Best Small Business Ideas 2010 And Beyond
What are the best small business ideas for 2010? Did you know they are right in front of you? The following is a guest post by Joel, a Certified Financial Planner™. He is the owner of a website with a unique credit card finder, a and a website for comparing car insurance rates.
It seems that many entrepreneurs have a knack for seeing the world a different way. Where most people will see a problem or an annoyance in life the entrepreneur will constantly be thinking of ways to solve a particular problem or meet a market demand. While of course we can’t all be like Thomas Edison I do think that maybe we can all agree that simply by attempting to look at things around us in new ways that maybe we can begin to solve some problems and find solutions that people will want to pay money to have.
photo by Fab O Lens, Flikr
This article will be very common sense but I think very potent if we can all try to apply some of the practical things from below into our everyday perspective and then maybe even find a gem of an idea to use as the basis for starting a new business of our own (if you do then be sure to read the article from Neal titled “6 Mistakes I Made When I Opened My Business” first). Here are some common mindsets in the forms of questions or statements that no doubt all of us find ourselves thinking and an accompanying uncommon question or statement that many with an entrepreneurial mindset would think as they try to tune in to the entrepreneur opportunities that are all around us on a daily basis.
One personal example was when I was fresh out of school and working at my first job I was under the impression that the group health insurance offered through my employer was the only health insurance that was available to me even though I later found out that the cost of the employer group health insurance was about twice as much as a similar individual health insurance plan that I could have purchased out on my own from the exact same company (Aetna)! That experience along with others gave me the idea to start a website for comparing many different options for health insurance. Here are three common scenarios that we all have come across at least once in our life. Do you act the “normal” way or do you see the potential entrepreneur opportunities and learning experiences that are all around you?
The Best Small Business Ideas Are Right In Front Of You
Waiting in Long Lines
Instead of saying, “Why is this line so long? Ugh! I hate this! I have so many things to do!” ask yourself: “What is this store doing right/wrong to make so many people wait in line to buy from them? Is there a competing good or service that could offer something better? What is a complementary good or service that many of these same people waiting in line would likely also be interested in purchasing?”
Getting Really Bad Customer Service
Instead of saying, “This company has horrible customer service!” ask yourself: “Why does this company have horrible customer service? Is is the way that the customer service process is set up? Is the customer service center understaffed or poorly trained? Do the owners of the company even realize what is going wrong? If I were the owner how would I be able to improve customer service and monitor their performance? Is their poor customer service consistently so poor that maybe it opens the door to a new competitor that can compete with them based on the key differentiator of superior customer service (and be able to charge higher prices)?”
Finding a Great Out of the Way Restaurant
Instead of saying, “Wow, this restaurant is great! I never even know that this place existed and it’s only a mile away from my house!” ask yourself: “Why have I never heard about this restaurant before? How could the restaurant owner have gotten my attention in a cost efficient way? Is this small restaurant operation easily scalable into a larger operation or into a franchise model? If I were the owner how would I go about getting new customers to try my food?”
*Want to hear a horrible idea that I had while working as a waiter at a buffet in high school? I got the wonderful idea to buy a small wall mounted antacid/heartburn pill dispenser off of eBay and I attempted to convince my restaurant manager to let me place it on the wall of the restaurant. Needless to say, the restaurant manager (and probably 99.9999% of all restaurant managers) were not so thrilled with the idea of placing a machine that dispenses heartburn pills right next to the door of their restaurant. Oh well, some ideas you happen to see are good ones and some are just downright horrible.
What are the best small business ideas you have come up with?
What are some common scenarios that YOU find yourself in where you have noticed either the entrepreneur learning experience or the entrepreneur opportunity that is right in front of you?
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