Saw someone who wanted to start a business asking for ideas, which is odd to me because I have tons of ideas. My handle on many sites is “ideadude”.
So here’s a thread from the ideadude on coming up with ideas and figuring out which are the good ones. 🧵👇
Back in the early days, @colemank83 and I would spend at least one weekend each month working on new ideas. We would build what we could in 2 days, push it out there, and see what stuck.
We got lucky and were able to transition from consulting into a software biz doing well.
In hindsight, there are better ways to come up with ideas for businesses. Here are some.
I recommend reading @jaltucher‘s article How to Become an Idea Machine
https://jamesaltucher.com/blog/how-to-become-an-idea-machine/
The big idea. Write down 10 ideas every morning. Practice coming up with ideas. Most of them will be bad ideas, but that’s okay, it’s the practice you want.
If you like that post, then I would also suggest reading James’ book Choose Yourself. It has many similar ideas.
Once you have ideas, how do you know if they are good?
For that, I recommend reading the great stuff by @amyhoy and @alexhillman at
https://stackingthebricks.com/
Specifically, check out their stuff on Sales Safari
https://stackingthebricks.com/video-sales-safari-in-action/
Ha! In this post Alex calls out the “see what sticks” approach that might have worked out for us, but took too long.
https://stackingthebricks.com/cant-find-audience/
Another related idea I learned from Stacking the Bricks is the “ebomb”.
https://stackingthebricks.com/the-ebomb-recipe-that-works/
The big idea here is to recognize all the questions you are already being asked by email and in person and publish the answers publicly.
If one of your ebomb posts gets attention, it could be a good candidate for building a service, product, or SaaS around.
My final advice is to just step aside from your day to day work and life for a while.
Every time I take a week off, travel away from home, and aren’t forced to focus on work, I come up with tons of ideas on how to improve our business.
Maybe you were able to get away for the holidays and are back and ready to work hard on your business.
If not, plan a getaway now if you can.
So there are some resources to learn how to practice your idea machine, do sales research with intention, come up with ideas for targeted content, and find the space to let your mind work.
Tell me your best practices, tools, books, & resources are for coming up with good ideas.
Originally tweeted by Jason Coleman 🤔💡💻💾 (@jason_coleman) on January 4, 2022.