When Searching For Ideas For New Businesses Remember That You Are Smarter Than What You Think

I currently own a freelance graphic design and programming business, with some writing on the side.

It does "OK" - I'm not on a sure path to riches and it's sometimes a struggle to find new clients, but on the other hand I somehow manage to eke out a living at it.

I'm just now crossing into my forties doing this, and if there is one piece of advice I would select to pass on to younger entrepreneurs, it's this:

You are smarter than you think you are!

So, when you are out there searching for ideas for new businesses, give yourself some credit and cut yourself some slack because you are smarter than you think you are.

Twenty years ago, I was fascinated by technology, but was doubtful that it would lead to a career.

I loved to draw on the computer, especially when I could write programs that generated beautiful fractals - but at the time, I thought "Anybody can do this, so it won't be worth money!"

Then again when the web came along, I was looking into HTML and web design and loved it, but I still wouldn't leave my day job for it.

Again, I thought, "This is so easy, as soon as it gets around everyone will want to do it."

But two decades later, I saw that I was wrong.

There really was something special about my talent then, and it wasn't a common thing that everybody would experience.

I kept working at dead-end corporate jobs all those years, aching to create work of my own but stifled by my own fear of failure.

"What's so special about me?", I would think. "I'm just another person who wants to break out of this cubicle prison and do my own thing."

But I finally earned enough to take an early retirement, and then got to look at what I really want to do.

And settled down with it, and I haven't regretted it too much.

And yes, it is harder to struggle on your own than it is to rest safely under the umbrella of some giant mega-corporation...but if you really have the entrepreneurial spirit, then you don't see the difficulty or it just doesn't bother you.

When searching for ideas for new businesses, make it a habit to search within yourself.

The thing that new entrepreneurs can do today is to find ideas for new businesses by looking around at what new skills you think "everybody has".

It seems like there's no limit to these.

• You'd never imagine five years ago that people would pay money to buy a Blogger template or a MySpace template, but now there's people making a whole living just from that niche.
  
  
• There are businesses whose whole profit is derived from selling ring tones for mobile phones.
  
  
• You might think of drawing a 16x16 bitmap picture in Windows Paintbrush is an utterly trivial task, but that's how icons are made!

In the end, you can make serious mistakes by going off half-cocked and thinking you know more than you do.

But...you can also make an equal mistake in underestimating what you do know.

Stick with a talent, and before you know it, a market for it will come along!

When searching for ideas for new businesses, then look at all of the talents that you bring to the table and see if they form an opportunity for a new business.