Learning, Sharing, and Teaching > Entrepreneurship
Need Business Ideas
Mgmny:
Hello everyone!
This is going to be a standard "What should we do?" request for ideas. My wife and I are looking for some/a side hustle(s) that could potentially become full time when my wife quits her job to be a stay at home mom in a few years (don't let that limit the ideas though, i can just as easily take it over with less parenting responsibility). I know there are no "secret" businesses that can make you a boatload of dollars, but we have a lot of good interpersonal skills that I think we can leverage.
We often find ourselves commenting on independent business owners sucking at their jobs, and how "simple" it would be to do it better than them (Businesses don't call us back when we ask for quotes, or don't return emails, or when we get a quote for something, they never follow up, etc etc.). My wife and I are super-punctual, professional, and generally provide high-quality communication skills in our current careers, that we FEEL would make us great business owners. We vet everything thoroughly before we do it and really pay attention to detail.
We're the type of people that try every possible coupon combination to get our pizza order to the least possible $$ (unbeknownst to me until recently, some people literally pay full price for pizza when there is a 50% coupon waiting for you if you click "deals" at the top of the page!! I was horror-struck when i found this out). We're generally charming people, that face-to-face interactions would be a pleasant experience for customers (i.e. we're not ugly, and people wouldn't avoid doing business with us because of this).
We're smart and it seems like it would be foolish not to leverage this. In a recent poor experience with a glass-repair/replacement company, I thought, "Wow, doing business with these guys really sucked. Learning to be good at replacing standard glass would not take long to learn/master, and I could provide 10000x better customer service than this company. Maybe I should just start a glass repair company, and easily put these guys out of business." But then I think, "You are reasonably intelligent, and there's a reason accountants make more money than construction workers. Don't waste your intellect on a physical-labor enterprise when you can do better making money with your brain." I'm not trying to spread elitism here (I really enjoy working with my hands, actually), but people generally get paid more $$$ to work with their brain than their hands.
I've read a lot of posts on here, and we've looked at franchises (generally a terrible business decision, it seems), and I've looked at businesses for sale, but the ROI seems really low than just opening up my own shop and building the business myself.
We'd appreciate any/all your help, and will definitely answer questions and appreciate constructive criticism. Thank you!
tl;dr: My wife and I are extremely customer-service focused, and would be able to provide a punctual, professional experience for our customers. What business should we start?
lexde:
I don't think there's a cut and dry answer to what you're looking for. It sounds like you want to do business coaching, but don't actually have the foundational experience of running a business yourself.
If someone had a million-dollar business idea, they'd be doing it themselves. So I think the best advice here is to take a long hard look at yourselves and your community, find a need, and fill it. The lucrative jobs take creativity and are usually tailored to their surroundings. What does your community need?
If you don't want a brick and mortar type business, try coding and app development and see what you can do there. I'm sure you could think of 100 ideas for mobile and web applications that would be useful, and then narrow it down to 5 and get to work. You'd be helping others while making a living. Maybe apps that help small businesses stay organized?
But generally, the "what" needs to come from you, not us.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Mgmny:
--- Quote from: lexde on September 18, 2017, 07:37:17 AM ---I don't think there's a cut and dry answer to what you're looking for. It sounds like you want to do business coaching, but don't actually have the foundational experience of running a business yourself.
If someone had a million-dollar business idea, they'd be doing it themselves. So I think the best advice here is to take a long hard look at yourselves and your community, find a need, and fill it. The lucrative jobs take creativity and are usually tailored to their surroundings. What does your community need?
If you don't want a brick and mortar type business, try coding and app development and see what you can do there. I'm sure you could think of 100 ideas for mobile and web applications that would be useful, and then narrow it down to 5 and get to work. You'd be helping others while making a living. Maybe apps that help small businesses stay organized?
But generally, the "what" needs to come from you, not us.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
--- End quote ---
Thanks lexde!
I understand why you mention small business coaching, and that isn't really a goal of mine - i was more mentioning this as a way to be better at small business than potential competitors. Like you said though, i have 0 small business experience, so i doubt i could get far as a business coach.
I feel like we'd make a really good realtor or insurance agent team, but everyone and their mother does that, so I guess i'm looking for something with low startup costs that we can capitalize by being pleasant, intelligent people to work with.
lexde:
--- Quote from: Mgmny on September 18, 2017, 08:20:10 AM ---
Thanks lexde!
I understand why you mention small business coaching, and that isn't really a goal of mine - i was more mentioning this as a way to be better at small business than potential competitors. Like you said though, i have 0 small business experience, so i doubt i could get far as a business coach.
I feel like we'd make a really good realtor or insurance agent team, but everyone and their mother does that, so I guess i'm looking for something with low startup costs that we can capitalize by being pleasant, intelligent people to work with.
--- End quote ---
Realtors can make quite a bit of money and if you're personable and intelligent you're already ahead. While the market IS saturated, you can specialize and you'd be surprised by how far a super clean website and marketing scheme can go. Most realtor sites seem gimmicky to me. If you could get something clean and streamlined you'd do well. Especially if you can cross-market with related fields (i.e. become or partner with a staging and photography service, get on lists of trusted realtors with big names like Dave Ramsey etc.). It will take creativity but that's where the fun is. If you can cross market you can make the business even more lucrative.
financialfreedom:
Build a business/app that allows middle-class, time-poor people connect with great tradespeople / contractors.
Offer the service that you have found is missing. You get paid for providing the full-service to your clients, while providing regular work to quality professionals (for a lower price that the client could get direct).
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