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How to get ideas on the run?

Simple idea but the innovation is in the execution
Simple idea but the innovation is in the execution.

Ideas can bring about new products and services, lead to forming a business and solve our pressing problems and challenges.

But where do you find ideas?

How do you come up with ideas, especially if you’re in a hurry and need them like now?

Really, there are mainly three ways:

• You can wait until an idea comes but you could wait until it’s too late.
• You can observe what is going on around you and hope that an idea will suddenly come from nowhere.
• You can approach idea-generation in a structured way using proven techniques that will increase your chances of coming up with a great idea.

Continue reading “How to get ideas on the run?”

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Is a biz-in-the box the right idea?

My home town featured recently in a Virgin Money flier. Always believed Kalk Bay had potential to be a star. Never crashed cars in Kalk Bay but brought boatloads of fish to the quayside for auctioning.

Off-the-shelf business opportunities (biz-ops) are springing up like Kalahari Desert truffles after the rainy season mainly because of the difficult economy.

The many biz-in-a-box options are so ubiquitous that it’s terribly confusing.

Take your pick: floor cleaning, carpet cleaning, custom engraving, website building and hosting, sports nutrition, vending wholesale computers and electronic products and roof repairs.

The list goes on and on…

Whatever you can think of there’s a ready-made business-in a-box with a DVD waiting for you.

But here’s the bottom-line:

Do you really want to buy a business system off the shelf?

Will it hold your interest and passion?

Will it bring in enough money to be more than a sideline business?

Another important question about these ready-made businesses is how well do they really work?

Continue reading “Is a biz-in-the box the right idea?”

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This SOB boss taught the wrong way to be tough

Hondeklipbaai
Hondelipbaai (Photo credit: www.alltravels.com)

Before sunrise the wind was blowing so strong that I knew we couldn’t take our diving vessel up the coast to dive for diamonds.

I didn’t bother to get up. I had grown up in False Bay and when the wind blew this hard we wouldn’t risk going out fishing on our ski boat.

Here on the isolated West Coast the Atlantic Ocean would smash tons of water against the shore when the sea was big and dangerous.

I heard knocking on my door. It was my fellow diver who announced that we were going to sea. I had better get up and come down to the jetty in a hurry. I told him this was crazy and that I’d tell this to our boss. His face told me that I was looking for trouble. Continue reading “This SOB boss taught the wrong way to be tough”

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Business lessons from the Kalahari bushveld

"Kiekie", an alert meerkat from the Namib desert.
“Kiekie”, an alert meerkat from the Namib desert, may surprise you with his unusual habits. But he’s a friendly little critter with his kryptonite being delicious-tasting scorpions

Travelling is a brilliant opportunity for seeing new places, people – and spotting new ideas. On a recent journey through Botswana and Namibia along the Trans-Kalahari Highway to the far-off coastal town of Swakopmund I discovered a few important life and business lessons at stop-overs along the way:

Continue reading “Business lessons from the Kalahari bushveld”

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Save me from this brutish barber

Rome, Barber Shop a via dei Portoghesi
What’s your experience been like at a hair salon or barber shop lately? (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When the price of mall barbers became too much to finance from my current account I stepped down several notches and patronised the local community barber shop.

Things went all right the first few times. The barber, a young man with a faint resemblance to dapper looking Clive Owen, cut my hair. A soft-spoken, friendly person good at his job, he soon became a favourite with the ladies. I was passed over to another barber.

Now, let me tell you I like to think I’m broad-minded so I let this new barber cut my hair. She looked and dressed worse than Kelly Osbourne ever did. Even in her most rebellious days. But I mean, to be dressed like this in your very late 30s. Come on, even Kelly has cleaned up her act for reality TV (though I suspect mum Sharon has had a hand in this but I could be wrong as she’s never really tidied up Ozzy’s act).

The problem: not only did this barber look weird but she had an attitude. A chip on her shoulder so big that I trembled climbing into her chair. She looked more intimidating than Edward Scissorhands when she held her shaving razor to my neck.

Sitting erect in her chair, I couldn’t imagine this barber ever playing with Barbies. Instead, I could imagine her sticking pins into a rag doll and pulling off its ears.

The worst of it was that she was sullen, unfriendly and spoke to me with a sneer. Foulmouthed beyond what you’ve ever encountered in a low-class London pub. Worse than a weirdo spiked high on drugs stumbling and mumbling filth outside King’s Cross station.

Goodness knows, just to save some money on a haircut, was this really worth it? I mean, on Saturday mornings you want to relax, do some shopping and get on with your day. I knew the owner of the barber shop but I wanted to at all costs not complain about her lest something untoward happened to me. Continue reading “Save me from this brutish barber”

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How do small businesses find new product ideas?

Lifting a Gold Good Delivery bar
Supplier ideas are often gold to small businesses (Photo credit: GoldMoneyNews)

Small businesses depend on new ideas for their survival and growth but where do they find their inspiration for new market offerings?

What’s the one thing that small business owners require for survival and growth?

A constant flow of customers who are attracted to their businesses to buy products and services that are necessities for their homes or businesses or market offerings that they need, want or desire.

Customers want the latest products and services, those that will make their lives easier, those that will bring them benefits.

How do business owners keep serving their customers with new products and services especially as the sales of more mature slow down and gather dust? Continue reading “How do small businesses find new product ideas?”

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Find your low-cost start-up in your own backyard

sandwich
(Photo credit: roboppy)

With the economy as it is I’ve noticed that the newsstands have ordered more than the usual number of small business opportunity magazines. In some instances they have doubled their orders.

From the cover lines in these magazines, it’s clear that people who want to start a business of their own or who are looking for a ready-made biz-op are keen to find start-ups that are recession proof, allow the owner to work at home, run the business full or part-time and desire businesses that pay off big.

These biz-op  magazines cover ways to make money from pet stores, forex, DVD rental machines, fish and chip outlets, mobile food businesses and renewable energy opportunities.

The articles show people who have lost their jobs and have launched consulting businesses at home, stay-at-home moms who have made it big in on-line auctions and even a business person who is doing great in the sandwich chain business. Continue reading “Find your low-cost start-up in your own backyard”

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A flight plan before you take off with your new business idea

soaring at sunrise
soaring at sunrise (Photo credit: (nz)dave)

It’s time for action. You’ve tested your useful, new business idea in the marketplace and refined it. You’re ready to introduce your product or service on a wider scale.

Don’t be too hasty.  Preparation – organised planning –that important final step needs careful thought before you thrust your business into flight.

It’s astonishing how many would-be entrepreneurs and start-up owners forget this step, plunging headlong into their business venture without proper preparation.

Here are some important considerations before you take the plunge: Continue reading “A flight plan before you take off with your new business idea”

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When the price of fresh fish stinks smoke them

English: Kalk Bay habour, Cape Peninsula, Sout...
Kalk Bay Harbour, Cape Peninsula, South Africa (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

After the bad weather the South Easter would drop in the night and we’d go out early in the morning to catch snoek off Buffels Bay near Cape Point. On the first day when the wind had blown itself out in False Bay the fish came on the bite.

Running up to Cape Point from the Millar’s Point slipway before sun rise, arriving at the fishing grounds, I still marvel how my old man had this uncanny sixth sense to put the boat right on top of the fish. He’d grown up fishing the lagoon in East London, fished for big-game tuna and marlin off Mozambique in the early 1960s and later pioneered ski boat fishing in False Bay, bagging record giant bluefin tuna in the bay off his small open boat with two 40 horse-power Johnson outboards.

We’d throw our bait lines out and work our leads, pulling in a silvery piece of metal as long and thick as a medium-sized carrot with a short red rubber skirt and 10/0 Mustard hook. We’d pull the lure with a motion that resembled a small fish the size of a pilchard struggling away from a bigger fish … the size of a snoek.

As we sat there on my old man’s ski boat with the sun coming up over the Cape Hangklip mountains, nothing would happen for a while. But we would keep on trying until at last one of us would go “vas” (strike) with a fish. This would signal that his “mombak” (unlucky curse) had been taken off.

Another fisherman on the boat would hook a snoek and soon we’d all be pulling in fish like crazy, breaking their necks, holding them tight under our arms or between our legs, pulling their jaws forward until we heard their necks crack. They were too frisky alive and their big teeth would cut severely leaving your flesh festering for days. Continue reading “When the price of fresh fish stinks smoke them”

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Stuck for ideas? Try these tools for brilliant results

shower out
Some find ideas flow under the shower.

Coming up with new business ideas for products and services involves observation, listening especially, especially to gripes, and reading in your chosen area of interest. These are the tools we all have, some more developed than others, and that with effort and imagination we can spot opportunities. This is particularly so when we make connections between unrelated or random thoughts, concepts, ideas, and objects.

But what should we do when we are stuck or simply need to explore ideas? This is when we can use idea generation tools to show us new possibilities for products and services. Using idea-generation tools and techniques we will be able to come up with more ideas than we can use. This increases our opportunities for coming up with better ideas and perhaps even breakthrough ideas.

Let’s look at a simple example to highlight the value of generating ideas in quantity. Top commercial photographers for high-readership, quality magazines take many photographs before they find one that will perfectly illustrate their subject of interest. In National Geographic’s “50 Greatest Pictures” some of the behind-the-scenes secrets were given. One sentence shows just how much trial and error goes into shooting iconic images:

“A photographer shoots 20,000 to 60,000 images on assignment. Of those, perhaps a dozen will see the published light of day.” Continue reading “Stuck for ideas? Try these tools for brilliant results”