How To Come Up With A Winning Business Idea: Sammie’s Ikigai and Blue Ocean Framework

This transcript is auto-generated and lightly edited for readability, it may contain errors.

[0:00] Sammie Ellard-King: My name is Sammie Ellard-King, and welcome back to the Money Gains Podcast. We’re a show all about making, saving, and investing your money. If you’re new here, be sure to hit that follow button as you won’t want to miss a show. And this week we’re back with the side hustle sessions. And today is going to be all about how to come up with a winning business idea. We’re going to jump right into actually coming up with the ideas, how to actually validate those ideas and make sure that they’re actually any good, and how you can build your business all around your audience and how you serve them to create a winning formula.

This has worked for millions of people from businesses that are doing thousands a month to multi, multi-millions a month. So this one really works, and I’m gonna absolutely love this one. It’s just gonna be me, and let’s get into it on the Money Gains Podcast. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, it’s good to be back with another side hustle session. And today I’m gonna be running through all about how you can come up with a winning business idea. Now, it’s something that my audience has struggled a lot with.

A lot of people, I get a lot of emails when we do the digital products emails, and they say, you know, I don’t know what to do. I can’t come up with an idea. And a lot of it’s like, I haven’t got any skills. And so what I want to do is run through some ideas and some frameworks, which have been super successful for me in building my own businesses, multiple six-figure businesses, marketing director for multi-million pound businesses that we’ve taken from scratch, all utilizing these formulas.

And these can be working on the everyday person right through to entrepreneurs. So there’s gonna be a lot of value in this one, and it’s just gonna be me, and we’re gonna run through it. It should take about 20 or 30 minutes, but you should walk away with your mind ready to roll in terms of actually getting an idea and coming up with an idea. Now, as I said before, I’ve literally taken businesses from scratch to multi-million pound businesses that we’ve sold on, and now I’m doing this without the gains.

And where every single person goes wrong is that they think about hey, I want to start an Instagram channel, I want to start a YouTube channel, I want to start selling products on an e-commerce store, I want to make supplements for fitness people, and that is fantastic. It’s great that you want to do that, but what they get wrong, and what every person gets wrong when they suddenly turn around and start thinking, oh, and I actually need to sell something to someone. They’ve done all this hard work building the product, posting the content before actually understanding who it was they should have been serving in the first place.

And so what we’re gonna use is a framework that is tried and tested, it is literally unbeatable. And I’m gonna match this up with another framework, which I’ve been learning all about too, from a gentleman called Russell Brunson. If you’ve ever come across Russell Brunson.com secrets or the expert secrets group, uh expert secrets book, I should say, this will blow your mind. So we’re gonna start off with a Japanese technique called Ikigai. And Ikigai is designed to unpack your purpose in life, and what it essentially does is when you match up, so it’s four circles and they intertwine together, and within the middle of those four circles is your Ikigai, it’s your purpose in life.

And how it works is you have one circle for what you love, another for what you’re good at, another what you could be paid for, and another for what the world needs. Now, what you do, interestingly, this is a great exercise, and I encourage anyone, even if you’re working in a nine to five business and you have no plans to start a business, but you’re just listening to this thinking this is a cool thing. Actually, this is great just to unpack exactly what you want to do in life.

So you take what you love and you make a deep list, you go deep into what you love. This should be like what you get really geeky about. It can be what you don’t tell people about, but it could also be what you bring up at family barbecues. You know, what are you ramming on about? And everybody else is like, oh God, will you leave me alone about that thing? Yeah, we don’t care, but you do. It’s like ingrained in you. You know, I used to like absolutely love playing Xbox and video games.

So I should liken that feeling to when I used to play Xbox and I just used to be in the zone. This the thing that really just grabs you and in the zone, it could be fishing, it could be, you know, Marvel comics, whatever that might well be, those that one thing that you really, really love. Try and hone in on that, but also make a list of other things in as well that you enjoy, that you really enjoy doing. So ideally, it ends up being that one thing, but often when we do Ikigai, it will end up slightly shifting, perhaps away from that.

And I’ll turn I’ll go on to that in a second. So make that list of what you love, spend some time on this, really go deep into your psyche. What what are you spending that? Often your YouTube history is a great place to look. Like, what are you watching videos on? What do you love watching documentaries on? What is it? What is it about you? Try and find that thing, and then the next circle and the second part of the Ikigai exercise that we’re doing today is uh what you’re good at.

So your skills. Now, what I’m gonna do is I’m actually gonna run you through a framework of how perhaps I would do this based on what I my skills and what I like, and then we’re gonna see where we get to at the end of it, just so you can start to see how I’m thinking about things. So, what I like could be football, entrepreneurship, history. I like 90s hip-hop, bangers, good old 50 Cent Dr. Dre, Snoop Doggy Dog. Um, I like archaeology as well. I watch a lot of archaeology documentaries, the unknown documentary on uh Netflix, unbelievable.

I just get really geeky about archaeology. I love it. Um, cooking, I’m a massive cook at home. I cook all the meals here. I it’s my kind of like separation from my business. It’s the end of the day. Love cooking up a good meal, and I also like strategy games on the computer as well. I don’t do that as much as I used to. In fact, I haven’t probably played a strategy game in in years, but I spent so long of my teenage years, which I wish I’d actually put to good use.

But actually, I love strategy games. Um, now football, entrepreneurship, history, 90s hip hop, archaeology, and cooking and strategy games. And then so that’s my list, and then I matched them up with skills that I have. So I wrote down things like public speaking, editing, branding, SEO, search engine optimization, cooking is in there. So interestingly, on both lists, sales in there as well, and writing, copywriting. So public speaking, editing, branding, cooking, sales, copywriting, search engine optimization, there was what was on my list there. Now, interestingly, what I do is I spend some time then.

I’ve got these two lists, and I take every single one on my what I like list. So let’s start with football, and I look at all of the skills and I go down public speaking, editing, branding. What could be something? So, for example, football, public speaking, interestingly, could match up with something like coaching. So, you see, I’m bringing this together, editing and branding might be that I create content around the coaching and branding. I create a brand for it, and I might create a website for it, for example.

You see how I’m building this out? How is it connecting based on perhaps what I could be doing with my skills matching up with what I like? Um, entrepreneurship now, public speaking matches perfectly. Editing, branding, SEO all works. Cooking, perhaps not so much, sales, absolutely, copywriting, absolutely. So there’s a brilliant synergy there, and I love entrepreneurship, so actually that works really, really well. So I might probably take entrepreneurship forward, and I’m going to in this case, but what you should do is work your whole way down the list and really hone in on the one that goes, Yes, that is cool, that is really cool.

I’m gonna roll with this, and then what you do is you start looking at what the world needs. So around entrepreneurship and all of the skills that I had, you look at things like community. You know, people we used to be best mates with our next door neighbors. That’s not the case as much anymore. We used to know everybody on our streets, some places still do, but often we don’t anymore. And we lack that kind of community vibe. So we look for it in other places, especially around the areas that we go into.

So community is a big one. So I noted that down. World needs community. It needs entrepreneurs need help growing their income. They need help with how to launch businesses, how to create systems to actually grow those businesses, marketing support, growth strategies, branding help. And suddenly all my skills and what I like is coming into what the world needs. And then we’re taking what the world needs and what we could be paid for. So I could develop a paid community, for example. I could have a paid newsletter, I could offer social media support to businesses, I could create business courses about how to launch and start and grow your own businesses.

I could offer marketing support as an agency, I could um come up with growth strategies that I promote online and that I sell into big corporates, for example. I could just go into branding if branding helps. So you see how this is what I could be paid for, and we’re matching that up. And then what you need to do is really extract one key lead thing about what you’re gonna do with that. So my Ikigai, at the end of it all, my purpose for life in this case, funny enough, is to help new and budging, but uh new and budding entrepreneurs quit their nine to five and launch businesses that they love.

So that’s my Ikigai, that’s my purpose, that’s my mission, that’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna be the guy that does that. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is Ikigai, and that’s how it works, right down to a T. So you should be able to spend a bit of time with this, and at the end of it, you should be able to say in one or two sentences absolutely what it is, what’s your purpose, and how are you gonna go for it? What can you love, your skills, what the world needs, and what you could be paid for.

If you get Ikigai right, you’ll wake up every morning with a purpose, with a smile on your face, and often a really powerful business idea because you’ve thought about what the world needs. You know, you’re not when you’re thinking about what the world needs, you’re not gonna think about stuff that’s already happening because you need to try and find your gap and your blue ocean offer, which leads me on to the second part of this. So, a blue ocean offer, which is a coin termed by Russell Brunson in his book Expert Secrets, revolves around creating a unique market position that differentiates your product or service from the competition.

So that’s what we do with the world needs. We kind of coin both of these together, and when you do these both together, it’s super powerful. Now, the blue ocean basically means that the market there is free of competition. Because when there’s too many sharks in the water, instead of fighting against others in what’s called a red ocean with really intense competition, an uncontested market space or an idea within a space that is slightly unique in terms of its proposition allows for massive growth and innovation because you’re not fighting against someone, you know.

I’m not going to become a local football coach, for example, in my in my local area if I know that there’s lots of local football coaches in around the area. Now, I could start a program for helping coaches level up in my local area. That’s something that’s new and different. Now, this is what this is what you you see how I’m thinking here. Now, what you need to then do from there is essentially create your customer avatar. So you’ve come up with the idea, you’ve looked at the Blue Ocean, you’ve tried to position yourself uniquely to others that can’t be compared in the market.

And then you need to go deep into the psyche of who you are actually targeting here. Who is your ideal customer? Now, when I create content for Up The Gains, I literally have one individual. In fact, I have three individuals because I do different types of content, and you can lead on to that. You can have other avatars, but I would start with one, and that is literally Dave, 33, wants to learn more about personal finance, earns 40 grand a year, um, has two kids, desperately trying to save and invest for his later years, perhaps has opened a Lifetime ISA to once in a while, but never got round to adding more to it.

Feels like he’s behind with money. And you see, in straight away that I formed a customer avatar, and obviously, my offer in you know, which before I was talking about entrepreneurship, but I’m just talking about what I formed it for for Up The Gains, and that was exactly who I’m speaking to when I’m creating everything, all of my products, my uh content, my newsletters, my podcasts. Obviously, I have others, so I have a lady as well, and I marry the two together, and then I have another another one which is more family-based around that.

So I think about you know, Junior ISAs, kids, and that type of thing. So you can have multiple avatars, but having one clear one is a really, really great place to start. Who is that business? Who is that product for? And it’s totally fine if it’s gender specific or age bracketed, because the more you drill down, when you go too broad with these types of things, you end up just not really helping anyone. If you go hyper specific, that’s the riches are in the niches, is what they say.

So once you’ve got to this point, you do need to think about your journey in terms of your products because eventually you’re gonna need to sell something if you want to make it a business, right? Now, that could be as simple as a digital product, it could be a physical product if you’re a master baker, or even if you’re just a you know uh on the weekend type baker, but you want to start, you know, doing cakes for weddings or something like that. What’s your product going to be?

And then most importantly, what’s the value ladder of your product? So you never just think of one, you’ve got to think of the whole journey. Now, obviously, this can change, this is not set in stone, but when you do it early, you start to come up with an idea for a business because you don’t want this business to fail. And this is where most people skip all of this bit. And when they skip all of this bit, they are setting themselves up for potential failure. You might manage to bundle your way through it, and yes, it does happen, but why put that stress on yourself if you just spend some time getting this bit right?

So think about your product journey. I’m gonna launch this, then I’m gonna launch this, this, this, and this, and it should kind of go up in price, and eventually I’m gonna get to X, Y, and Z. Brilliant. So we’ve got four or five product fans, and that’s called a value ladder. You want to try and think about the levels up in terms of your products, and then you need to think about how you’re gonna go and do this. So you need to craft an irresistible offer. So, what makes you too good to refuse versus you know, Tom over the road doing something similar, for example?

Now, wealth, health, and relationships. If your product isn’t in one of these niches, then your offer should be. Now, think about it like this. So, for example, you know, gardening isn’t really in wealth, health, or relationships, but the offer very much can be because it needs to be pulling on wealth, health, and relationships, and this is something else that Russell Brunson goes into, and I loved it, so I’m bringing it to you guys today. I’m definitely not coining it. Now, for example, gardening doesn’t really cover health, wealth, or relationships, right?

But if I framed it like you could how to save time creating your summer beds so you could spend more time with your family, suddenly that’s playing on health and relationships, probably more on the relationship side, spending time with your family, building your relationships, allowing you to have more time, saving money, saving time on your gardening, so you can spend more time with your family. Pulling on that relationships, pulling on the health for touch as well, giving you more time back. Second offer could be how to save money creating a million-dollar garden for a fraction of the price.

This is playing on the wealth side of stuff. So you see how I’m coining the offer based on wealth, health, or relationships. If your niche already fits into that, you know, let’s say financial planning or dating or you know, dating goes into relationships or dieting under health or losing weight or fitness, for example, then great. Then you can build your offer as well around targeting something which is your problem or that heart string that that person has. Now, if you do this, I am and you get this right, this is why you should spend time on this.

You will 110% have much better chance of success than anyone that doesn’t. And so I wanted you to go through this and really think about this in a lot of detail. And if you have any questions as well, drop me DMs, my or my email, which I’ll leave in the description below, about how you can do this. I’ll also leave uh a link to a case study where I go through some of this in a little bit more detail as how I would create um a 10k business from scratch from day one.

If you took everything away from me, what would I do? And so I’ll leave a link to that in the link in the description below. And then lastly, think about this. So you’ve got your idea, you’ve got your product ladder, you’ve got your customer advertise sorted, you nailed down your business idea in Ica Guy. How are you going to market? Now, this is really important. So, what what I tend to do is look at where does my audience play the most, and also where do I like spending my time?

Because if, for example, um I absolutely hate TikTok, but I like Instagram and my audience plays on both, there’s your answer. So you don’t really want to go and just kind of learn a channel for the sake of it just because that’s where your audience is. You know, if your audience only lives on Facebook groups and you just can’t stand Facebook groups, then you know perhaps it’s not the right thing to do. So just think about that. You’re gonna need to learn how you’re gonna go to market.

Think about these things first, where your audience plays, how are you gonna go and reach them, how are you gonna cut through the other people that are in the space, which you’ve done with your offering anyway. So all of your content ideas should really just be about serving that problem. You can come up with hundreds and thousands of content ideas just bound around the problems that are facing your audience within that space. If you solve and you serve at scale, you will never go broke again. Trust me.

It’s all about serving your audience. It’s not about your idea, it’s about serving them. And if you can learn how to do that, you will absolutely nail it. Okay, guys. Well, I hope this one has been useful for you. Little bit of a shorter episode. It’s gonna fall part of our Friday side hustle session series, which I’m gonna do once a week. Just drop in a little bit of value, knowledge bombs from my years in marketing, and now obviously without the gains, I want to get you trying to thinking about how we can make you some more money with this side hustle series as well, because more income means you can invest more, it means you can save more, and it just improves your overall being.

Go on that holiday that you wanted to do. So, this is exactly why I’m doing the side hustle series. But it’s been Sammie Ellard-King on the Money Gains Podcast, and we’ll see you Wednesday next week. Cheers, guys.