I hear a lot of folks (not just here) talk about how those out of work should start a small business. So - Let's have at it.

If you were going to start a small business, what would it be and why?

Example 1: One fellow I knew was in maintenance for years at a metal stamping company. A couple years after becoming the maintenance supervisor he quit and started his own business. He bought a couple of used presses and set them up in a building on his property. He then went out and got 'over flow' from companies which took on contracts they did not have the capacity for, which have equipment problems, or some other capacity issue. It is interesting that most of his work is undocumented outsourcing where he can get dies back to the customer quickly in case a customer would want to visit and see their dies... As we all know, this practice, though very common, is frowned upon (this is not a reflection on him, but rather his customers).

Example 2: One fellow, about 8 years ago, decided to blacktop driveways. He had a hard time holding jobs because, like me (ahem...) he found it difficult to work in what my restaurant friend calls an 'insane' envirionment. He has no staff - He hires people for each job (temps). Last year he netted over US$95,000 (gross was over US$200,000). Most of his work these days is from government - Local road work, but he also has a number of 'big name' accounts such as the local Walmart's parking area. My opinion as to why he succeeded is he is a 'good personality' company. In this case, it's his personality. But I believe if he was put in a position as a CEO in a big company and given the power, that company would become a 'good personality' company.

Example 3: This web site. I'll throw this in because it has become an income source for me, even though that was not the original intention, nor do I have a 'business model' for it. I'd say it's moderately successful, but then again there are web site owners out there makes thousands of $ every week if not every day (last year this site grossed about US$27K). As to why it has 'succeeded' (as in been around a long time), and I'm guessing that to some degree it is 'succeeding' (opinion territory), I can't say. Even sitting here right now typing, it amazes me that the site is what it is and that so many people spend so much time to help out others with their problems. But - I'm thinking about the blacktop business....

So - Small business ideas. What business? Why would it succeed? Startup costs? Any details which you would like to give.

If you were going to start a small business, what would it be and why?.

This topic reminds me of a joke my father used to tell.

A man was visiting the small town where he had grown up after having been away for many years. He was conversing with an old-timer when a memory suddenly surfaced. There had been a civil war cannon in the town square, and one of the local municipal workers, a man named Clyde, used to clean it periodically as part of his normal duties. The visitor asked the old-timer if Clyde still cleaned the cannon. "Nope," replied the old man, "about 15 years ago Clyde bought a cannon and went into business for himself."

:topic: This site is marvellous in contrast to my husband's similar attempt for Linux users. There wasn't community support for the questions placed in the forum; he ended up researching and answering most of the questions himself, which became too much of a drain.

I wrote a few articles for the site (he wasn't skilled or comfortable to do much writing), which were viewed thousands of times but we weren't able to keep the hits consistently numerous to attract advertisers. It's too bad, because it looked like a good thing for awhile.

If I had more skills at it, I'd so small home improvement jobs. Only get to be a 3-4 person company. If you do a good job, and show up on time (a BIG problem in this industry), dress reasonably and don't cuss like a sailor and act like a slob, you can get all the business you will ever want by word of mouth, and make a decent living doing it.

I'm already making and selling jerky. I'm looking at growing the business, and possibly raising marshmallow.

If I had more skills at it, I'd so small home improvement jobs. Kevin Mader did that for a while with a fellow and they did quite well. I don't think Kevin is still doing it, but last I heard his partner was very busy and doing quite well. :topic: This site is marvellous in contrast to my husband's similar attempt for Linux users. There wasn't community support for the questions placed in the forum; he ended up researching and answering most of the questions himself, which became too much of a drain.

I wrote a few articles for the site (he wasn't skilled or comfortable to do much writing), which were viewed thousands of times but we weren't able to keep the hits consistently numerous to attract advertisers. It's too bad, because it looked like a good thing for awhile. If you look back through some of the old threads here, for quite a while I pulled stuff off of news groups, listserves and other places. But I wasn't really doing it back then as a profit venture. As much as anything else I used this as my 'own personal' database and learning tool, if you will. There were a few early 'regulars' who joined in. That was nice and it was fun.

But even now I don't see this site as terribly popular, but that's my perception of what 'popular' is. If there were typically 400 or more people on the site at any given time I'd be more inclined to define it as 'popular'. It continues to be interesting, I must admit. I do know it's harder than people think to put a web site online, keep it online and to drive traffic to it.

I'd want something that my wife and I can do together.
We currently run a flea market leather shop that shows some signs of life, though this year hasn't been great so far. I do like the freedom of our little shop. And I like dealing with the customers (most of the time)
We also have a presence on line which is also showing some stirrings.

I am thinking of marketing a series of databases that I have been working on. These would be basic quality databases written in MS access and designed for small businesses to get them up and running quickly. While also allowing them the fexability of modifying the database themselves, or having me do it.

My problem is that the things I like to do the best you don't get paid for. I love to read history. Particularly of the WWII period. One could possibly do research for others but I don't know that would work.

I will put in my 2c on the home improvement thing. A co-worker from years ago went our on his own to purchase "undervalued" homes, fix them up and resell. When I ran into him last year (at my flea market shop) I asked if he was still doing it. He laughed and said he never got started. While he was looking for the first property, he did some handyman work for friends. He's been so busy ever since that he hasn't had time to re-hab a house. All word of mouth and good craftmanship.

FWIW

In my opinion, a business (big or small), requires "entrepreneurship" in hiring help and positioning the business for continuity and growth (if there is sufficient market.)

Most one-person "businesses" are really self-employed

tradespeople (selling a product made by a third party or selling a hobby product)
craftspeople (carpenters, mechanics, plumbers, electricians, machinists, Quality auditors:rolleyes: )
or laborers (janitors, landscaping workers, etc.)
Self-employed people can make a very healthy income, but business owners employing multiple people can make enormous incomes AND build equity in a going business which can be sold at a multiple of income, whereas the self-employed person has no "business" to sell other than some equipment and perhaps a repeat customer list, which will barely sell at depreciated value.

Many people are suited to be "self-employed" - only a few have the temperament and courage to take on the responsibility of creating an organization to provide income and work for multiple people on a steady basis.

For quite a few years I've had a side business building and selling computers. I used to make some fairly good money, but the market is too saturated now - it's tough to make it worth the time. I still do an occasional upgrade or something, but it's just from word-of-mouth by friends who know I can do it. The value I get from it now is mainly the tax advantage I get for business use of my home.

As Wes implied, this type of business is really just trading time for $$. To make more income requires more time. To be a really successful business owner, my business would have to provide more and more income while requiring less and less of my time...

Interesting thread. I've always said that I would like to come up with a good idea to create a business that employs a few people. I think quality management types make good leaders because we know how to think in terms of "processes" and "systems". Many of us are also pretty good at keeping everyone happy. Comes from all those years of customers yelling at us, and management expecting a lot, and not always providing the resources!

I did look into franchising about a year ago. Specifically from the company Mad Science, based on Canada. Pretty cool product for educating young kids about science, but BIG start-up costs.

If anyone has a brilliant idea, and needs a good people person with all that processes and systems background, let me know!

--Jodi

My husband is a surveyor and is working through getting his various licenses. The grand plan is that someday I will start my own surveying business (our state is very friendly to Woman Business Enterprises) and I will work with him (not for him!) doing the non-technical research, grunt work, etc.

It should give us a decent income and something to do when the kids (notice the use of the word "when" and not "if") are out of the house. If anyone has had to pay for a property survey lately, you know its not cheap. I plan to profit from that someday!!!

Another plus to our plan is that I'm the one with the marketing degree and the people skills. My husband..well..he knows how to survey. We'll leave it at that.

I toyed with owning my own business many times...Bar/Resturant and manufacturing but they seemed to be too big a headache too soon. I love to cook and developed some seasonings so I don't have too add 4 or more seasonings all the time. I have 4 blends that cover 75% of my cooking. I started selling them at our Farmers Market last year with some sucess. But I am still looking for something that I really have a passion for that can be sucessful. I can be creative with something enjoy and don't have to worry about how someone else preceives it (like in Quality).

I got this by e-mail today: Dear SAE Member,

Consulting Workshop for anyone interested in starting their own consultancy business is being offered on Thursday, April 14, 2005 at the Marriott Renaissance Center, Detroit, Michigan. This is during the SAE World Congress week.

This workshop covers topics such as why you might want to consider your own business, how to decide what product or service to provide, tactics to employ to promote your business, business structure, financial issues, and more. A list of reference materials will be provided to the attendees.

For more information and/or to register use the following link: http://www.sae.org/globalsections/sections/new-consultant.htm

Sincerely,
Janiece E. Lang
Program Developer
SAE, Membership & Section Programs
janiec@sae.org
Bus. Phone: 724.772.7137

Since Marc posted something about help starting a business, I thought I would mention a nationwide group called SCORE (http://www.score.org/). It's a network of mostly retired executives who provide either free or low cost assistance to people wanting to start a business. I attended a helpful 4 part seminar for $50 last year. It covered accounting/financing/marketing/legal issues. There is also a good database where you can search for and be hooked up with a mentor.

--Jodi

I am not sure this is off topic or not.

I am currently working in a forigen development agency supporting Technical Vocational Education and Training. My organization hires consultants in differnent fields related to its mission. Eventhough these external consultants are earning a nice income than me, I am the one who is assisting them in many aspects. I feel I could do what they are doing in a better way. Now I am planning to leave my permanent job and do my own business as a consultant in the field - try to share the market with these consultant. Would you please give a hint to proceed with my plan

I am not sure this is off topic or not.

I am currently working in a forigen development agency supporting Technical Vocational Education and Training. My organization hires consultants in differnent fields related to its mission. Eventhough these external consultants are earning a nice income than me, I am the one who is assisting them in many aspects. I feel I could do what they are doing in a better way. Now I am planning to leave my permanent job and do my own business as a consultant in the field - try to share the market with these consultant. Would you please give a hint to proceed with my planThe primary considerations are these:

Do you have sufficient funds to support yourself and family until you start generating consulting jobs to equal or exceed current income.
Do you get non-cash benefits from your company now that would be difficult to duplicate if you were on your own (health care, vacation pay, office space, computers, telephones, internet connections, etc.?) If yes, how much more will you have to earn to make up for that?
Do you know for a fact these consultants you deal with are working regularly or do they have lots of "down time?"
Will you be able to get consulting jobs from companies other than your current employer? (the ideal is to have a large pool of potential contracts to cover yourself if any one of the companies has a slow period or decides to bring the work in-house.)
Will you be able to become an entrepreneur and hire assistants to do the "grunt work" so you don't merely trade a steady job working for a company for a nonsteady job as a part-time contractor?

Thankyou verymuch for your prompt respond I realy appreciate you and your site.. just to answer to your questions:

Yes, I have a fund which is to be used out of from my provident fund of years of service in the company. But I always do not dare to touch this money because i see it is only appropriate to use when I am retired.Concerning the sourse of contract, or jobs, I am not relying on my compony only. I have targeted many other companies seeking my service(but no certainity)

Regards,

This is one of my favorite topics. I used to have a "crazy business ideas" blog but I took it down.

My two latest ideas are for enterprising teenagers:

1. Garbage can pressure washing. Lets face it, garbage cans get stinky. A kid with a pressure washer could put out fliers that he'll be in the neighborhood on the next garbage pickup day. If people want their cans washed, tape the flier along with a check to the front door on that day. (This sign-up method is pretty effective in my neighborhood for lawn aeration.) Most people would probably pay $5-10 dollars - e.g. if there is a garbage can and a yard debris can. You could hit a lot of houses in one day.

2. Lawn mower tune-up. I get a lot of kids that come around trying to sell their lawn mowing services. No thanks, but it'll be cool if one of them offered a tune-up and blade sharpening service.

Regarding the home improvement business, my thought was that it would be a good idea to market yourself to real estate agents. When people sell their houses they often could use some help sprucing up the property. The service would have to be targeted somewhere between the cleaning service and remodedling levels. That is, it would be a detailed cleaning service (clean the molding with a toothbrush level of detail), and low-end house repairs (caulking, gutter cleaning, drywall patching, touch-up painting, etc.).

- Nick

I became unemployed 3 years ago, with 9 months unemployment comp.
The day I came home from work, I told my wife to think of a name for a hair studio. (she had 20 yrs, experience)
We found a building, remodeled it ourselves and opened in 5 months.
I worked for the next two years just off word of mouth from people who asked my wife who remodeled the studio.
I did have experience with drywall, hardwood floors, doors, decks etc. with a little plumbing and electrical.
I hired people when needed and did fairly well.
The toughest things about both of us being self employed were paying for insurance, no sick days, always buying new equipment(no savings) and never being able to make time to relax.
The 12 to 14 hour days weren't bad because I was doing so many different things that time went pretty fast.

Last October I moved back into manufacturing just to get benefits and catch my breath. (I still handle all of her paperwork and payroll)
Now having had a taste of business ownership, I definitely see my self getting into something else.... only time will tell.

Ed

Regarding working with real estate people.
My partener and I came up with this idea a few years ago and have found that most of them are too greedy to share their commision. So what we did was to create flyers describing what we can do for the SELLER prior to contacting an agent. The last house we painted, papered and re-finished the hardwood floors. The agent said the because of the extra $ the seller had invested, they netted and extra 20K for their house! We also did some landscaping.
So we made 5K for two weeks work, the seller made money
and the agent left our business card on the kitchen counter!
We get most of our business via word of mouth. Two more homeowners in the area have contacted us since!

Somehow I missed this topic....

I've been doing photography on the side for years, a little more professional since about '98 or so. I belong to a camera club locally, we have a decent studio area so I can do studio sessions easily (if noone else is using the space).

It's hard to compete against the $20 Walmart/Kmart/Olan Mills places though. I mostly push sessions for someone to give photo's to their significant other (used to be called Boudior Photos in the '80s I guess). I also do regular portraits, senior pix, etc... 3 hour shoot costs $150, and now that I'm full digital you get a CD of everything & 12 4x6's. Add-on's are $10 each.

I have my own studio equipment now & travel to events to do a "Prom Pix" setup. Backdrop, 3 lights, laptop, camera & dye sub printer that spits out nice 4x6's & gets put into a paper holder. That's been a real success lately.

I wish I could start my OWN studio though. The hardest part would be 1) finding a space that's affordable (I'm broke) and 2) covering the daily bills till profitable (guess about a year). Almost had a place early this year but couldn't get the $ together.

Jerry:nopity:

Somehow I missed this topic....

I've been doing photography on the side for years, a little more professional since about '98 or so. I belong to a camera club locally, we have a decent studio area so I can do studio sessions easily (if noone else is using the space).

It's hard to compete against the $20 Walmart/Kmart/Olan Mills places though. I mostly push sessions for someone to give photo's to their significant other (used to be called Boudior Photos in the '80s I guess). I also do regular portraits, senior pix, etc... 3 hour shoot costs $150, and now that I'm full digital you get a CD of everything & 12 4x6's. Add-on's are $10 each.

I have my own studio equipment now & travel to events to do a "Prom Pix" setup. Backdrop, 3 lights, laptop, camera & dye sub printer that spits out nice 4x6's & gets put into a paper holder. That's been a real success lately.

I wish I could start my OWN studio though. The hardest part would be 1) finding a space that's affordable (I'm broke) and 2) covering the daily bills till profitable (guess about a year). Almost had a place early this year but couldn't get the $ together.

Jerry:nopity:One of my friends got riffed several years ago and was keeping body and soul together working 3 to 4 days/week as a substitute high school teacher. He had always had an interest in cameras and things. One day, I invited him to be part of an audience where I was giving a presentation for a local access cable outlet. He was fascinated by the "backstage" part of the studio and invested savings and borrowed to get two high quality "professional" digital video cameras and has gone into business of "videographing" everything from weddings to industrial training films. It took a year of part-time to reach break-even and he did some "pro bono" work for some business associations and chambers of commerce to create word-of-mouth publicity when he showed the completed, edited DVD disks at their meetings. His next goal is more cameras to be able to intercut long views and closeups in the editing process. Along with that will be the entrepreneurial aspect of hiring assistants.

He is now exploring the concept of uploading videos on a website (teasers - for association members to order full DVD copies of proceedings) and eventually, sufficient storage and bandwidth to hold entire films available for downloading.

So far, he is doing all his editing on a Powerbook with several extra hard drives attached.

They always recommend starting a new business doing something you like. Here is a good example of how profitable it can be. My wife works with someone whose husband started a business from a hobby he had. After a disability forced him into retirement from law enforcement, he started spending more time on his hobby of making model airplanes. He was very good at it, started meeting people at model airplane shows and eventually made some contacts to make prototype models for airplane manufacturers. The business did so well that he literally became a small business millionaire.

Bill Pflanz

That's a great story Bill. Another way to start is to identify where there is a whole or niche you can fill in your area, like shopping for other people, making deliveries for stores, curb service oil changing and the like. Check out Entrepranuer Magazine (I might have mis-spelled it). They also have a pretty good website.

I've been doing photography on the side for years, a little more professional since about '98 or so.


Wife just called and said someone is ripping me off. Even charging the same amount for shoots. Friends of a friend I believe. Oh well, surprised it took this long...

Jerry:rolleyes: