23 Ideas to help Rediscover Your Business Passion

The New Year is a terrible milestone for starting something new.

Why? Because without a proper plan for a consistent effort, that initial burst of new energy eventually fizzles out. 

The New Year deceives us. 

Our strategy, goals, objectives, key metrics, and actions should be reviewed and tracked continuously. Not just January. 

But, as it happens, New Year is still a natural prompt for a review.

And so as I was sitting around the Christmas table, I got to thinking about ways to reach more people with my content without going through content burnout again. 

The idea struck me! What if I take content already created (my card deck of 60 prompts) and apply it to one specific area?

And so the idea of 60 daily brand-building prompts was born. 

Below, I invite you to peruse 23 prompts to help re-energise your 2023. I will use each prompt as a lens to look through different aspects of building a brand and a business.

1. Facing a roadblock? Simplify it to a singular truth.

The prompt: How can your challenge be simplified to a singular truth?

Russian author Leo Tolstoy described truth as: ‘Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.’

First, let’s define the word challenge. 

It could be an obstacle. Like a digital platform you’re using for business, raising their fees.

Or it could be a roadblock. Like being unable to break through a certain profit threshold. 

Take all of the information about your situation and wash away any assumptions, false beliefs, or those based on fear.

What is left is the truth and a way for moving forward.

Raised fees may still be lower than compared to other competing platforms, given your specific circumstances.

Or your energies might be focused on raising revenue (and increasing expenses) rather than finding a way to streamline your ‘cost to deliver the goods’.

2. Think you need a world-changing business idea to succeed? Think again.

The prompt:  Can only dead fish go with the flow?

Supposedly, only the brave and the determined can fight against the flow to achieve greatness and create something new. But to be different isn’t limited to only ‘going in the opposite direction’. 

That phrase seems to indicate that unless you are wildly different, you won’t succeed.

You don’t always have to go completely opposite to mainstream to have something innovative.

Apple isn’t going in the opposite direction to other technology companies, they simply ‘package’ their products better.

Tesla isn’t really moving in the opposing direction, they’re simply finding an alternative way to empower a vehicle.

‘Reverse ideas’ can be a great way to start an ideation process of what to improve.

But if your only pathway to a solution is looking for a polarising opposite to what’s expected, you’re likely to turn a lot of people off before you even begin.

Grow quickly and build a following by going with the flow but finding clever ways to package what you’re creating.

3. Struggling to stay relevant? Consider this idea.

The prompt:  Your audience can’t see. Does your idea change?

Counterintuitively, creativity can thrive when some boundaries are given, often producing novel results. To cater to the visually impaired, Disney developed ‘Feeling Fireworks’, a tactile experience that makes fireworks more inclusive.

You won’t have a profitable business if you create something that nobody needs.

After all, “necessity is the mother of invention”.

In other words, to create a thriving business, innovate, or be creative, you need boundaries.

You can apply this thinking to innovate an existing business.

Case in point: I’ve met business owners that went from making things to making things accessible.

Websites, PDF documents, and other digital and interactive tools.

Read that again: they stopped making their core thing – and started doing something different.

The changes in your business don’t have to be this drastic, but the prompt can help you see something you weren’t seeing.

4. Need to add more excitement to your offers? Think like Walt Disney.

The prompt: Imagine that you are Walt Disney.

As a way to inspire and direct the Imagineering team, Mr. Disney’s created ‘Mickey’s 10 Commandments’. Commandment #4 is ‘Create a weenie – Lead visitors from one area to another by creating visual magnets and giving visitors rewards for making the journey’.

What does this tip make you think of?

It could be about weaving stories into your business and how to connect everything.

It could also be about gamification and how you could reward customers for their attention.

Look at your current business – specifically services/offers and customer experience.

e.g. If you only rely on selling one high ticket offer (or volume of low-value products), you could look into a value/product ladder.

e.g. If you want to improve churn rate, systemise a way to reward loyal customers (anniversary vouchers, surprises for repeat customers)

Options for improving these two areas are only limited by your imagination (limitless).

5. Is the status quo holding you back? Package your business idea cleverly.

The prompt: What if you took away a key requirement?

Tesla took the assumption that cars needed a driver out of the equation and put self-driving cars into development. They’ve also made some of the software available as open source to other car manufacturers to enable industry-wide innovation.

Innovation is seldom about creating something that doesn’t exist.

More often, it’s about finding a new way of doing an old thing.

Say you’re in the hotel business. Do you need hotels?

Not necessarily. Enter Airbnb.

Another example is the pandemic. 

It showed many businesses that what many assumed was a key requirement was optional.

Working on-site at the office to be productive.

6. Trying to turn problems into opportunities? Use this technique.

The prompt: Can you turn it into a ‘how might we’ question?

A perfect mix of specificity and broadness in a ‘how might we’ question is a great way to help open up the possibilities and see a multitude of solutions. If you can create multiple ‘how might we’ questions for your problem, even better.

You might have heard to frame problems as opportunities.

That’s bollocks. Problems are great.

They help us become better problem-solvers.

But we can turn problems from scary to fascinating by framing them as questions.

And it will work even better if you spot multiple questions within a problem.

Problem: We don’t have any idea why customers return their orders.

• Question A: How might we get customers to tell us reasons for returns?
• Question B: How might we decrease the number of returned orders?
• Question C: How might we get customers to contact us before they decide to return a product?

7. Want more cut-through in the market? Use this exercise.

The prompt: How can you sum up your idea in only 6 words?

Supposedly, once upon a time, Ernest Hemingway bet some friends that he could write an entire story in just six words. This kind of brevity might seem impossible, but if you think about writing an entire 300+ page book, the premise seems less daunting.

Focusing on the absolute essentials can help you find the true essence of your brand.

Think about your brand and business, could you distil it down to just 6 words?

What about your customers? How would they describe your brand in only 3 words? 

A little more effort now… what one word could summarise the essence of your brand?

When we think of McDonald’s, we think of burgers. 

Even though they also have a cafe, a playground, and other products and experiences (and they consider themselves a property company). 

But they’d built their business around a core offering, making sure to be top-of-mind for it. What one thing are you top-of-mind for?

8. Need more business focus? Adopt a metaphor to drive your brand.

The prompt: Can it be like a radio signal?

Albert Einstein described the wire telegraph as a very, very long cat. ‘You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, and they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat.’

Most ideas and businesses are born by looking at the world at large.

Is there a ‘big idea’ that can focus your business efforts?

e.g. Amazon (the company) applies the metaphor of Amazon (the river) to how they think about business. Keyword – resource.

Arguably the largest river in the world, Amazon represents the company’s ambitions to offer the widest range of products to the widest areas of the world.

A ‘big idea’ or brand metaphor can often outlive your actual offering (i.e. products and services may change).

To discover your brand’s metaphor turn to customers and see what story about your brand they are telling.

Tip: Interviewing 10-25 customers will be a good start.

9. Having issues with brand assets? Take a monochrome look at them.

The prompt: You can only execute your idea in black and white.

The red, yellow, and green traffic lights are somewhat problematic for colourblind people who have trouble distinguishing between colours. That’s why some new innovative traffic light designs include additional arrows for ‘go’ and a cross for ‘stop’.

This is an especially helpful prompt when thinking about your visual brand identity.

While colour can be a wonderfully memorable brand asset (e.g. Tiffany’s Turquoise), you can’t rely on it solely.

There are times when colour is unavailable or unpractical to produce. And in some instances, is unseen (colourblindness).

And you need to have other elements that customers associate with your brand beyond colour. (distinctive brand assets)

Does your logo work when reproduced in black in white or in small sizes?

Do you have other brand elements customers associate with you (e.g. The Golden Arches of McDonald’s)

Going even further and touching on a previous post, what if your audience can’t see at all – can they still recognise you by your audio branding?

10. Customers aren’t as engaged as you’d like? Add some play.

The prompt: Imagine that your audience were children.

As children, we tend to be less concerned with outcomes and mistakes and more with exploration and curiosity. Richard James, a naval engineer, came up with the idea for the worldwide phenomenon toy Slinky by accidentally dropping one of the battleship’s springs.

There are plenty of businesses already taking care of our ‘base needs’ (shelter, food, safety, etc)

And today we all seek more play and wonder in our lives.

Is there an element of play, exploration, or curiosity you can add to your business?

You might launch a community like Lego did with Lego Ideas.

A hub that allows users to submit ideas for Lego products to be turned into potential sets (essentially promoting play in adults).

Or you might add playful automation like Duolingo with their learning reminders.

And automate customer notifications when it’s time to return.

11. Need to align your team? Fight a villain in your brand story.

The prompt: What if you rebelled against something?

In 1984 everyone got talking about Apple, as it set itself up as a rebellious defender of humanity, liberating the world from monotony and technological lobotomy, and building a massive following of fans in the process. 

Branding-wise, you don’t need to go to extremes to succeed or stand out.

But you do need to differentiate sufficiently for customers to choose you over others.

As Rollo May said, “The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it is conformity”.

In practical terms, can you find a Lex Luthor (villain) to your Superman (your brand)?

It could be an outdated industry standard. 

It could be certain damaging beliefs you want to change.

It could be bad habits customers are working to overcome.

Next step: Create a story that positions you as a no-brainer solution for rebelling against (and defeating) this ‘villain’.

You can use this strategy to inform your marketing messages, pitches, tone of voice, and more.

12. Want to have the same impact as Google? Become indispensable.

The prompt: Can your idea change language?

The word artificial is an example of a changed meaning. It was once used to communicate something artfully or skilfully constructed by hand. Then we also have verbs that never existed before, such as Google, Uber, and Xerox, thanks to the success of those brands.

When a brand becomes indispensable, everyday, must-have, it can alter our vocabulary.

There are downfalls (e.g. genericide), however, the upside outweighs those. Your business becomes top-of-mind for a specific category.

If Yahoo ended up buying Google in 2002, we could all be yahooing right now instead of googling.

To achieve that laser focus, lean into your primary strength that serves the (future) needs of your customers.

Being known for doing one thing really well (even if you do other things) is what helps to build those associations. 

What could that be for your brand?

A previously shared tip on distilling your brand down to 1 word can help inform that decision for you.

13. Customers find your process too complex? Focus on this instead.

The prompt: How can you reduce it to pure essentials?

Recipes that call for just 3-5 ingredients are gaining popularity because of their simplicity, purity, and accessibility. Similarly, traditional Italian cuisine relies on the freshness and combination of just a few key ingredients.

Have you engaged brand consultancies that built you a 7-step process pyramid to ‘inform your brand’?

Or does your own process involve these many pillars, elements, and gizmos? 

The truth is that your audience doesn’t care nearly as much about your process as you do.

What they do care about is whether you can get them from A to B with the least risk and most benefit.

Your process is below-the-bonnet stuff – most people don’t need to know about each component that makes a car work.

In fact, your conversions will double when they perceive you as a simple, no-brainer solution.

Stop talking about your process, and start marketing the direct outcomes of working with you.

14. Struggling with brand consistency? You need this analogy.

The prompt: Can you think about it as the weather?

If it’s dark and rainy, it might be dark and rainy for two weeks in a row. But it will also be sunny one day. It isn’t under one’s control when the sun comes out, but it will.

This weather analogy is a great mindset to apply to building a brand or business.

When launching a new product, reaching out to business leads, and building revenue, consistency is a must.

e.g. I know that if I ‘forget’ to spend at least 50% of my efforts on networking and marketing my services, new business will dry up.

Building a brand, marketing, and innovation. Those are all ongoing, long-term activities. And you will have ups and downs.

You can’t control the outside forces (market, global events, etc).

But if you have a systematic approach to your brand-building activities, results will always appear.

Despite what’s happening with the weather.

15. Want to be perceived as a more premium brand? Define this first.

The prompt: You can only build your idea using red 2×4 LEGO® bricks.

In a study, two groups were asked to build a construction, one group with no constraints, and the other could only use a certain type of brick. Which group do you think came up with the most creative constructions?

The question on the card may seem like a trick one. Surely creativity would come from fewer constraints?

The reality of the experiment (and many similar studies) shows otherwise.

The ‘constraints’ group’s creations were judged to be significantly more creative and lateral than those in the free expression group.

Beyond creativity, limiting inputs can help position your brand as a premium one (and charge premium prices).

FMCG brands do this a lot. 

e.g. ‘We make our yogurt only from fresh Tasmanian milk’

or ‘We only use ethically sourced wild tuna’

In practical terms, you can limit your:

• ‘ingredients’,
• the customers you work with, 
• the deliverables 

Try this modified version of Marty Neumeier’s Onlyness Statement:

Our [your offering] is the only [your category] that [perceived customer benefit]

16. Don’t feel like you’re working on your dream business? Go through this exercise.

The prompt: Imagine that you are dreaming.

Carl Jung believed that dreams were the psyche’s attempt to communicate important things to the individual and give us clues about what was really going on. He believed that dreams felt nonsensical because they communicated in symbols. What dreamy and abstract associations and symbols can you conjure up?

Here’s an exercise to help you (re)imagine your dream business. 

You can do this exercise alone or with your leadership team.

Imagine it’s 20 years in the future. 

Your business and project have been a resounding success.

It’s impacted the world in ways you couldn’t imagine. 

A report is being written in TIME magazine about this reality.

What’s on the cover page (sketch)? Write the headline. Subheading. A short summary of the report.

After the exercise, you can reverse engineer to steps and events that lead up to this success (and discuss common themes of this vision if you have multiple participants).

17. Not getting the desired product launch response? Let customers create your brand.

The prompt: What if customers were involved in co-creation?

Kickstarter started in 2009 as a way to bring creative projects to life and help creators build communities around their work. As of 2021, over 19,004,664 community members pledged, supported, and have become part of over 193,952 independent projects and ideas.

Being an idealist and perfectionist can cause us entrepreneurs a lot of frustration.

We launch products that underperform because we forget to establish product-market-fit first.

We need to build what the market wants, not what we think it needs.

Share a survey to gather potential interest.

e.g. I’m thinking of building a course/product that helps achieve x, would you like to learn more?

Split-test your ideas with low-cost Meta ads.

e.g. Set up 2-3 basic landing pages with different ideas, headlines, etc, and see which ad performs best.

Launch a waitlist or beta program.

e.g. Run organic or paid traffic to the waitlist for your offer and see if it gathers sufficient leads.

Have the market co-create with you by telling you what they need.

18. Can’t overcome a challenge? Try redefining the problem.

The prompt: Can you redefine the problem?

When Henry Ford was looking for more workers he redefined the problem by instead asking ‘How can we find more work for people?’ and helping him to think about it from a different perspective and reinvent the manufacturing process as a result, by introducing a conveyor belt. 

If you can’t overcome a challenge, try redefining the problem.

Let’s say you’re struggling to find a logo designer who will ‘nail’ it.

Phrase your challenge as a series of questions, until you see the ‘real’ challenge.

 How or in what ways (action) (object) (outcome)?

e.g. How can we design (action) a logo (object) that will make my business seem professional (outcome)?

e.g. How can we position (action) the business (object) so that it’s perceived as professional (outcome)?

Even a slight language change can help you see you have an entirely different challenge.

19. Ended up with a bloated product or service offer? Reconsider your priorities.

The prompt: How many components can you subtract?

French author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry once said that ‘Perfection is achieved when there is nothing left to take away’, and while less isn’t always more, we can always reflect on ‘What can we take out of the idea or experience to make it more focused?’

The word subtract in itself tends to have a negative association.

Our brains are wired to subconsciously see addition as a more positive action.

But complex doesn’t always mean better.

Clear marketing messages will work better than complex ones.

Less complex branding and visual elements are more versatile.

Your team will perform best with actionable (not vague) brand values.

A clear (and somewhat automated) process will beat a complex one.

20. Feeling the snowball or treadmill effect of social media? Refocus your energies.

The prompt: Can you find similarities with a snowball?

For instance, we can think about investing as having a snowball effect. As the snowball rolls farther, it gets bigger (the longer you keep investing the stronger your investment grows). 

The most relevant business activity we can apply this analogy to today is social media content.

The average human consumes roughly 34 gigabytes of data & information every day. 

That could equate to about 100,000 words heard or read every.

But if you’re not somewhere in that ‘noise’, you risk slipping away from people’s attention altogether.

That doesn’t mean you need to get on the hamster wheel of social media though.

You don’t need to post every day to stay relevant. Focus on a few exposure and reputation-building pieces.

Even 2-3 weekly, strategically planted pieces can compound in the long term.

21. Investing too much effort and money in acquiring new clients? Adjust your strategy.

The prompt: Your solution has to be a sum of many parts.

One of the rules in Cubist Art is that if representing an object, it must be fractured and depicted from several viewpoints – this type of constraint typically creates something novel and unexpected. How can your idea be a combination of many parts?

Let’s look at just one possible way to apply this prompt to your business.

You’ll know that it’s much harder (and costlier) to seek out new clients than to serve existing ones.

And yet, most business owners spend a disproportionate amount of time on the former.

If you could redirect just some of that energy into finding new ways to serve existing clients…

You could re-invest some of the profits back into marketing to have new customers come to you. Win/win.

Apple does this very well. They get you with the iPhone. Or the Mac. 

But they have an entire ecosystem of other things for you to buy. Apps. Music downloads. New iPhones and Macs.

22. Don’t have the skills to innovate? Partner with someone who does.

The prompt: Imagine that you’re a chef.

In the most basic terms, we can understand that a chef creates a recipe or dish based on certain ingredients s/he has or knows. If a new ingredient is introduced, suddenly there is an opportunity for new experiments and recipes. 

As a ‘cook’ equivalent business owner, you might do okay.

But it’s unlikely that you will have a ‘Michelin-star restaurant’ (be top of your market)

If you do want to be a leader in your industry you need to find a way to innovate.

A way that you and your business can ‘create the recipes’ not just cook them.

So as a ‘cook’ business owner wanting to innovate you’ve 3 options.

1. Learn the skills you need to become a chef (possible)
2. Remain a cook but hire chefs to head up innovation (easier)
3. Partner with a chef and build something of value together

Option 4: You do you, there are always alternative solutions to every challenge.

23. Can’t find a viable business idea? Borrow one.

The prompt: What if you had to borrow the solution?

Social Car is a service that lets car owners rent out their automobiles to people who temporarily need a car. More flexible than typical car rental agencies, it provides renters with access to a car nearby and allows owners to earn extra income. Win-win.

Airbnb doesn’t need hotels to compete with hotels.

Uber doesn’t need cars to compete with taxi services.

Even Apple doesn’t create all components for their products.

If you’re thinking about starting a business, you can see that you can do so without ‘owning’ anything.

Here are some of the most popular business ideas from 2023:

• Dropshipping (products made by others)
• Affiliate marketing (products made by others)
• Ghost kitchens (food prepared by others)
• Digital marketing (marketing other businesses)

And if you have an existing business it doesn’t mean you need to rethink your entire business structure.

But if you want to scale, at a certain point you’ll need to find a way to outsource or delegate.

Enjoyed this article?

This series is part of a 60-day content challenge. Prompted by my Get Ideas Deck, I’m sharing 60 daily prompts on LinkedIn, applying them to brand building. 

Hopefully, these will help you spot a new opportunity for innovation, strategic pivot, new leverage, or a rethink of your business and/or brand in 2023. 

Want to access all 60 prompts? Download the Get Ideas Deck or download the ebook for free here.

Please share this article with just one person you think might enjoy it. And if you found this article insightful consider signing up for Studeo Insider emails and receive more insights like this, once a month.