Bulletproof Brainstorming For Business Ideas

And because of that, I've found it helpful to have an external resource to prime the pump.

But before I introduce my brainstorming resource of choice, let's talk about what brainstorming actually looks like. Oxford says it's where you:

"Produce an idea or way of solving a problem by holding a spontaneous group discussion."the group was observed brainstorming about their writing."

The most important aspect of brainstorming is the "free association" exercise where you let ideas "flow" without any kind of "editing" or "premature exclusion" of ideas.

This is hard for a lot of us as, because of the combination of our school training and the current societal climate, we're trained to not make "mistakes" and to constantly "self-edit".

You'll want to try and side-step that and just get some ideas down without, judging them initially. In other words, in brainstorming, there are no bad ideas (at least in the first draft).

So with that in mind, Nick Loper's book, “$1000 100 Ways”, is a thorough collection of side-hustle case studies that includes 100 members of his community and is the PERFECT resource if you're trying to brainstorm ideas about starting a side-hustle or online business.  

The layout of the book will help you immediately laser in on what category of side hustle would be most relevant to your interests AND may actually serve as a mini-brainstorming session for some of your own online business ideas.

I’ll list the categories and give a few examples of just some of the case studies for each one. (I don't have enough time to go through all 100 here.)

There are 4 convenient categories that can help you laser in on which might be the best fit for you right now.

• Local Services

• Freelancing

• Online Business

• E-Commerce and Physical products

    

Let's get started with some examples of:

• Knife And Tool Sharpening

• Portable Hot Tub Rentals

• Pressure Washing

• TaskRabbit Chores

• Personal Grilled Cheese Chef

• Water Slide and Bounce House Rentals

• Home Organizer

• Handyman For Hire

•  Drone Operator

Freelancing

• Virtual Bookkeeping

• Web Design

• Sales Copywriting

• Custom Pen and Ink Art

• Tutoring and Academic Coaching

• Video Spokesperson

• Personal Finance Writing

• Career Coaching

•  Narrating Audio Books

Online Business

• Project Management Blog

• The Co-Working Handbook

• Public Domain Publishing

• Insurance Blog

• Software Review Blog

• Selling Specialized Spreadsheets

• Viral YouTube Videos

• Podcast and Newsletter About Craft Beer

• Financial Education Coaching And Content (again that’s mine located on page 205)

   

E-Commerce and Physical Products

• Custom Print on Demand Art

• eBay Consignment Service

• Online Store For Handcrafted Products

• Reselling Books On Amazon

• Furniture Flipping

• Beeswax Wraps

• “Low Content Print-on-Demand Books

• Mountain Bike Flipping

And again, there are a TON more for you to check out in the book.

Now, to give you some insight as to how thorough each case study is, here’s the list of questions the contributors responded to (to maybe help you flesh out questions you could be asking about your current or future side-hustles):

1. What’s the “elevator pitch” for your business”?

2. How did you come up with that idea?

3. What motivated you to get started?

4. How much did it cost to get started?

5. What are the best ways you’ve found to market your business?

6. Roughly how long did it take to reach $1000 in profit?

7. In a typical month, how much does this business earn today?

8. What mistakes or failures have you had along the way? If you had to start over, what would you do differently?

9. What’s next for you?

10. What are you excited about these days?

On a side note, if you want to read my responses to these questions you can either 1) get yourself a copy of the book (page 205).

Two additional FREE resources that will help you get this process cemented in your brain (and there's a little more to it than what I'm able to cover today).

1) My FREE START. An Online Business quick start guid guide… It outlines this entire "idea brainstorm" process and goes into more in depth on what we just covered today.