Has it ever happened to you that idea of setting up own business comes to your head? And you tell yourself that I have enough energy and determination to get things going. But the motivation dips a little as one big problem prevents from taking it forward – what business to set up –  online or in-store or something else?

You start looking for profitable business ideas in areas you are passionate about. And spend hours in front of your computer trying to figure out what will be the best business. But all the search efforts fail, if you don’t arrive at a conclusion.

Everyone has strength to work hard to start that business, enough time to make it take off and even some savings to invest in that venture.

But the most important thing often missing is a business idea you are passionate about, that can generate a profitable income.

Has this ever happened to you? If your answer is yes, then this article is the perfect destination to know what business to start and find out which entrepreneurship path best suits you.

So here are the 6 steps to help you know what business to put:

1. Know your passion

Many people who don’t have a job or who have one in which they don’t like or earn enough decide to start a business. And the first thing they ask themselves is: which business is going to generate the most money for me?

If you also think like that, you will fail. Starting a business thinking only about the money you’re going to make is not a good idea for several reasons.

By doing this, you’ll just look for easy money and end up getting into something you don’t like or know well.

If you don’t know the field you’re going to enter well, unless you first learn everything you need to know about it, you won’t know how to administer and handle certain situations and you’ll end up failing.

And if you’re not passionate about that business, you’ll end up hating it and definitely fail.

Yes, the first 2 or 3 years may motivate you to earn, but after that, it will become tiring. And that will make business suffer a lot.

Therefore, the first step to know what business to start is to investigate what your passion is.

The key to starting a successful business is knowing what you’re interested in. So take a piece of paper and a pencil and start writing down what you like. No need of apps or software to create this. Pen and paper is enough to start your entrepreneurship journey.

Ask yourself these questions:

1. What things do you like to do on weekends or in your spare time?
2. What are you passionate about?
3. On what topics do people ask you for help or advice because they know you’re an expert at it?
4. What activities do you never tire of doing and would you be happy to repeat every day?

The answers to these questions will help you form the first idea of what might be the best business for you.

Don’t be in a hurry to find out! Take your time in creating this list. Go to a park (or do it at home when no one distracts you) and spend an entire afternoon thinking about and writing down these passions.

Check that list over the next few days to see if there’s anything you’d change. If there’s another passion you want to add, or if there’s something you’d rather remove.

When you have the final list, rank everything from the most important and the most interesting to the least attractive.

What if you can’t find anything you are passionate about?

There are people who think they don’t have any passion or anything that really interests them. And that’s why they feel so lost when it comes to starting a business.

But this is not a correct way to think. Because we ALL have something that keeps us moving, love and enjoy doing. But sometimes we are so busy that we don’t know what it is.

If you have thought about what your passions are and started creating a list and you fail to write a single point, then do not worry. Follow this simple exercise:

1. Go back to childhood days and think about what you liked to do.
2. It’s amazing to know, growing as an adult, how disconnected we become from those things that brought us great joy when we were young.
3. So remember all the things you enjoyed at that time. Did you like to play house building, or did you prefer spending hours painting anything you saw?

No matter how silly the activity was, write it down on a list, and think about whether you’d enjoy doing it again today, or how you could turn those games into a business now.

This way you’ll discover your hidden passion and realize there is something that interests you.

2. What skills or knowledge do you have?

Great, so now you’ve determined the interest. The first hurdle is crossed. Now it’s time to explore the skills.

For example; if you want to start a business as a analytics service provider, which requires math knowledge too, and you are not good at numbers.

So make a list of all your skills and knowledge. No matter what type or how silly they seem: jot down ALL.

Do you know how to do magic tricks? Write it down, do you like to talk to other people? Do you have knowledge of law, accounting, languages, writing? Write them all down.

Some questions to assist in doing this are:

• What do you think is your best skill?
• What are the skills that everyone who knows you tells you have?
• What knowledge do you have that you think you could sell?

This detailed analysis is very important and will help in knowing the strengths and weaknesses. If you’re interested in graphic design and have artistic and computer skills, you have found the business that’s right for you!

3. Analyze the above two lists together

You already have one list where you have listed your interests, and another where your skills are written down. It’s time to analyze both at the same time and see what business ideas can be drawn from them.

Look at the most important interest for you, and see if you have the skills to execute it based on the skills list.

If YES, congratulations! You got the first idea of a business to write.

Make a third list (the definitive one) and write there all the businesses you can think of according to your interests and knowledge.

For example: If you like to cook and are good at making different cuisines, you can start a catering or hotel business, or teach cooking. If you like to cut and style hair or fit wigs, you can set up your hairdressing salon. If you have knowledge of law, and you like to help people, provide legal services to individuals, companies – give courses on law, etc..

It’s much easier than you imagine to know what business to set up. You just need to know what interests you have and whether the skills could be combined with those interests to create a business based on both.

4. Identify what you are willing to risk

Once you have several business ideas, you have to know, what risks you are willing to take to start your business.

A business is something wonderful through which you can generate good income and work at what you like. But just as there are possibilities to succeed, there are also possibilities to fail.

So think about it and decide realistically – what risk you’re willing to take, and eliminate those business ideas that outweigh those risks you’re willing to take.

If your project fails, what’s the maximum time you wouldn’t mind having “wasted” on it?

How much money are you willing to lose, if you are not successful in that business?

Imagine that you are willing to invest a maximum of 3 months in a project and $700 in starting it up.

If you want to create a recycling company, which may take about 4 months to start and in which you have to spend $4,000 on machinery, it is better to eliminate that idea because it will not meet your expectations.

But if you want to start an online accessory store, which will only take you 1 month to start and about $500 investment (initially), that can be a good business to start with.

So scratch out business ideas that exceed these criteria.

5. Define the rewards of your business

You will have noticed that the list of businesses that you put is reducing further. And slowly you are getting closer to the best one. Now you have to take the step of thinking about the rewards you want to achieve from doing it.

Everyone’s purpose on starting entrepreneurship is different. There are people who just want to start something to work a few hours and earn an extra money. And others want a full-time business generating more than $2,000 in profits.

So answer these questions:

1. How many hours do you want to work in business?
2. How much money do you want to make with it?
3. From where do you want to start working?

If you want to work 5 hours a day from home, earning $1,500 each month, and one of the business ideas that has come off your list of interests and skills is to create a restaurant, you’d better eliminate it.

In a restaurant you might earn more than $1,500 a month, but you’ll have to work more than 5 hours a day, and of course, you can’t manage it from home.

Eliminate ideas from the list, that don’t match the answers to these 3 questions.

6. Choose the business idea that best suits you

This is the last step you need to take to know what business to set up, so let’s go back and summarize what you have done so far:

1. Listed interests and skills
2. Created a list of business ideas based on interests and abilities.
3. Eliminated businesses that outnumbered the time and money you’re willing to invest in them.
4. Eliminated remaining businesses that won’t give you the rewards you want.

You probably only have a few businesses left in the list and you should choose only one, BUT WHICH ONE?

Here the answer is to let yourself be carried away by your intuition and choose the business that you think will be best for you.

At this point, the choice will be much easier to make than at the beginning. Because surely you will only have 2 or 3 business options that will completely adapt to you (that you like, for which you have skills, time and money).

Bingo!

You finally have a business to start now, requiring planned steps to begin with.

If you follow the 6 steps listed above and decided on what business to start? Then mention that in the comment section below.

Thank you. Hope you like this article. Best of luck for your entrepreneurship journey.

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