This may help you. On my business podcast, "Bacon Wrapped Busines" (Shameless self plug) I just interviewed an expert at this named Jimmy Coleman. You can hear the full interview here: https://baconwrappedbusiness.com/linkedin-lead-generation-strategies-that-actually-work-with-jimmy-coleman/ And yes, he helps with this exact stuff. Question: What is your business?

Yes you can.

Will you permit me to be really frank with you? One of the things I get paid by clients for is Ideation consulting. But ideation is a specific process, not randomly brainstorming ideas. Here's the frank part, you're looking for a very lazy way out... which means you're already lost. Yes, you can take a passive role in a business by investing cash in them OR by providing such extraordinary value one time that they give you equity for that value exchange. You also said you want to found a startup but not do interviewing. What does that even mean? You don't want to interview employees?

Your "passion" is around entrepreneurs and business owners. But is that also your "experience" in being one or helping others in any way shape or form. You love coaching and consulting and speaking... which infers you've done it a lot. Unless you mean you "would love to" coach/consult/speak but haven't done it yet. You would need to be more specific. Because your ability to help consult is dependent upon your actual ability to help consult. I did this video about the topic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJmeJ6-D4rI But you still need to start with your existing ability to help

So this is a great question and requires a relatively complex answer. And this is NOT legal advice. The first answer is that No, in most cases do not patent the invention yet. Often a provisional patent will do just fine, much cheaper and faster to market. Most inventor patents out of the gate are a waste of time/money. Additionally, one license negotiation piece is that if you have the Prov Patent Application, (PPA) then you can have the licensee pay for the cost of YOUR patent. I recently interviewed licensing expert Stephen Key, NYT Bestselling author of One Simple Idea about this topic. You can listen if you'd like for free here: http://baconwrappedbusiness.com/stephen-key/ Hope this is helpful

I actually have this article bookmarked in my evernote account about explainer videos. http://l00p.co/xgO15Q they do a great job of breaking down all the steps of the process and I used this when I created an explainer video for http://pigtones.com

As a long time investor in real estate for myself and someone who finds properties for other investors I will try to help you out. First decide what your long and short term goals are. Your priorities are more important than the property or area. Are you looking to for a solid medium to long term investment that yields a good return over time in a stable asset or looking to make quicker cash by fixing and flipping. If you're looking to get a good return on your money, without worrying about being an active landlord, fixing toilets or having management responsibility, there are companies who will do all of this for you. Find the property, rehab it (if necessary), rent it out and manage it. You'll pay them to do this, but it's a lot less work than getting involved and doing a lot of this yourself. In fact, most of the properties I purchase for myself and my clients are from frustrated landlords who bought property, wanted to manage it themselves and after a few years of headaches, they sell it to me at a very big discount just to get rid of it. So make sure you know what you want for yourself, both in terms of return on investment and time or risk involved. There are opportunities for you no matter what you want to do, but those are key. AFTER you know that, the biggest decisions are WHERE to invest and how you're going to find the properties. If you live in Southern California, as I do, you may not want to buy and hold because you can get much more for your money in places like Dallas and Memphis (where I buy houses to "hold"). Working with a company who does everything for you is a called a Turn-Key operator. Hope these help, if you'd like more insight, feel free to schedule a call. Brad