Everybody is always looking for the next big thing. We are told that within each of us there is a billionaire, that it is a matter of reaching your human potential. There are magazines for business opportunities, articles, and ideas galore. Flip to the back pages of any of these magazines and you will conveniently find the business opportunities that are advertised everywhere with promises to make millionaires of us all within 365 days or less.

Sure, if you are robbing banks – that is.

There are many stories that have come from life altering and mind altering situations where regular people or rags to riches have actually become millionaires. Most of these stories come down to the human factor, their resilience, their commitment, and their faith in themselves. The reality is that for them, fear is a common factor that existed but they had under control or drove them forward. The fear of a new opportunity as not as great as their desire to consciously create their success and physically take action to do so. They were part of the Do It! Generation, the slogan we use to be very familiar with by the Nike swipe on a shoe, shirt, or hat.

It is true that there are some who have rags to riches stories about a simple, yet brilliant, idea which made them incredibly rich. It has happened; it still does and will still. The story of Bill Gates is an interesting success story, or the founders of Google, the inventor of the Company Bodog for online gambling, or the founders of Google… all are great internet success stories. But, the fact of the matter is that we do not need to sit hand in head, staring at a bowl of stale popcorn for dinner, for circumstance to force us into a moment of business brilliance.

It can, and should, happen almost every day.

Opportunities are all around us if we only know where to look. “There are business opportunities around every corner, in every paper, in every circumstance,” says Bill Gibson, Canada’s Top International Business Speaker and South Africa’s favourite business guru.

In a recent article he tells us how to maximise these opportunities:

Identify your full business opportunities: “Ask yourself what business you are really in and then act on it,” says Gibson. “If you are a neighbourhood convenience store you can really take the term, convenience, to a new level by offering more than just the basics, but expanding into total convenience for your clientele. Video hire, instant, meals, a delivery service or a wider variety of goods. The opportunity is ripe for the taking.”

Identify opportunities arising from your current business: Business owners need to ask themselves if their companies’ resources are being fully utilised? Is it possible to diversify or enhance the product or service currently offered? Strengths can be expanded and weaknesses corrected to provide new opportunities. An aircraft manufacturing company had a fibreglass division which was underused and costing the company money. The choice was to either close the division (costing jobs) or find an alternative use for it. The company decided to start designing bathtubs and, so successful were their designs, that a new company was formed just to design and produce the tubs.

Take advantage of current situations: Some people may see it as opportunism, but fact of the matter is that we do not live sheltered lives. There are many good, and sometimes bad, events that demand attention and offer potential profits. For example if your city is experiencing an increasing crime rate, for example, this has lent itself to a huge boom in the personal security market. Armed response, pepper spray, even security complexes are now the order of the day. After a volcanic eruption on Mount St. Helens, entrepreneurs developed souvenirs and novelties for the tourism industry. It is not a matter of exploitation, but rather clever and rapid reaction to needs created by sudden changes in the environment.

Magnifying (amplifying) people and events: “Magnifying or amplifying the popularity of a special person, group, enterprise or event can ensure greater demand for a product or service,” says Gibson. “Use an image-making strategy to create market demand.” This method of increasing interest is especially effective in the tourism industry. Without Nelson Mandela, Robben Island would just be another prison, would it not? Sandton Square renamed itself Mandela Square at Sandton. While it is a great tribute to the world’s greatest statesman, it is also an excellent move to magnify or amplify the status of the square. Some South Africans will argue that the large bronze statue probably does not do the man justice, but most international visitors will not see it that way. Amplify the importance of your offer, if marketed the right way, the masses will follow.

Capitalising on a growth trend: Try to get involved in areas where more and more people are getting involved in. Consumer spending behaviour is a fickle thing and can move in any direction at a rapid rate. New innovations, tastes, lifestyle choices and fashionable trends offer many profitable opportunities for the entrepreneur with his or her ear to the ground. “To capitalise on the growing trend towards natural healthcare, many pharmacies now offer wide ranges of these products,” says Gibson. “The explosion of the call centre industry is another example of taking advantage of growth trends.”

Most Amercian companies use Canadian or Indian-based call centres. It is cheaper for them and, especially in Canada’s case, the quality versus cost ratio is especially favourable. Many local companies have caught on to this and are making vast sums of money. Taking advantage of a fashion opportunity also falls into this category. Skateboarding, for example, has become very fashionable again. The same can be said for the clothes, music, and equipment that go hand-in-hand with the skateboarding culture. It needs to be taken advantage of.

Find use for waste materials: South African billionaire, Patrice Motsepe, started his empire by coming to an agreement with a gold mining company to utilise the dust left from its mining activities. With a special process for extracting gold from the dust he built his business. Today, Motsepe is involved in all manner of industries including mining, finance and soccer. One company’s waste can be another’s bread and butter if utilised the right way.

“A market switch happens when consumers move from one type of product to another on a long-term basis,” says Gibson. “Just think of society moving from VHS to DVD players, from tapes to CDs to MP3s and such.” When a market switch occurs a whole host of other industries benefit from it. Packaging is needed for the new ranges of products. Other support equipment is needed to enhance products’ fashionability for the consumer. Cell phones are a classic example of secondary offers enhancing the image of a base product.

There are many other areas which we can explore to find that business idea that will make our dreams a reality. Newspapers are full of potential ideas, if we only open our minds to the possibilities hiding amongst the pages. Gibson says that we have trained ourselves to miss the obvious, to look in the wrong places and to over complicate the matter. Business genius is not born from a bowl of stale dinner popcorn, it is all around us. In everything we do, in everything we read, in every travesty and adversity we may face. We just have to be positive enough to see beyond a few strands of hay.

For information on Bill’s Turning Entrepreneurial Spirit Into Business Opportunities audio CD and manual program which can be purchased and emailed in soft copy to you contact billgibson@kbitraining.com

Business opportunities are all around us, just like radio and television waves, but we don’t recognise them until we tune them in with an antenna and receiver.  If you are interested in more information on the 51 opportunities we believe are key  for recognizing opportunities contact  billgibson@kbitraining.com for more information on Turning Entrepreneurial Spirit Into Business Opportunities  to help you search for new venture ideas. If you keep those questions in your mind, you will begin to “tune in” on the opportunities which surround you.

Every existing or potential business owner can always be searching for new venture opportunities. A business is like a living organism; parts are always in a process of dying and need to be replaced.

Business owners need to be looking for new products, services, processes, and procedures to keep their organisations healthy. Without growth and new energy every business will eventually die.

There is a big difference between a business idea and a business opportunity. You might have many IDEAS for business ventures, but they are business OPPORTUNITIES only if they have a chance to succeed. Separating the opportunities from the ideas is like separating wheat from the chaff, the way to find the “good stuff”. This program includes a list of questions which you should ask about any new venture ideas. If the answers show that the idea has promise, you can proceed to develop a business plan. If your answers show some serious problems with the idea, then you can modify it or move along to another idea without losing much time or money.

Existing and potential business owners should be prepared to replace one business idea with another. The failure of one idea is less important than the failure of a total business organisation. If one idea does not test out well, another can be tried. A large pot of ideas is a basis for business success, so that alternative ideas are always available. Anyone relying on a single idea has nowhere to turn when that idea fails. The continuous cycle of generating ideas and testing them to find the real opportunities ought to be a normal part of business development. When too few real opportunities are found, more ideas should be generated.

Having a good idea is only the first step in developing a business. A good idea cannot ensure success if other essential factors are not in place. However, a poor idea can fail even when the best business skills are used. Anyone with a single idea needs to check that idea thoroughly before acting to start a business. In addition to checking the single idea, the potential business owner needs to consider alternative ideas which may have more promise. Thorough examination of a business idea is always cheaper than the expense of business failure.

Finding business opportunities requires a systematic, analytical approach, and also a degree of unstructured creativity. Many individuals find it difficult to combine both approaches. To draw on the strength of both dimensions, you might want to consider developing a team for exploring opportunities. The result from a group of people with different talents and skills can often be superior to those from one person. Interaction among people can lead to new ideas which no-one would have thought up alone. Developing a small group with a variety of business and thinking skills can be both exciting and profitable. Suggestions in the program will work equally for individuals and groups.

The importance of business planning cannot be overstated. Once an idea has been selected as the basis for a venture, thorough business planning is essential. After using this program, you ought to have one or more ideas which are good enough for you to invest the effort of developing a business plan for your business or new product/service launch.

We can only supply ideas through our blog, but the ideas, judgements, information, and decisions about your potential ventures are YOURS. Your success will depend on your own efforts and ideas.

Above all, remember that information is not power, information combined with right actions is power.

By Ryan Anthony Gibson