Anything can be a business. We’ll say it again. Anything can be a business. Your angry rants at bad drivers? A stand-up comedy routine or song lyric material. Your aunt’s donated closet of vintage clothes that aren’t your style? An online vintage store. Your style that everyone on campus wants to copy? A personal shopper or stylist. Your science projects in the basement? An emerging biotech company.

So don’t get hung up thinking that the things you love to do most in the world don’t seem very businessworthy. They might be not at first—but that doesn’t mean you can’t get them there. Cast a wide net for yourself and really think. (Take a walk around the neighborhood. Getting your feet moving has an incredible way of getting your mind moving too.)

WHAT HAVE YOU ALWAYS LIKED TO DO? Don’t self-censor. Don’t tell yourself, Yeah, but that’s not really a business. Make a list, and don’t feel embarrassed if it includes things like hanging out with your friends, painting your nails, googling weird science facts, and studying for engineering tests. We can create businesses out of all those things. That’s the fun part.

Alex Douwes and Nellie Morris came up with the idea for their business, Purpose Generation, because of common attitudes and opinions they observed in their peers.

ALEX AND NELLIE

It all started over coffee back in 2012 when we were discussing why so many of our peers were unhappy in their jobs. A lot of them were leaving the corporate world for startups in the hopes of finding a greater sense of purpose and agency, looking to have an impact. We recognized that large corporations have significant resources but often don’t understand how to leverage these to retain top young talent and engage millennial consumers. We discovered that boardrooms are filled with 50-year-old-plus men talking about what their kids want and realized that, as millennials, we were uniquely able to advise them on how to remain relevant.

Instead of making assumptions about what our generation wants—or assuming that our own opinion reflects that of everyone else—we decided to build a tribe of 18- to 35-year-olds to act as our in-house insights engine. Our tribe is made up of engaged, passionate consumers who want to co-create new products and services alongside brands. We kick off every project by tapping into our tribe and continue to come back for them for feedback and gut checks along the way to ensure that the consumer voice is an integral part of every solution. Instead of sitting down with research participants in a sterile environment like traditional market research firms do, however, we connect with them as peers and make the process as engaging and fun as possible. Then we translate these insights into a language our clients can understand. This has been a huge differentiator for us.

FIND YOUR THING

They key to any good business is coming up with something you can provide that other people want. Sounds simple, and it can be. Sure, there will be hitches along the way, but if this wasn’t challenging, it wouldn’t be worth doing.

YOU KNOW WHAT YOU LIKE TO DO. It’s that thing you always have to put aside so you can get to your homework. Then, as soon as you get the chance, you’re back looking at videos on coding and trying to hack into your parents’ laptops. Or writing your blog. Or makng smoothies. So take those interests and think about how to pursue them big-time. That should be the starting point of your business: the thing you love to do so much that you’ll sneak time away from everything else to do it. If you love it, you’ll keep at it until you’re good at it. And if you’re good at it, you’ll want to spend more time on it. Once you’ve mastered it, you can build it into a successful venture.

HERE IS WHERE YOU GET TO STRETCH YOUR IMAGINATION and think far and wide about how what you like to do could be a business. Don’t limit yourself to enterprises that sound like traditional businesses. If you and your friends always start each hang session by pulling out a bag of clothes and swapping them, realize that maybe there’s a new business in clothing swap parties. Throw in a small entry fee and some food and your idea turns into a fun, profitable night. Art, politics, nonprofit work, writing: any of those can be your launching pad. The only thing that qualifies a new venture as the right venture is that it’s something you enjoy. Let’s start there and take the next few chapters to figure out how to turn that thing you like into something you pursue avidly. That something is your business and you are the Boss.

For Neeka Mashouf, that thing was a solar car.

NEEKA

I’ve always been passionate about renewable energy, especially solar energy. Ever since I first learned about it, I have been in love with solar energy. . . . If cars were powered by the sun, there would be so much power for change. This project is student-built, student-run. People on the team had an idea of what they thought was cool, that they thought would have an impact, and they just ran with it. The things we do are things no one has done before, exploring this unknown frontier.

I’m super passionate about this. The car team has been around since 1990 and has built generations of vehicles. We just finished our eighth-generation car. It’s gone from three wheels and superheavy to now incredibly light, with the same mileage as a Tesla—250 miles (400 km) on single charge on battery pack. If you drive at 45 miles (72 km) per hour, you can drive indefinitely on sun power. The energy in equals the energy out.

People have described the car as looking like a spaceship or boat. It’s really aerodynamic and thin from the side. Sleek. It’s beautiful, with a cockpit for the driver. This car and past cars seat one. The next car that we’re designing is going to be a multiseater solar-powered sportscar. We’re getting closer to the vision of having a solar car in society.

START BY MAKING A LIST

GO ON, GET OUT A PIECE OF PAPER. NUMBER IT FROM 1 TO 20. Start listing things you like to do, or even things you’ve always wanted to do but haven’t had the chance to do. List them with abandon. Don’t censor yourself or tell yourself they’re not business-worthy. We’ll get to the how-tos later. What are things you would do on a day when you had no other plans? Your list can include things like coding, going hiking, throwing a ball with your dog. Maybe you enjoy reading magazine advice columns or long-distance running? Whatever you like, write it down.

THEN MAKE A NEW LIST. Write down 5 things that really scare you. Do you hate speaking to strangers? Dislike talking about yourself? Hate being indoors? These things are good to know, too. Things that scare you are not reasons to choose or not choose a type of new venture. They’re things to know about yourself at the outset. Knowing them will help you deal with them and overcome them.

NOW HAVE A LOOK AT YOUR FIRST LIST. There are the activities that you simply love, the things you’d do for free, things you’d rather be doing than almost anything else. There’s also likely another category among the items on your list: things you’re good at. Being good at something can be reason enough to like it. But by acknowledging your skill, you’re distinguishing things you merely find fun from things you can do better than others. That’s where you can begin to find the seeds of the business you will start and run.

EVERY BUSINESS STARTS WITH AN IDEA. It doesn’t have to be a never-before-thought-of idea, but it has to be an original take on an idea.

Here’s how Chental-Song Bembry came up with The Honey Bunch Kids.

CHENTAL-SONG

The inspiration started when I was 10 years old. I loved reading and writing and loved to watch cartoons. But I didn’t see any main characters on TV who looked like me. My characters Dizzy, Cheeks, and Stuart are all in sixth grade, 11 years old. They’re based on parts of myself, my friends, my family, and kids I knew at school. All three characters were starting sixth grade and didn’t know one another, but they met at the same bus stop. I wrote about kids in middle school learning to get along, exploring such themes as respect, empathy, why not to bully, and peer pressure.

Right now I’m working on turning the books into an animated series and brand. What Dora the Explorer and SpongeBob have, I want for the Honey Bunch Kids. I’m working on a comic book deal and finding a production company to partner with. We have a theme song, animation—and cool dance moves.

IDENTIFY A NEED

It almost sounds so obvious that we sometimes forget: the best ideas come from someone looking around and thinking, Why isn’t there a ____ for that? If you’re wondering why a solution to a clear problem doesn’t exist, chances are others are thinking the same thing. Ask yourself, What are all the big or small problems I can think of that no one has solved yet? You may have some really big problems on your list, like coming up with alternative fuel solutions and restoring the water table in drought-ravaged areas. Or you could tackle a smaller problem: Why aren’t tights more durable?

Some challenges stem from your hopes for the world around us: less pollution, more trees in urban areas, more equitable access to organic food. Others are a matter of thinking outside the design box.

When Naama Raz-Yaseef started her nonprofit in Zimbabwe, she was trying to solve a very concrete problem in a single village: how to design a pump that would move water from a river up a steep slope and into gardens where crops were growing. The community needed an irrigation system, but they lacked the resources for the necessary power source.

NAAMA

My solution was very simple: to bring in irrigation pumps that were really small and cheap. They’re like the sump pumps many Americans have at their houses. But because there was no electricity in this village we decided to install mobile solar panels that cost less than $100 each. The pump suctions water from the river and pushes it up through a hose to a container at the top of the hill, from which a drip irrigation system runs the water through the gardens. It’s a simple, well-known working solution.

I believe in small scale, working with a specific community and understanding their needs. We test the system with the women and train them so they’ll become experts. They can train others, thus creating a source of income for the community.

JUST ONE MORE THING

WE HEAR IT A LOT: DO WHAT YOU LOVE! And while that is great advice—who wouldn’t want to have a job they love?—it’s not the whole picture. The reality is that work is work, and even doing what you love comes with a lot of things you might not love so much. You may even hate them. That’s fine—just make sure you can handle having them in your life. For example, if writing takes you to a blissful place of creative freedom, you may want to find a way to make it your business. And you should. Write a novel, start a blog, create a magazine, make a movie. But realize that there are other elements involved: selling your work, marketing yourself, negotiating, dealing with other people, being told no, rewriting according to other people’s ideas that don’t necessarily match your own. NO ONE LOVES EVERYTHING ALL THE TIME. There are bound to be bumps and scratches in the process of launching anything you decide to do. So make a commitment to yourself that you will persevere in spite of the things you may not love. They’re part of the package.

As the Bronx High School of Science Fe (Iron) Maidens learned, perseverance pays off.

CHARLOTTE, TEAM CAPTAIN

Being on a robotics team is a lot of work. We met twice a week year-round and every day but Sunday for six weeks during build season. We spent time at home planning out our meetings and gave up our weekends and summers for video calls discussing design and strategy. But in the end it was definitely worth it. As frustrating as robotics can sometimes be, when nothing works and deadlines are approaching, by the end of those six weeks, when you have a (hopefully) fully functioning robot competing with teams from across the world, you know that all the time and energy you spent in the end paid off. Even though you may have had to stay up way too late way too often or missed out on hanging out with some of your friends, you still got to spend time with your friends on the team, doing what you love to do.