In Episode 12: How to Find Your Business Idea, we talked about taking a look at what you already have to come up with some business ideas. In that episode, I mentioned three things to look at specifically.

Three ways to come up with business ideas:

• Your skills
• Your stuff
• Your strengths

When you look for business ideas in those three areas, you’re making it so much easier on yourself to win!

For example, my first business idea came from my stuff. There was an 11-stall barn already on the property I was renting, so I used that to start a horse-boarding business.

Now, my second business came out of my strengths and skills. That was a side business doing life coaching, and it was long before I ever became a speaker for Dave Ramsey.

But now we’re going to take this a step further. If you want to start a business of any kind and you want it to work, your idea needs to be based on two things:

1. It needs to solve a problem.
2. It needs to serve a target market.

In this episode, I’ll walk you through examples of how to determine which of your business ideas meet this criteria.

Related: The One Thing All Businesses Must Have

My Guest This Week Is Ken Coleman!

My good friend Ken is an author, a speaker, and the host of The Ken Coleman Show on Sirius XM and the EntreLeadership Podcast. His passion is helping other people find their passion.

To do that, Ken helps people who feel stuck or confused in their careers by shining a light on their core qualities as a person. From there he brings clarity by weighing their passion against their talents to help them discover what they should be doing with their lives.

But Ken didn’t start out as a successful speaker and Ramsey personality. Ken says, “I left a corporate VP job at age 31 to chase a broadcasting dream that started with two listeners. One was my wife.”

Before getting his own show, he spent years working behind the scenes at Ramsey Solutions and eventually on the stage hosting Dave Ramsey’s live events. Ken has interviewed hundreds of top business leaders all over the country and helps thousands of people every week with their career and business ideas.

In this episode, Ken and I talk about:

• How to narrow down your top talents—those things you do better than anything else
• The euphoria that happens on a scientific, physiological level when you’re working in your sweet spot
• Creating a “purpose sentence” for yourself and your business
• How to change an entire conversation and shift the room by asking the right questions
• Why chasing significance will bring more success than chasing wealth or status

Choosing a Winning Business Idea With Madison Dennis!

Our success story this week comes from Madison Hardy Dennis. Madison’s business idea checks all three of our boxes: MHD Beauty is based on her skills, her strengths, and her stuff!

When she started thinking about leaving her full-time administrative position in 2014, she took stock of all the things in her life she was really good at. She discussed the list with her husband, and they thought about which skills and strengths would lend themselves to a freelance business. She kept coming back to makeup.

That first year Madison started her freelance beauty business, she was hired to do makeup for two weddings. But her business has absolutely explo