I know a few people that say they plan on being entrepreneurs but they're waiting on a great idea.  One thing I now know from working at Zane is that you can't have great ideas unless you're already an entrepreneur.  Great ideas always solve problems and you can't solve problems unless you know about the problems and you can't know about problems unless you are already working in a related field.

It seems like very few companies are founded on an idea.  Facebook started out as a lame online yearbook.  Google was a stupid research project.  Yahoo was basically just a collection of links.  It wasn't until these companies got going that they actually had their great ideas, and those only came because the people working there were so innovative.

Great people create great companies.  Great ideas are just really cool things to daydream about.

Ok, so let's say I consider myself a great person (stop laughing).  That means that I'm in a position to start a great company.  But if I think it's a waste of time to wait for a perfect idea, where do I start.  I realize that however the business starts isn't important, but it still has to start somewhere.  This was my conundrum.

Well, this recent freelancing gig pretty much solved the problem for me.  The work I'm doing is for a company that isn't particularly tech savvy.  During virtually every step of the process, I thought to myself, "Man, I'd really do things differently if I were running that company."  I don't mean that as a criticism.  This company manufactures skis.  There's no reason for them to worry about tech stuff.  But I wanted to worry about it for them.

That's when I realized how I can find a problem that I want to solve.  If I wanted to start a company, I'd just get as many freelancing gigs as possible in as many different industries as possible.  This would do two really great things.  First, it would create a source of income so that I wouldn't feel pressured to rush into a venture prematurely.  Second, I'd have exposure to way more potential business ideas than I ever could working at a preexisting company.

People only hire freelancers when they have a problem that they can't solve themselves.  I think it's safe to say that if you expose yourself to enough of these problems, you'd eventually find one that you could build a business around.  You'd also already have a customer for whatever product you wanted to build.

So if I were to start a company today, my first move would be to book 80 hours a week of consulting and freelancing gigs.  Knowing how I generally work, I bet I'd have an entire business model in a matter of weeks and I wouldn't even realize it until I had already figured the whole thing out.