Finding what you’re good at is the first step in coming up with a new business idea. You have to understand your accomplishments, skills, vision, and passion before diving in headfirst. We’ve highlighted a few tips to help you discover what your niche is.
Identify your accomplishments
Looking at how you spend your free time and your professional career, write down the accomplishments that you’re most proud of and the activities you’ve enjoyed the most. Making a list of your accomplishments will help you understand what you’re good at, how hard to have to work to reach your specific goals, and where your passion lies.
Pinpoint Your Skills
After finding your accomplishments, you need to find the skills that got you there. Identify your soft skills versus your hard skills.-
- Hard skills: Skills that are tangible – real or actionable (like being good at basketball)
- Soft skills: Skills you can’t touch or see (like being a good communicator)
There are several ways to find out what we’re skilled at, such as taking an assessment or asking those around you. Having someone from the outside looking in is important. Where we might not put something on our list because of struggles and personal bias, someone else might add it knowing better than you that you are good at that skill.
Discovering what you already know is a helpful hint into what you’re skilled at. Maybe you already know how to use video software to create high-quality videos. Therefore, you can mark down video editing as a top skill.
Knowing your skills makes it easier to build a business and do meaningful work. The easiest business to start is one with skills we already know we’re good at. Building off your achievements and passions, you can build a solid foundation for a business.
Not having the perfect skills doesn’t mean, however, that we can’t dive into a topic we’ve never fully experienced before. If you have the dedication and the basic skills to accomplish your goals, you can start any business you want.
Know your vision
What are you hoping to accomplish?-
- Champion a cause
- Transform your hobby, passion, or interest into a business
- Pursue an opportunity you’ve come across
- Create something no one has seen before
Have an understanding of what you’re hoping to accomplish. Understanding your vision will not only help you pick the direction of your newfound business, it will also drive the strategies you need to make it happen.
Acknowledge why you’re starting a new business
Acknowledging why you want to start a new business can lead you in the direction you should take. What’s driving you more than anything else?-
- Freedom: Financial freedom, time freedom, freedom to travel and choose
- Impact: It’s more than making money – it’s more about making an impact and leaving the world in a better place
- Legacy: Making my mark on the world
The type of business you choose to create is driven by your choice of freedom, impact, or legacy. With freedom, you’re more likely to go with your best skill creating a business off of your already found knowledge that makes you independent as fast as you can. With impact, you’ll choose what you’re most passionate about, even if you haven’t developed all the skills necessary quite yet. Lastly, with legacy, you’ll choose your best accomplishment and start your business based on this. If you’ve already accomplished something great, it’ll be much easier to build off of to leave your mark on the world.
Understanding yourself and your motivations to want to start a new business is key to finding your niche. You can’t build a business based on nothing. Your drive and passion have to lie somewhere. Understanding your personal drive is key.