a three-column worksheet to find your next business: what you're passionate about, skills you want to learn, and frustrations you've solved. Score each idea on how exciting it is and how much it helps others. Money-first motives usually fail.
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Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael. Welcome to another edition of Ask Evan. Today I'm going to answer a question from one of my newsletter readers, Nathan, and it's a very common question that I get asked a lot and I love answering it, so here we go. It's from Nathan again and he wants guidance on what type of business to start. So he's hoping to become an entrepreneur, doesn't know how to get started and what specific type of business to start. And it's great that you're thinking like this. A lot of entrepreneurs start up because they're hoping to make a lot of money, and that's a great goal. You definitely want to make a lot of money, but it's typically the guys who just try to make money, they never end up making money. And you find that the most successful entrepreneurs— and you can do your own research, find, you know, any entrepreneur that you really respect, a famous entrepreneur, there's a lot on our site— if you look at how they got started and why, it's because they had a really strong passion for whatever they were doing. Yes, they wanted to make money, but they also wanted to have an impact on the market that they were going into. So when you're first starting up, it's a really exciting opportunity, especially where you are now, because you can pick anything. There's unlimited opportunities. So it's finding the one that best suits you and not just going after something that you think will make a lot of money. What I found really helpful when I'm helping entrepreneurs, and in my book I'm creating this chart that I think will help people, but I'll try to describe it for you guys watching the video. When you're trying to pick what idea you think would be a good opportunity for you, I like coming up with 3 different columns. So the first one is, what are you really passionate about? And that's, what do you like to do, you know, when you're not going to your job, right? What do you do on your weekends? What would you like to do all day long if you could? And try not to put things like sit on a beach, watch TV, you know, that stuff comes out of just having too much work and being overstressed. You couldn't really watch TV all day long and be happy. You couldn't sit on a beach all day long and be happy. Trust me, you know, you'll do it for a month and then you'll get bored and you want to do something, right? As people, we want to be creative and we want to help people and have a purpose, and it's not going to be lying on the beach or watching TV. So yeah, that stuff might be fun, but try to write down on your list of what you're passionate about, things you could see yourself doing all day long and be really excited about it. You know, for me, I love helping entrepreneurs and I love the world of entrepreneurship, and I could spend all day doing entrepreneurship stuff. And I do spend a lot of my day doing it, and it's never tiring for me. It's always exciting. So you want to find something like that with your own business, something that you could be always excited by. So start making that list. So hopefully you come up with a few ideas, you know, maybe go for 10 different ideas. The next list I'd make is try to come up with another, ideally 10, of things that you are excited about or want to learn. So something you've always wanted to try to do, something that, you know, maybe you haven't had the time to do before, or you were just afraid to do it, you didn't believe in yourself, you didn't have enough confidence. But things that you wish you could do and see if there's maybe a business opportunity for you somewhere in there. So, you know, potential passions, things you're not quite sure if you're super excited about but you want to try. So make that list. And then the third list is things that you've solved, that are frustrations for you. So look at the things in your life that cause a lot of frustration and how did you go about solving it? Because a lot of the entrepreneurs that are successful they started around a pain, right? So if you're having a lot of frustration and you're able to solve it, then chances are there's a lot of other people who have the same problem, and maybe you can help them solve it. And for you, maybe it's really super easy how you did it, but for other people might be really difficult. And so there's an opportunity there for you to create a product or service to be able to help them solve that challenge. So make that list of things again you're really passionate about, things that you want to learn that you're— that excite you, that you haven't really tried too much yet, and then things that you've solved as a frustration for yourself that you think might be able to help others. Once you have that list, I start scoring them. And how I score it is on two factors. One, how much does it excite you, right? How much fun do you think it's gonna be? 'Cause you're gonna be doing this, it's gonna be tough, you know, setting up a business isn't easy, but it should at least be exciting and fun. So look at the ideas that you've created on your list and come up with the ones that you think would be the most exciting and fun and you think you could grow and keep doing and have a lot of energy with. The second thing is how much is it gonna help people? At the end of the day, the amount of money that you're gonna make is gonna come from helping people, right? The more you can help people, the more money you're gonna be able to make. That's the foundation of business. It comes from adding a lot of value to people's lives. So think about all those ideas and see how much can impact other people. And from there, you should have, you know, a narrowed down list of all your ideas and then how exciting they are and how much they help people and your top The top business opportunities will come from the ones that you are really excited about and you can help a lot of people on. That should be where you start your business around. Uh, we're creating a worksheet around it, but hopefully I've explained in the video in a way that helps you kind of take that next step. It's a very common problem. Uh, a lot of entrepreneurs don't take the time to really tap into what they're really good at and build a business around that and just jump into something because they think they can make a lot of money and they usually end up losing money or spending a lot of money trying to make money. And not getting to where they wanna be, and it's not fun because you're not doing something that you're really excited about and passionate about. So, hopefully that helps answer your question. Uh, for you guys watching, if you like the video, please give it a thumbs up below. It makes me wanna do more of these for you. And if you have a question about this video or another question about, uh, your own business, feel free to leave it in the comments below. I always read those and try to respond to as many as I can. So thank you, and I'll see you on the next episode.
