Any new business starts with discovering what you are actually going to do. What is your business?

This essentially begins with brainstorming, planning your time and activities in writing, managing yourself in writing, and treating your business like a business so that it will pay you like a business.

If you plan to treat your internet website business like a hobby...do it when you have time, if you have time, then it will pay you like a hobby...and what do hobbies pay? Nothing, nada, nil...zip, is that what you want?

Well, we don't want that for you, either.

Brainstorming

Begin by brainstorming off the two questions below to help you define a business direction in which to go. This will start you on the process of defining your business niche.

Brainstorming Questions

1. What do I know a lot about, or what am I willing to learn a lot about?

2. What am I passionate about, what motivates me, what do I enjoy?

About the Brainstorming Questions

The Internet is about information. To market successfully on the Internet you must know something that other people are looking for, something of value, enough value that they would search for that information and perhaps pay for it.

At the same time, while you may know a lot about something, if you are not passionate or excited about it, as is the case with almost all people, you probably will do very little if nothing with it. So, you need both - valuable information and passion.

Brainstorming Guidelines

· When brainstorming whatever comes to mind, write it down. If you are in a group, whatever comes to mind, speak up and say it. Have someone in the group make the list as ideas are put forth.

· Clearly understand that during brainstorming, whether alone, or with two or more people, there is no critiquing of ideas allowed, particularly negative critiquing.

· Set a time limit for your brainstorming, between 10-20 minutes.

· When the time is up, set the list of ideas aside for a day or two to cool off. After the cooling off period, come back and add any new ideas that might have come to mind.

· Finally, analyze the list, selecting out the best ideas to implement.

· Create a plan of action, and begin implementation immediately.

Brainstorming Exercise

Brainstorm a list of 10, 15, 20 possible businesses you could go into. Write them on a sheet of paper.

After you have brainstormed your list, put your sheet of business ideas away for a day or two. After the time has passed, get out that sheet, read over it, and add any new ideas that pop into your mind.

From that list, select your top 3-5 best ideas. If you struggle with this, go onto the following exercises to work through your barriers more effectively.

Possibilities Generation Exercise

Some researchers named Holmes and Ray figured out the 43 Most Stressful Life Events. I’m going to list here for you from some of the life events that they identified. These are Hot Spots-potential hungry fish can perhaps be found here, hence a great internet business with money-making potential.

Here's the list:

death of a spouse,
divorce,
marital separation,
jail term,
death of a close family member,
personal injury of illness,
getting married,
getting fired at work,
reconciling after being separated from a marriage,
retirement,
change in the health of a family member,
pregnancy, and that’s stressful for both the husband and the wife,
sexual difficulties,
the gain of a new family member,
a business readjustment,
significant change in your financial state,
death of a close friend,
a change to a different line of work,
change in the frequency of arguments with your spouse,
Taking out a mortgage for over 10 thousand dollars,
experiencing a foreclosure on a mortgage or a loan,
change in work responsibilities,
having a son or daughter of age to leave home,
trouble with your in-laws,
accomplishing an outstanding personal achievement because of the adjustment,
a spouse beginning or stopping work,
beginning or ending schooling,
change in living conditions,
change in your personal habits,
trying to change your personal habits,
having trouble with your boss,
change in work hours or conditions,
change in residence,
change in schools,
change in recreation activities,
change in church activities,
change in interpersonal or social activities,
taking out a small loan (less then 10 thousand dollars),
change in your sleeping habits,
change in the number of family get together’s,
change in your eating habits,
vacations,
Christmas,
and then minor violations of law.

Now, let’s take a look at some hobbies and consumer categories that you might want to connect with people in.

By the way, this is a wonderful resource, not everybody knows that Paypal has a list of shops. This is really for later in the course, but one of the things that you can do with Paypal shops is see the popularity of them. They list the number of purchases that have occurred in each shop.

So that’ll give you a sense of what niches are more popular. But for now, just read through these and think about how you might want to connect people in these areas. Remember, this list contains broad categories and are not niches themselves, but will get you to start thinking about your own interests.

Theres:

Antiques & Art
Auctions
Automotive Areas of life
Things for babies and children
The Beauty category
Books, Music and Movies
Business Services & Supplies
Clothing
Collectibles
Communication
Computers & the Internet
Crafts
Cultures & Religions
Currency & Coins
Dolls & Bears
Electronics
Fashion
Food & Drink
Gifts & Flowers
Health & Nutrition
Hobbies
Home & Garden
Media & Entertainment
Non-Profit & Political Stores
Pets & Animals
Real Estate

Full categories of Services, but we’ll drill down on that in a little bit.
Sports & Recreation
Toys & Games
Travel

By the way, if one of these broad categories stimulated your interest, you might want to go to Paypal Shops. Just go to Paypal and on the bottom you can find Paypal Shops and then you can drill down into any of the categories yourself.

I’ll give you an example, let’s look at the hobbies section of Paypal Shop’s and we find that what’s most popular there is genealogy (just for examples sakes...this may or may not be true).

Then, we could also connect with people in a supportive role, on any particular disease or medical condition, and here’s a list of medical conditions that you might want to explore.

acne,
substance abuse and alcohol addiction,
allergies,
Alzheimer’s,
there’s anxiety and panic,
arthritis,
asthma,
cancer and the wide variety of different afflictions or different types,
chronic pain,
Depression,
diabetes,
constipation,

By the way, for any of these, any of these categories that are very large, you would probably have difficulty attacking depression, in and of itself. But if it was… teenage depression, if it was the depressive reaction to acne…depression about loss of a pet. You can feel free to modify them.

Back to the list:

digestive difficulty and disorders,
epilepsy and seizures,
frequent respiratory illness,
headaches,
migraines,
hearing difficulties or disorders,
hepatitis or other liver issues,
high blood pressure,
high cholesterol,
HIV and AIDS,
infertility,
menopause,
smoking,
staying smoke free,
pregnancy,
psoriasis,
eczema,
other skin disorders,
sleep difficulties,
Thyroid issues,
urological difficulties and disorders,
eyesight correction (glasses or contacts),
cataracts,
blindness and of course,
weight issues.

Then, we could also think about the broad categories of life goals. Everything to do with the attitude that one takes toward life. Everything about:

your career,
your education,
family,
relationships,
romance,
finances,
physicality,
experiencing pleasure and joy,
spirituality,
public service.

You could work with people that work in small businesses or people that work in large businesses. Banking, innovation, time management vendors.

You could work with any of a long list of hobbies. Here's another list:

trains,
locomotives or knitting,
airplanes or helicopters,
remote control cars,
rockets
racing boats and boating
the inner game of golf,
the inner game of hiking,
the inner game of juggling, soccer or knitting or chess or baseball or softball or football or basketball.

You can get a very long list of this in Yahoo’s directories. Look at the directory list under recreation and sports.

What I would like you to do now is just look at your list, and if you don’t have at least 9 ideas written down than go back and do this exercise again and look at Paypal Shops and write down at least 9 different possibilities.

Okay, so that’s the end of the possibilities generation exercise, from this point we’re going to begin to narrow them down.

The nice thing about this is it is written down and I want you to save your possibilities list because you can always go back to it. You might want to expand it later.

Once you’ve got the process you might want to do another niche to bring a different type of person into your demographics.

Now, what you’re going to do is look at your list and I want you to circle the five most appealing niches that you might want to work with. Now that you’ve circled those five most appealing niches, I want you to write them each on a separate sheet of paper.

Spread those sheets of paper out on the floor, where you have a little bit of room to work. What you are going to do after that is go and get a whole bunch of old magazines, whatever you have around the house, and I want you to look through the magazines, rifle through them for pictures of people and these should be pictures of people that you might imagine you’d find, if there were a group meeting of any one of these niches. If you don't have magazines, then this can easily be accomplished by going to Google.com and clicking on the Images link and searching for images.

So, you are looking for a picture of a person, you can find more than one if you have to, that you can put right next to the name of the niche, on a piece of paper. So, you should have at least five different pictures of people and put them next to each one of the names of the niches. You don’t have to absolutely know, you could just be guessing and using your imagination. You do not have to be perfect at this exercise.

This can be a lot of fun. So, take a break and get into something comfortable, Make yourself something hot to drink.

It’s a good idea to take a break in between exercises actually, because this is a very important exercise and you should be fresh for it.

So, now as we being to personify your niches, you can get a sense of who might actually be on the other end of the computer when you are working this niche and what these people might be like.

I want you to have each of your niches names on the floor and, I want you to be laying out the pictures of the people in the niches next to the names of the niches. Then, for each of these niches, I want you to spend just a moment looking at the picture and the name of the niche and I’d like you to write down a few words about the people that you’re imagining and that you are associating with your niche.

I want you to write down:

About how old you think they are?
Are they married are single?
What’s their family life like?
What are their hobbies?
Do you think they are introverted or extroverted?
Are they organized or disorganized?
Happy or unhappy?
What do they wake up worried about?
What do they go to sleep thinking about?
Do they exercise?
Are they religious?

Anything that comes to mind about them, there’s no right answers and I just want you to write down a few of those characteristics now.

Now, write down a few words about each of the people that you are associating with the niche now. Okay, so at this point you should have five pieces of paper on the floor, each with a name of one of your niches.

Each with at least one picture of people that you might imagine most associated with that niche and a few words about each of the people that you imagined.

Organize your information and email your results to your coach. Be ready to discuss your findings and your exercises with your coach in your next session, if you are to meet with a coach by telephone. If you do not have a coach, move onto the next two paragraphs.

Okay, what I want you to do next is take the time to look over your five most important niches and the people and things that you wrote down about them and if I were to force you to pick three, which three would that be? And of course, you’re going to save everything you’ve done, in the event that you want to change your mind later on and go back to it, nothing's really going to be thrown away. But if you want to focus on three of them, which three would those be?

It may help to discuss this portion outloud with someone. So, maybe you could find a friend or a spouse or a family member who would be willing to listen to you talk it out. Get a sense of how you feel about each of the niches as you talk about them out loud, that would be very valuable. And, if you can’t do that, then you can take a few moments to, or more than a few moments to journal about your experience. Or, you can record it into a tape recorder for yourself.

Your Next Steps

What we’re going to do now is a mental exercise. I am going to invite you to close your eyes. What I want you to do is imagine that you’re in the favorite part of your house, or home or apartment, at the most comfortable time of day with nobody around, this is just time for you. As each moment passes you feel slightly more relaxed, although you’re not going to go to sleep and you’re not going to be hypnotized.

I am going to take you through a little guided imagery exercise. And as you feel more and more relaxed, know that you’re in full control of your experience and I’d like you to notice that there’s a door that appears in front of you. It’s a door that you haven’t seen before, and you know that it is perfectly safe on the other side and you can come back whenever you want to.

So, in your minds eye, I’d like you to imagine walking through that door, finding yourself in a very safe corridor, well-lit very safe corridor and as you walk down that corridor you find that you’re approaching three more doors. And on these three doors, that you’re not going to walk through yet, on these three doors, are the names of the three niches that you just chose.

In addition to the names are the pictures that you put underneath them, and as you approach the door, you begin to realize on the other side of each door is going to be an entirely different scene, which may or may not have anything logically to do with the word or pictures on the door. So, look at door on the very left and I would like you to walk through it and find yourself in an entirely different scene.

See what you see, hear what you hear, feel what you feel. I’d like you to look for a specific person behind that door and imagine that they invite you to go through some snapshots of their day with them, a typical day in their life. A full day from dawn till dust, including their breakfast, their lunch, their dinner, their work or their relaxation time. As you go through the day with them, I want you to get a sense of and ask them what obstacles or challenges they face? What gives them joy? You get a sense of what it feels like to be with them, what it feels like inside of you to be with them and what opportunities you see to improve their lives. After you have had the time to go through a full day with the person behind this niche, this door, I’d like you to walk back through that first door and find yourself facing the other two doors in the corridor.

I’d like you to go through the middle door. I’d like you to see what you see, and hear what you hear, and feel what you feel at an entirely different scene, it may or may not have anything logically to do with what’s written on that middle door. And again, I would like you to see the person behind the door and experience the day with them. Go from dawn to dusk. See what it’s like for them to wake up, have breakfast, get washed up, lunch, dinner, work, recreation. What obstacles or challenges are they facing? What’s giving them joy in their life? What does it feel like to be with them? And what opportunities do you see to help them improve their life? I’d like you to come back and walk through the third and final door.

Find yourself in an entirely different scene, it may or may not logically relate to the words and pictures on the door. I’d like you to find yourself with the person from that niche. And I’d like you to imagine a day with them, from dawn to dusk. Seeing what it’s like for them to wake up, and wash up and have breakfast and lunch and dinner and work and relaxation time and recreation time. What obstacles have they faced? What gave them joy? What it felt like to be with them? Finally, what opportunities you saw to help them improve their life.

When you’re ready, when you feel like you’ve had the time to explore all three doors, if you need to, you can come back and go to one or the other for a moment. Take your time to do that, if you want to go and ask a another question or observe something else.

I’d like you to prepare to come back, walk back through the corridor that led you there. You find yourself back in the comfortable place in your home or apartment at that most quiet peaceful time of day.

I’d like you to tell your coach in your next coaching session, if you have a coach, as much as you feel comfortable with, about the experience that you had. For those of you who do not have a coach, it would be good if you would take a few moments and write down the experience you had behind these doors. Just a few words to anchor you, so that if you should come back and want to reexamine your thoughts about this niche a month from now that you’ll have some triggers to help you remember.

So, after having done this, prioritize those three niches, in terms of what your favorite would be, and second favorite and third favorite. I don’t want anybody to be afraid of doing your homework, because there are so many resources for people that will get you information and help you turn into an expert.

There are two things that stop people from getting into the business they want. One, is not knowing how to market it. The other is not knowing how to become enough of an expert and I‘ll give you some resources. There's Yahoo Answers. A lot of people don’t know that Yahoo provides a variety of services in addition to search, and one of the things they have figured out is that there are all these people out there who got really, really good at doing research and they found a way of screening them and aggregating them.

And providing a service so that you can post a question, such as, what are the 10 most difficult obstacles that potential adopties face and what are the demographics of people that are looking to adopt? There's also www.uclue.com. It's a small fee based research community that will do a one- or two-page writeup of your specific question for a very small fee. An older service it replaced was Google Answers, which no longer exists.

When you typically think about becoming an expert, don’t let the lack of expertise stop you, I want you to look at your level of excitement here. In Module 3, we will look at the several streams and ways you can make money off of the ideas you have chosen so far, then we will take all of this into Module 4.

Now, in Module 4, we are going to move to some of the more left brained and evaluative ways of looking at these markets, to see whether there’s really market viability and how you might want to approach it.

Getting into Time Management and Planning

With any new endeavor, there are going to be changes. That is obvious. But what does that really mean? Have you heard this quote?

What this quote is talking about is how a person uses time. Use your time in the way you have before, you will keep getting the same old results.

Plan Your Time Differently - Get Different Results

This means you must use your time differently. The most effective way to change the use of your time is to plan it and manage it.

Take Control - Plan Your Time

You will now need to plan into your week anywhere from 8-15 hours where you are working on your Internet business. If you do not take control of your time, we guarantee you your week will blow by you like a whirlwind.

Suddenly, before you know it, it will be that day of the week you have a session with your coach.

Whenever we ask a student how things went for them that week and we get the answer, “Busy!” That is code for, "I didn’t get much done!" With that in mind, here are a couple of helps.

The Web site www.Mindtools.com has a number of tutorials on personal improvement that you will most likely find of great value.

Remember, you are going into business so you can be "in control." To be in control of your own financial future, to be in control of your time and flexibility. You want to be your own boss - work when you want, do what you want, when you want, all of that, right?

Well, the first tool to use to get in control and stay in control is planning your time. If you do not plan your time, you automatically default to "out of control."

The choice is yours.

The First Step of Taking Control - Time Management and Planning

1. At the beginning of each week commit to a number of hours you will work your Internet business, 10, 15, 20, etc. Write this commitment down in your calendar or planner.

2. Schedule the days of your week, and if possible, the specific hours of each day that you will be working on your business. For instance Tuesday 7-10, from 6:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m., Wednesday 7-11, from 5:00 p.m. till 10:00 p.m., etc.

Make sure you write out your schedule in your calendar or planner. Do not rely on your memory.

Entrepreneurs do not rely on their memory, they write it down.

3. It is important you keep these appointments with yourself, like you would any other person you respect and take seriously. If you keep breaking your appointments with yourself, ask yourself, what am I telling myself about me and this business? We all make time for those things that are truly important to us.

4. Next, make a "To Do" List for the week from the lesson you are working on this week and anything else you need to do for your Internet business.

5. Prioritize that list.

6. Assign an amount of time to complete each item then double that amount. This will give you extra room so you do not go into panic and crisis mode if things do not move as smoothly as you would like.

7. Once you have completed your schedule and your "To Do" list, make sure you have easy access to it.

8. Implement your plan day by day. If you see you are not completing your "To Do" List for the time period you schedule for yourself, or for the week (and do not wait to figure this out the day before your next week starts) schedule yourself more time to get it done. Remember, this is your business. If you do not do it, who will?

9. Be ready to discuss your progress with yourself in your journal.

10. As you work and questions arise, be sure to write your questions down. Often you will come up with your own answers. If not, your questions will be there for you, ready to search for answers on the search engines.

11. For more information and ideas on Goals and Planning, check out www.Mindtools.com.

3. For each business you are seriously considering, make a Pros and Cons List. If you do not know how to do this here are the instructions:

For each business you are seriously considering take a sheet of paper and at the top of it, write the name of the business.

Next, draw a line down the middle of the page.

At the top of the left column write Cons.

At the top of the right column write Pros.

Fill in all the cons and pros you can think of for each business.

After you have done all your Pros and Cons lists evaluate what you have done and do a short summary at the bottom of each page.

Finally, make your decision so you can research your decision online.

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