If you’re looking to start a business, you’ll need a great idea. Find one by incorporating the following methods into your everyday. Grand ideas that bring along the big dollars are stumbled upon constantly, by people who have the right mindset. These people don’t hold any magic or special powers; they are normal people, meaning you can replicate their success and achieve MORE.

You follow these methods and we guarantee you're a step closer to creating the awesome businesses the world is currently missing.

Exercise your brain - it's a muscle after all

Practice thinking of ideas for even the small, regular day-to-day tasks you have. Come up with ten ideas. The first five will be easy to think of, then they get progressively harder.

For example, think of ten:

• things you can have for dinner tonight
• people you can call next week
• colours you can paint the living room
• songs that have a memory attached to them.

It doesn’t matter what you think of, what matters is you use the part of your brain used to come up with ideas. Make it fun - think of it as a game and do it on a daily basis. Soon, writing a list of ten new products you can make or ten new businesses you can start will seem simple.

NOTE: With thinking of great business ideas comes a load of bad ones. Don't get rid of those ideas - keep a record of them somewhere. Jot down the concept, the business name and the intended audience. Even if you know the idea isn't good or won't sell, you can possibly develop on it and make a plausible model. You truly never know where a great business idea can come from.

Identify the pain points

The top businesses solve specific problems in an exceptional way their customers are attracted to. Naturally people move away from pain and towards pleasure, so find out what your target audience's pains are. The best way to do this is to simply ask them directly. But how can you do this? Why not join social media groups relating to your interests or a specific industry you're aiming to go in to and find the problems, issues and grumbles that people currently have.

Or why not quiz your loved ones - whether it's your partner, family members, friends or even your neighbour? Ask them what their biggest challenges are currently in relation to your interests or the specific industry you're looking to go in to and simply find out what they’re struggling with.

Use casual and effectual thinking

Let's first define these different forms of thinking. Causal thinking is when you follow the pattern of cause and effect of something, and in this case devising a business idea with it. You come up with a problem and you decide a way to solve it. Effectual thinking is where you look at your existing assets and work out what you are uniquely placed to do. The assets you hold can include your knowledge, qualifications, networks and personal strengths. Both forms of thinking hold great value. You might come up with something insanely obvious to you but groundbreaking to others.

Combine niches

Great business ideas can be born from combining two or more distinct concepts. The result could be a product or service that amasses interest from both sides to create the ultimate super fans. An impressive example of someone combining different worlds/niches together is Justin Woolverton, the founder of HALO Top ice cream. He created a product as an experiment from his home in 2011. For him it was simple. He was into fitness and wanted to eat an entire tub of ice cream without feeling guilty. So for his business idea, ice cream and health food were the two niches that hadn't been combined effectively before, but he managed to do it with great success. In August 2017, Halo Top became the #1 selling pint of ice cream in the America. And in November 2017, Time Magazine named Halo Top one of its top inventions of the year. This was all because Justin decided to combine two things he loves... HOW COOL IS THAT!?

Regularly change your scenery

Routinely change your routine. Make it normal that you are spontaneous and in new locations where you can. Refuse to have the same week twice in a row. Refuse to do the same walk with the dog. Stop reading books by the same authors. Widen your sphere of consciousness to become the magnet for inspiration you need to be to come up with brilliant business ideas. Spend time with the right people - those who motivate you and fellow entrepreneurial people, so their devotion and mindset inspires you.

Always be willing to change things up, stay alert and find new prospects. Great business ideas can come to you at any time and be influences by a number of factors. Whether you're on a plane, or just in the garden, changing your scenery will change how you think. Your brain is forced to come out of autopilot mode and when this happens you're forced to process new information and look out for various dangers. This, in our opinion, is prime idea time.