Business Inspiration: 9 Ways To Find It

Business inspiration is the spark that leads to a great idea or energizes you to build your company. It can come from anywhere—even from your own backyard. 

Alex Drexler, founder of the fashion brand Alex Mill, finds inspiration around New York City. 

“Our inspiration, our vibe is really from New York City,” Alex says on Shopify Masters. Anywhere you look in New York, “you can see such beautiful details, from the color of the buildings to just walking down the street. New York is really, truly an inspiration.”

Read on to learn how to come up with business ideas and find inspiration of your own, with tips from successful entrepreneurs.

The importance of business inspiration

In the business world, inspiration is the spark that stimulates your brain so you can create something new. Inspiration can lead to developing new business ideas, product concepts, marketing strategies, and more. 

As you start your entrepreneurial journey, you can lean on your original inspiration to maintain a competitive advantage and clear brand vision. 

Learning strategies for finding business inspiration—such as researching your competitors, connecting with other business owners, talking with customers, or even just taking a walk—can help you uncover opportunities more consistently. 

Once you feel inspiration strike, seize the moment—don’t wait to take action. An entrepreneurial mindset is willing to leave comfort zones and believe in yourself. 

Besides, a 2026 study conducted by The Harris Poll on behalf of Shopify found that up to 57% of founders who waited before launching say they wish they’d started sooner, not that they were better prepared.

Ways to find business inspiration

• Take a walk
• Go to a museum
• Travel somewhere new
• Read a wide variety of material
• Look to history
• Think about your own needs
• Stay up to date with your industry
• Use social listening
• Meditate

Here are a few ways to proactively source inspiration:

Take a walk

The physical world is a rich source of inspiration—all you have to do is take a walk and immerse yourself in it. 

“I think one of the best medicines in life, not just for creativity, but for many things, is to take a walk,” Arjan Singh, cofounder and head of brand at filtered showerhead company Jolie, says on a Shopify panel.

“You’re not gonna be creative if you’re put on the spot to be creative,” he says. “Being curious, asking questions, having an open mind, not saying no to an idea, saying yes to an idea and sort of building upward from there and going for a walk—I think that solves a lot of life’s problems.”

Go to a museum

Museums afford the chance to be inspired by great works of art. They also let you take a break from staring at a screen. 

Elaine Choi, CEO of haircare brand Crown Affair, recognizes the importance of periodically stepping away from work to find inspiration. She’s been doing it with Crown Affair Founder Dianna Cohen since day one.

“We would talk and we would go to museums, and that’s what we encourage amongst the team, too,” says Elaine at a Shopify panel. She calls these unstructured hours “wobble wobble time.”

“What is the inspiration that sparks the work? And then you go into the work—versus sitting for four hours on a laptop, and maybe doing some online shopping, and seeing what happens,” Elaine says. “That’s always been the culture of how we work.”

Travel somewhere new

Sometimes you need to get out of your own bubble to get a fresh perspective and find new ideas. 

“Whenever I can, I travel,” chocolate brand Compartés CEO Jonathan Grahm says on Shopify Masters. “Traveling puts me into a different mind-frame, where I could take the business hat off for a second and be more creative, be inspired by the things that are around me, by my surroundings, by nature, by flavors, by food.”

Jonathan uses his travel experiences to inform his product development process. 

“I might have a salad at a Thai restaurant that might have ingredients like mango and basil in it, and I’m picking them out going, ’Oh my god, a mango basil chocolate would be amazing,’” Jonathan says. “I’m constantly trying to take my surroundings and my experiences and put them into my brand.”

Read a wide variety of material

Read material including books, blogs, trade journals, and news articles to look for inspiration. Reading widely allows you to broaden your knowledge, discover new ways to solve problems, and learn from history. 

These blog articles provide business ideas to help you feel inspired:

• Online business ideas
• Part-time business ideas
• Travel business ideas
• Wholesale business ideas
• Tech business ideas
• Low-cost business ideas
• Passive income ideas
• ChatGPT business ideas

Look to history

Founder and CEO of Harlem Candle Co. Teri Johnson finds inspiration in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s. The founder became interested in this period, and the titanic cultural figures who shaped it, while studying abroad in France.

“James Baldwin, for instance, lived 17 years of his life in Saint-Paul-de-Vence and wrote some of his greatest work and lived his happiest moments there,” says Teri on Shopify Masters. “How can I capture that in a fragrance?”

Teri eventually moved to Harlem and started pouring candles at her kitchen table. “I have so much appreciation and respect for those who’ve come before me,” Teri says. “I wanted to figure out, ’How can I create products that people like? How can I create products that I want to buy?’ I want to buy a candle inspired by Josephine Baker’s boudoir.”

Think about your own needs

Sometimes, the best product to sell is the one you’re looking for and can’t find.

Take Dan Demsky, cofounder and CEO of clothing brand Unbound Merino. Dan was preparing for a trip through Southeast Asia and read that merino wool’s antibacterial and odor resistance qualities made it perfect for travel. 

“I think: Perfect. I need to find merino wool T-shirts,” Dan says on Shopify Masters. 

He bought a few merino T-shirts with boxy cuts, but the outdoorsy look wasn’t versatile for urban settings.

“I remember it was in this cool cocktail bar: I’m looking around and I’m seeing all these people around me and they’re all dressed really cool,” says Dan. “And I’m wearing this shirt that looks like I should be walking with a canoe over my head.” 

Dan realized that his inability to find the product he wanted signaled a gap in the market—one he could uniquely fill with a new business. 

“And then it just hit me: I’ve been spending the last two years trying to find a product to sell,” Dan says. “This is it. Because if Unbound Merino existed when I was looking, I would just be a customer.”

If you’re worried that the product you wish existed is too niche, know that, in 2026, niche market products are outselling the mainstream. Nearly 55% of new Shopify stores launched in 2025 were in a long-tail category, according to Shopify’s 2026 survey with The Harris Poll. 

Stay up to date with your industry

Keep a pulse on what other brands and leaders in your field are doing. Toral Patel, former senior vice president of marketing at beauty brand Kopari and current CMO at skincare company Prequel, recommends perusing the news, going into stores, and browsing social media. 

One way to know where your industry is headed is to set up an RSS news feed or Google keyword alerts for your business or product category, so you’ll get alerted every time there’s a major development. 

You can also use Google Trends to see the popularity of different search terms over time. Likewise, newsletters can help you keep tabs on what’s happening in your industry and what your competitors are doing.

Another option is to attend industry conferences and networking events to help you meet other smart people working in your field, get feedback, and build a strong community.

“It’s important to build a close network of people who are in similar roles where you can bounce ideas off of each other,” says Toral. “If you’re in a rut or stuck on a challenge, you can freely share without fear of your ideas getting out or being judged or anything like that.”

Use social listening

Social listening is the process of monitoring and analyzing what people are saying on social media platforms. It involves observing larger conversations relevant to your business as well as digging into the comment sections of your own posts.

“I love reading all the comments on our social media,” says Joanna Griffiths, founder and president of undergarments brand Knix, on Shopify Masters. “One of my favorite things to say is that the answers are in the comments. And I really want to stay close to the customer and what it is that they’re saying to us. So most of our great product ideas come from comments and suggestions that come from our customers.”

Meditate

If you’re feeling overwhelmed with information or stimulation, it can help to take a beat to sit in silence and quiet your mind. This has helped Ann McFerran, founder and CEO of the nail and lash company Glamnetic.

“That plays a big role in my creativity and making me feel consistently inspired every day and happy,” says Ann on Shopify Masters. “If you’re not working on yourself emotionally, then it’s going to hinder your ability to work within your company.”