For me, brainstorming was one of the hardest parts of starting my new business, Klemow LLC. Its not that I had hard time coming up with good ideas, in fact, I came up with plenty, but I just didn’t know when to stop. I wasted tremendous amounts of time tweaking and changing my business model.

This section focuses on how to be productive and come up with your best ideas in the shortest amount of time.

To do this, we are going to take our goal, making money, having more free time, living on the beach etc, and start working backwards.

Great, you have a goal, now think, what would you need to make it happen?

Lets look at me. I wanted to make more money running a company where I could help people. I also want to have my hands in many projects at the same time so I can never get bored. That was the goal.

So how did I decide what I was actually going to do? It’s a big economy out there, so it seemed pretty reasonable to copy what has made most people successful and add my own perspective. I wrote down a list of some of the biggest industries I could think of. Then, I wrote down a list of some of the most innovative new businesses that I could think of. Then I started trying to apply successful business models with different industries to see if I could come up with something unique. When you do this, you have an advantage. Both the product and the business model have already been tested and proved successful.

At this stage it is also useful to do some research. You really want to know as much as possible about the industry you are going to be entering. You don’t want to make things to hard for yourself by trying to start a business in a declining industry. Get a library card so you can get access to big online databases such as EBSCO. If you need access to something you can’t get through a library, there are companies out there that do nothing but business industry research. I recommend paying for information if you have to. Its a much better use of your time.

So you don’t have to be incredibly original, you just have to look at things in a new way. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel. It is important to come up with as many different applications of your business model as you can. This way, you have already started to map out your business plan with options for future growth.

Once you start making your list, a few ideas are going to jump off the page. You might do a few calculations and start to get pretty excited. I certainly did.

Initially, I was thinking big. I won’t go into specifics, but while potentially very profitable ($150 million of revenue in the first year seemed likely) the business model I initially planned to implement was also potentially very risky. I came back down to earth and decided I wanted to employ the business model with the highest potential utility. I wanted to have the best chance to succeed. I needed to be more realistic.

As I was looking at my list, I took into account my strengths and future plans. I am computer literate and I have a strong background in advertising, marketing, and public relations. I decided that I would start a web business because I already had the skills to reach a large audience at a low cost using the internet. I also could operate multiple web businesses at a time so if I got bored with one, I could spend a week or two diving into another.

I also plan to move soon. With an Internet business, I could run my business from anywhere in the world. If I felt like it, I could use my laptop to run this website from a beach in Mexico. Even though I might make more money starting another kind of business, at the end of my brainstorming session, running an Internet business seemed obvious.

Once you finish brainstorming and your idea and business model have taken shape, you are probably pretty excited to start building your business. However there is one last important step. It’s a step that actually saved me from making a huge mistake.

Lets talk about minimizing risk.