Gaps in the market for selling to consumers

There’s still a lot of consumer demand for wellbeing based business ideas. Especially for ideas based around helping people to get better sleep and to feel better in themselves.

Although there have been a number of gadgets and apps around sleep for a while now, this is still an in-demand area, and there are some great business opportunities.

There’s been a big explosion in demand for vegan foods, including vegan alternatives to milk and dairy. Some of this is at the mid to high end such as my local YouJuice in Brighton which concentrates on raw and healthy vegan food, and some is at the mass market end such as vegan burgers sold in the freezer aisles in the supermarkets.

There’s lots of space for developing business opportunities here – but be aware that there can be big risks involved in running a food-based business.

You’ll have seen the big comparison sites for switching your electricity supplier or choosing the right credit card. These kinds of businesses have been around for a good while now, and there’s little point getting into this space and competing with the well-established people here.

But while we’re talking about finding the gaps in the market, there are definitely business opportunities in more niche comparison sites.

Find an area where people are willing to spend a decent amount of money (so, not small consumer items like books or pens) and do some human-powered comparison shopping. Write tons about this to attract traffic, and then offer people your recommendations based on the different criteria they might choose.

I’ve put several specific business ideas based on this gap in the market into my New Business Ideas Collection, showing you exactly how this works in practice and how to go about setting it up.

Gaps in the market for selling to businesses

There’s a lot of appetite at the moment for all kinds of modular building. From small kits for tree houses and garden sheds, through to modular ice rinks and industrial units. This market is better established in Germany and the US, but not in the UK, and the rest of the world there’s more of a gap in the market for attractive modular, pre-fabricated and half-built buildings. Note that I said attractive, as there’s lots of the regular ugly stuff out there already – the gap in the market is more for the mid-end ranges which look good.

That kind of business will take a good part of a million to set up, so it might be too much for some of us. But don’t worry, if you don’t have a million or even £100 to get going, there are lots of gaps in the market you can get going with straight away by selling services to businesses.

Business services gaps in the market

Businesses are run by busy people who don’t always have time to do everything. There are lots of service businesses you can offer to entrepreneurs to cover the things they’d like to have time to do but don’t.

And of course, business owners don’t have time to go through the learning curve of using the latest marketing techniques, applying new ideas to their business, or even putting the right messages out on social media.

There are lots of business opportunities here to create some great businesses, doing interesting things, helping people and making a good living. The trick is to identify the niche gaps in the market, so you sell your services as a receipts organiser, or a social media helper, rather than a full-on bookkeeper or a full-service marketing agency.

Keep up to date with my best tips and information

I keep my best resources exclusively for my email readers and that’s where I publish my best content first.

You may also want to read:

How to spot a gap in the market

Ideas for accountants

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We all lead busy lives. And we are far too busy to be able to spend heaps of time on researching exactly the right item.

Think of all the times where you have been bewildered by the amount of choice out there when you want to buy even the simplest of items. Unless it’s something that you have bought before, have got a strong recommendation from a trusted friend or you’ve got a whole afternoon to research what you want to buy, you are pretty lost.

I saw a Facebook post the other day, where someone was asking for advice on buying a laptop. She didn’t understand why some cost 2k, and others £300, let alone what kind of machine she should buy. I know the feeling…and had no idea of how to advise her. In fact, the last laptop I bought was on the recommendation of a geeky friend, cost me 1k, and breaks down all the time. It’s rubbish.

Even if my Facebook friend had all afternoon to dedicate to finding the right laptop for her, she still wouldn’t have the accurate information. Reviews are flawed, new products come out all the time, and she has a bewildering array of choice. And she doesn’t have all afternoon to spend looking.

Life is complicated – how you can help

And choosing a laptop is a simple choice, in comparison to other big choices we need to make in life. What kind of business should I set up (I can help with that one, at least). Who should I marry, which house should I buy, who should I vote for?

Anyway, enough complaining about how complex and busy modern-day life is, and on to the real big question. Where are the business opportunities?

Where is the gap in the market based on helping people to choose?

How to create a new business based on helping people to choose

There are lots of opportunities here, and three main business models to choose from

Business model 1

I suggest finding an area where people are going to spend a decent amount of money, but are uncertain about how to spend their money. Specialist travel, buying computer hardware for an office (i.e. spending more than 3k a year) or commissioning art are all good candidates for this.

Set up as an adviser in this field, and specialise in helping people to choose what they need without having to spend days researching it. Either charge people a fee to help them, or find a way of buying in bulk so your profit margin comes from the savings you don’t pass on to your customers. This gives you a service based business. If you pick the right area and do the right marketing, this can create a good business for you.

Traditional businesses which use this business model of helping people to choose include independent financial advice, travel consultants, artists agents, investment managers, book clubs.

If some of these are business models you haven’t come across before, that’s probably because you haven’t subscribed to my New Business Ideas Collection. Here is how that works, and how you can get your first month’s trial membership for just a fiver…

Business Model 2

Maybe you don’t want a service based business – maybe you want something more scalable? Maybe you want a bigger business which isn’t limited by the number of hours of your time you can sell to customers. You want something more automated, so you can help more people and make more money.

With a little more investment, you can help people to go through all the decisions on how to spend their money and make their choices, guided by your process.

Here’s a simple example

I had to buy a new bike light the other day. I went to Amazon, and they suggested about a million different types of bike light for me. I’m a busy person, and I needed one quickly or I would be a danger on the road.

With my bike lights example, you’d set up a website where I can put in my requirements…

– what kind of light (rear light)
– how much do I want to pay (a tenner, max)
– what sort of charging/batteries do I want (micro usb charger please)

And out pops the answer, with the opportunity to buy through you.

Choose your products carefully

Don’t do this with bike lights, by the way, there really isn’t enough money in this area to make it worthwhile. You want something like choosing the right private school for your children, insurance, or high end office equipment.

You will have seen this business model with all the switching sites for utility bills, and to some extent with Which, or Consumers Report in the US, who also charge you a fee for seeing their product reviews. The Trainline also has this business model, helping you to find the best train fares for your journey.

Modern and B2B business models

New versions of this are companies selling services to businesses, such as pensions auto-enrolment or payroll. I’ve used consumer focused examples in this article, but the real opportunities for this business model are helping businesses to choose how they spend their money.

Remember that you want to pick an area with a great deal of choice, but one that also involves quite a lot of money being spent. That way, there’s room for you to make some money on the basis of your recommendations.

Is there money in review or affiliate sites nowadays?

This is the traditional way of monetising helping people to choose. You find an area you’re interested in, write a ton of blogs about it, and review products in your area. For the “best buys” you provide an affiliate link where people can buy their thing, and you get paid a tiny percentage if they buy.

I beg you to think carefully before jumping into this area. It’s not such a great business model nowadays.

It used to be that you could make good money from the affiliate business model if you can get the right area, and generate enough traffic.

But nowadays, the opportunities are very limited, because there are so many competing affiliate sites. And most of them are pretty rubbish. The reviews aren’t real, they’re churned out by reviewers who are just writing up the manufacturer’s press releases. For many items, manufacturers release new models all the time Which is why I couldn’t just order another bike light from Amazon, the same as the one I’d lost – they don’t make it any more.

Amazon’s ability to offer faster delivery,and often better prices than the competition for consumers, plus very small fees for affiliates means that the opportunities for you to make money with this model is very limited.

There are lots of other business ideas out there – just because this one used to work, doesn’t mean it will now.

Some more business ideas based on helping people to choose

I’ve put a lot more detail on the kind of online businesses which work, and the ones that don’t in the New Business Ideas Collection, which is a good place to start when you’re thinking about how to get going with an online business like this. Here’s how the New Business Ideas Collection works…

Some other articles to get you thinking about your next business

You might also think about:

• The prostitute business model (not what you think!)
• The project based business model, and how to change your business to be more like this
• The recurring income business model – one of my favourites
• Business ideas based on curated collections
• The business ideas you don’t want to do (contains a lovely picture of dogs as well)
• A list of advanced marketing books – my choice of the best marketing books for small business owners when you want to develop your knowledge further.

Photo credits to Graham Skuse and Martin Fiser on a Creative Commons license, plus Jeshoots and Kelly Sikkema from Unsplash

The post Can you make money from helping people to choose? appeared first on The Joy of Business.

You know the kind of thing I mean, big lists of half baked ideas for new businesses.
Well, this is my list of business ideas, but these are all ones that could actually make you some decent money. Some of them could make you a lot of money indeed.

Have a look at the list, see what you think, and then, if you want the detailed versions, plus dozens more great business ideas that actually work in practice, have a think about subscribing to the New Business Ideas Collection, my library of great business ideas, where I tell you how to set these up, what skills you’ll need to get them going, and how much money you could make in practice.

If you want to go straight to the full on version of course, you can get instant access to all the ideas, along with full instructions on how to get going with these business ideas.  Here’s how to do just that…

Here we go, your first list of business ideas

• Curated subscription boxes on a monthly basis
• Spotify playlists for specific purposes
• Eating meet ups
• Collective buying club
• Referrals generator and connector
• Receipts organiser
• Leave behind designer
• Business accelerator
• MailChimp manager
• Vertical vegetable growing

Another little list of business ideas you could set up

• Unusual weddings
• Graffiti removal service
• Life organiser/second wife
• Tourist welcomer
• Developing online courses
• Teach people how to get money through crowdfunding
• Set up a B2B membership site
• Whole life carbon off setting
• Opportunities in wearable technology
• Walks organiser

Even more great business ideas

• A cash flow add-on for Xero that actually works
• Specialist virtual assistant service for business owners with dyslexia
• Knickers by post (!)
• Specialist PR agency
• Lead magnet developer
• Online book group
• Private healthcare service finder (European version)
• Products made from Formcards
• Products the trainers (e-commerce)
• Video course developer

Here’s a list of business ideas I’m currently writing up for New Business Ideas Collection

• Course developer for lazy academics
• Course developer for people who are really good at what they do and want to sell courses to teach others
• Grants finder
• Business plan writer (Crowdfunding version)
• Services for dyslexic students
• Greeting cards by post
• Seasonal aromatic mixes
• Art gallery/cultural escorts (need to find another name for this)
• B2C membership sites
• Build and administer membership sites

Why have I put this list of business ideas together?

I quickly pulled this list of business ideas from the index of my giant file where I been putting together all of my writing about all the different business ideas I’ve been coming up with over the last few months.

One of the challenges of encouraging people to pay for access to the New Business Ideas Collection is that people can’t see what’s inside the box until they take the brave step of shelling out a fiver to take a trial membership.  Which isn’t a massive amount, but you still want to get an idea of what you’re paying for.

So I wanted to give you all an idea of some of the different ideas for new ventures that I’ve been playing with, and give you some food for thought about being self-employed, and some of the different ideas you might want to have a look at.

I have to admit that I got a bit bored with the copying and pasting, so these are about a third of the different ideas within the New Business Ideas Collection and I’m adding more all the time.

What’s next?

Obviously, this list of business ideas is just a teaser, something to whet your appetite and make you think about what you might set up as your next business.

If you’d like to get the full details of these different business ideas, and how to go about setting them up, then you can get access to all of the business ideas in the New Business Ideas Collection and choose something that is going to really suit you. Here’s how it all works…

The post A list of business ideas for you appeared first on The Joy of Business.

How to find business ideas

A while ago, I noticed that people were talking rubbish on the Internet.  I know, unbelievable, isn’t it.

In this case, though, this rubbish made me really cross, because they were talking rubbish in my area of expertise.  I came across loads of articles telling people how to find business ideas.  And pretty much all of the ideas were terrible.  You might have seen some of these articles…get cash now by babysitting, make millions by selling on eBay, all that kind of thing.

You’d think by reading these articles that all you have to do to make money nowadays is to write a few blogs, put up some affiliate links and then go and sit on the beach while the money rolls in.

So I decided to do something about this…

I thought about all the people who had come to see me over the years who wanted help with a business that wasn’t right for them. In fact, some of those business ideas weren’t right for anyone, because no one could make good money from them.

But how are people who have never run a business before supposed to come up with brilliant business ideas?  They can’t unless they’re particularly lucky.

I am lucky in this way, because I’ve been in the world of business for a long time. And I’ve been able to learn lots of ways to make money.  I know how to find business ideas because my job for the past 15 years has been at least 50% looking for the nugget of a good idea in the not quite so brilliant business that my clients have been running.

(The other 50% is helping clients to concentrate and bring out the good idea, and then helping them to make lots of money out of that bit, by the way.)

Have a headstart on finding business ideas

I sat in front of my computer and wrote up a bunch of business ideas.  I didn’t just do a list of them, I wrote recipes for each of them, describing how they work in practice, and how much money someone could expect to make with that idea.

This was an enjoyable this process to find business ideas, write them up and get them ready for people to use.  I didn’t enjoy throwing away the bad business ideas. The ideas which looked like they’d be good but didn’t stack up financially when I got my spreadsheet out. But that bit just had to be done.

How to get your hands on these ideas

If you want to find business ideas, I’ve got a whole load now.  And I’m adding new ideas, and new resources to help people get into practice with the ideas all the time.  I’ve called all of this my New Business Ideas Collection, and you can get your hands on my business ideas for £5.

Take a look and check it out… see if the idea you’ve been looking for is here waiting for you.  Here’s how to find the right business idea for you…

Photo credit – Coronal mass eruption (probably full of great business ideas) from the sun, taken by the clever people at NASA

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Some of the business ideas using curated collections

I love this idea, and I’ve used a lot in developing many of my New Business Ideas Collection. There are some good ones in there, such as selling knickers by post (one of my personal favourites) snacks for a specialist diet, and how to set up a subscription box service on the same model as Graze.

More resources if you want to get into the curated collections idea

Some thinking behind the business model of curated collections

Some more thoughts about how this works in practice

Top tips for using curation within your business

Lots more curated collections for business ideas for you

Are you looking for a new product or service to sell to your existing customers, or may be a whole new business altogether? I put together a big library of business ideas, some little ideas, some big ideas, and some in between.

If this sounds like the sort of thing you been scouring the Internet to find, you can get access to the New Business Ideas Collection, my library of all kinds of business ideas for just £5 for a trial membership.

Here’s how it all works…

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Most accountants offer help for businesses or individuals to make sure that they’re compliant with laws about tax returns and help with their bookkeeping.  Boring. I think there are lots of other business ideas for accountants to offer.

Why these business ideas for accountants are important

Most businesses don’t really understand the numbers that they get from their accountants, and they only look at them once a year. This makes me crazy when I see clients doing it. The annual return information from accountants is usually out of date as it’s done months later for the tax deadlines.

Wouldn’t it be nice if your firm offered a simple version of what the big firms offer and help with management accounting?

I particularly like this idea because you can offer it as an upsell to your existing customer base. It can be offered as a subscription service. Recurring revenue products like this add very nicely to your profits.

How this additional income stream business idea for accountants works

Many accountants see management accounting as a very full-on service, needing lots of resources to do the job properly. I’m not sure that this is true. For small and medium-sized businesses, most people just need their accounts to be up-to-date (which they can do themselves or through your existing bookkeeping service) and for somebody to give them a report once a quarter.

So I suggest that you build a templated report, then cut and paste the information from the client’s accounts into that report. You’d need to write it in plain English so that the business owner can understand it easily. It would likely take a couple of days’ work to build the report the first time, and then you could get a junior member of staff to fill it out for each company.

Have a think about the things that would be most useful for your average business owner to understand, what’s going to be really useful for their business.  Things like a graph showing the increase in sales matched with the increase in profits (or vice-versa), commentary on the increase or decrease in debtors might be worth pointing out.

You might want to have a paragraph at the end which gives an overall commentary on the financial health of the business, pointing out any warnings they might need to look at, such as liquidity or cash flow issues, or just congratulating them on doing well.

Try this idea on a dozen people first

You can trial this business idea on a dozen existing customers for free and see what the response is. Make sure that you tell people that this is a pilot and they’re getting a free beta version that is chargeable later. We don’t want your beta testers to get used to it and then get annoyed when you ask them for money later.

Then launch it as a paid service, put it on your website with a button they can press to subscribe and send out an email to all your existing customers. I think small businesses would welcome this once a quarter, and they might pay around £250 – £350 a year for the service.

Because you are using the template and you’ve already got access to your customers’ accounts, it would not take long to produce each report and add a personalised element to it. You wouldn’t need a managing partner to do this kind of work.

If you get a hundred people to sign up, that’s a nice extra £25 – 35K per year to add to your billing, with very few additional resources. Accountants – test out this business idea and let me know how you get on.

How much does this cost to get going?

You don’t need new staff or special software. The template can be developed in-house, so there’s not really a cost to getting this going.

My advice would be to avoid using a completely software-driven approach here. I’ve seen some of the automated reports coming from accountants, and they are not much use because they overuse accounting terms that business owners often don’t understand.  To get your clients to pay you an extra amount of money for this, you’d need to make sure that this was a “Service with a Software” business idea which was truly useful and valuable for the client. That means using the same natural language as your clients use and phrasing the report so they can understand it.

Who is this good for?

This simple business idea for accountants would be a lovely upsell for any firm, whether you’re a sole-person practice or a 30+-person firm. As well as the additional revenue, providing this service could be a good differentiator for your company, helping you to attract new customers.

What’s the trick to making this work?

I wonder if the reason why most accountancy firms don’t add in upsells is because they’re busy concentrating on the work that they have on hand. So the trick with this business idea is for an accountant to treat it as a distinct project and give it a champion. One person is responsible for making it happen across the company. This person writes the template, does the pilots, and sets up the emails and the sign-up form on the website, and gets the credit when the new money comes into the company.

How much money would I make?

This is an upsell, an additional recurring revenue product, rather than a whole business in itself. But that £25-35k (or more) is recurring income that you wouldn’t have had without this. And that probably represents the same income as about 20 new clients. Launching this seems like an easier way of increasing billing than having to bring in 20 new clients.

More product-based business ideas for accountants and business owners

As well as tons of tips, guides and ideas for accountants and business owners, I also run Adventures in Products, focussing on how to pivot to productised services and product-based businesses.

Adventures in Products

Photo credit – Anssi Koskinen

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Although being a business plan writer is really interesting work, because you get to find out about people’s different business ideas, I love the other parts of my business (such as writing up business ideas for you, and seeing my business mentoring clients) too much to just be a business plan writer all the time.

But there is definitely potential to build a business just around writing business plans for other people. This idea concentrates on writing investment-based business plans for banks, peer-to-peer lending or crowdfunding, but watch this space for other recipes based on other sorts of other business plans as well.

A business based on writing business plans for other people is a great one for anyone with a good understanding of what banks are looking for and somebody who likes researching and putting together spreadsheets. It’s a relatively well-paid service business – and it could be the one for you.

This is an sample business idea from New Business Ideas Collection, where I’ve got tons of new ideas for successful businesses, plus all the instructions for how to set up that kind of business.  Take a look and see what you think 

How being a business plan writer works

First of all, get some practice in writing business plans.

Unless you’ve written a few of them before, you’ll need to see a few pilots to work out how to do it (and the best way to build the templates that you’ll need) and to see if this suits you. I would contact a few local businesses and offer to write a business plan for them, either to help them to get investment or just help them organise their business better and do their cash flow planning. Not everybody will be up for your offer of something free, some people will think that there’s a catch in it, and other people will say yes, but won’t have the time to put in to give you the information about their business that you will need for the business plan.

I know from my own experience that people who want a business plan, even when they’re desperate to get funding for their business, often don’t have the time to give me the information or work on it with me. So don’t be put off if it takes you a few tries to get the pilot – it’s nothing to do with you, it’s all to do with the amount of time they have to spare.

The next stage is to write some really good templates. You could have a look around at some of the business plan templates that are available online, but I warn you that many of these are either overly simplistic because they’re aimed at start-up businesses, or they are very old-fashioned. It’s a good starting point, but I guarantee that you’ll have to write your own templates, including the ones for the Excel spreadsheets.

It would also be worthwhile looking at some of the crowdfunding sites, such as crowdcube.com, and getting hold of some of the business plans on these sites as a reference point for what other people are producing. I would also have a chat with some friendly bank managers, firstly so that you’ve got somebody you can introduce your customers to when they’ve got their business plan, so you look good; and secondly, so the bank manager can tell you what they are looking for in a good business plan.

Then you need to get yourself some customers.

This would be a mixture of different sorts of marketing.

You would definitely need a website, and I would pay attention to both search engine optimisation and content marketing.

I would also probably follow a pattern of developing a lead magnet, so you can develop an email list and then be able to regularly talk to people who are interested in business plans but maybe aren’t quite ready yet, so that when they do need the business plan you’re the first person that they come to.

You can find lots of information and tips on the main part of my website about this kind of marketing.

I would also get out there and do lots and lots of business networking, and find the right networking groups for you in your area. If you’re in Brighton in the UK, there’s a link of all the networking groups in my area on my site as well.

Make sure your LinkedIn profile is up-to-date, and take some time to reignite all your LinkedIn contacts, to make sure that people know what you’re doing now.

As a specialist service, it might take you a little while to get going, but that’s okay because it gives you plenty of time to build up the content on your website and keep adding to your email list.

How much does this cost to get going?

There would be a time cost to you here, to learn how to do this well, and to get your marketing setup, plus a bit of time to wait for the first commissions to come in.

Remember that you’ll need to allow a budget for you to live on for a few months while this gets going.

You’ll also need to spend some money on setting up a good website, including some money for a decent design, and possibly some training courses. I would budget at least £1500 for the set-up cost of the business.

Who would be a good business plan writer?

This is probably a business that is suited to somebody who is more introverted than extroverted. If you follow this business recipe idea, you are likely to spend quite a lot of time sitting in front of your computer, writing business plans, doing research, and drawing up spreadsheets, plus writing lots of text for your email and content marketing.

If you’re the kind of person who always needs someone around you, or you work best as part of a team, this probably isn’t the business for you. But if you work well on your own, can set your own deadlines and are happy putting your music on and getting down to work, this could be just the role for you.

What skills will I need to be good at this?

You’ll need to be very good at writing – it’s your job to bring this business to life and communicate that well to potential funders and lenders.

And a business plan needs to be written in relatively formal language, so you’ll need to be comfortable with this sort of English (or whatever language you’re going to be writing it in.)

Plus, you’ll need to be very familiar with Excel, not so much the fancy tricks like macros, but being able to handle quite complex documents – the kind of documents where multiple worksheets interrelate with one another. In particular, you’ll need to know about the world of business, and how it works in practice.

What’s the trick to making this work?

I like this business idea because you’re offering a specialist service as a business plan writer.

And you can offer a number of different levels of business plan. Some people will want something that is cheap and cheerful – maybe for £1000, and that represents a couple of days of work for a start-up plan. Other people will need something much more advanced that will take you three to five days of work, and they’re looking to raise a million pounds.

How much money would I make?

I charge between three and five thousand pounds to write a good business plan. And I tend to turn down the business plans at the lower end.

I’ll give you my secret, which is that my day rates for this kind of work (which I never tell to clients) is between £850 and £1000. Remember that you won’t be able to bill for every day, nobody does, but if you can build this kind of money for 60 days out of each year, that makes for a good income, especially as your overheads are going to be very low – just a computer, some software, and your marketing costs.

Great variations on the idea of being a business plan writer

You might have great knowledge of a particular industry sector, where you can specialise in writing business plans.

For example, you write might write business plans specifically for the pharmaceutical industry or for restaurants. If you have this, I would make a feature of it and dive deep into the sector, because you can always charge more if you specialise.

Other things to remember

On the legal side, you’ll need professional indemnity insurance to cover you just in case anything goes wrong with the business plan that you wrote. And remember to get part of the fee upfront, and part of the fee on completion, which is good for your cash flow, and also means that you do get paid.

Photo credit – thanks to Petra Bensted

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One of the things that I notice about working with smaller businesses who are growing into bigger businesses, is that they don’t have processes. They don’t have anything mapped out to tell people how to do things.

And as you grow, particularly when you have more than five people, or you have people who are in the same office as you, then this can be a problem. This great business idea is based on providing a solution for those companies.

It’s a great niche service business idea that might be the one for you.

This is a great business idea which is part of my New Business Ideas Collection.  If you’re looking for some new ideas for a great business, or want something to add to your existing business, take a trial for just £5 and look at a whole load of great businesses I’ve written up as recipes for you to try out.

How this great business idea works in practice

You might have worked in a bigger company, or you might just be a very organised person who can see how things should work. Your service is to go into growing smaller businesses with probably at least five people, but more likely 12 people and upwards, and help them to get very organised.

But you’re not going to be their office manager and do it all for them – that’s a different business idea.

As a small business process expert,  you go into a company and you map out their processes for them. You have a look at how they currently do things and you work out better, more efficient ways of doing those things.

For example, say you go into an events company, where everything is very busy, especially leading up to the event; you work out the best ways for doing the marketing for their events, signing up and getting paid for the exhibitors, a checklist for the venue, and instructions for all the people who are the greeters at the door, etc.

You might spend a couple of days working out how they currently do these things, and what the best ways of doing them would be.

You draw up lots of flowcharts, checklists, role descriptions, and maybe a Gantt chart or two. You train them on how to use all of this, and then you go away. For a while anyway.

You schedule in some time to go back to them, and see how they’re getting on. This is essential for two reasons: firstly, without your input they will go back to their own their old ways, and won’t be following your carefully drawn-out procedures. So it is in their interests to get you back to make sure that they do things the right way. Secondly, this is good for you, because you get to charge them more money.

You charge them an hourly rate for this, and you might add in another hourly rate which is for regular calls, updates or emergency callouts. You’ll probably go back to them about four times a year.

How much does this cost to get going?

This is another service business idea which you could start-up with just your LinkedIn profile and some nice business cards.

So it is a low-cost business idea to begin.

But to really get going and make sure that you’ve got enough customers, you will of course need a website – nothing special or outrageously expensive, but you should plan to recycle some of your first earnings into a decent one.

Or if you’ve got some money to start off with, it would be great to get this done around the time you start, and as websites always take a little bit of time to get together, you’ll have your first clients and some testimonials from them by the time that you’re uploading the first set of contents to the website.

Who is this good for?

This business idea is good for somebody who really understands how business processes work.

In particular, you have to understand how small businesses work.

In the past, I saw someone apply business processes from her experience at a very big company, and it just didn’t work in the tiny company that she was working in. She went into too much detail, and was too prescriptive, so nobody in the business wanted to do as she said. Learning from that experience, I think it would be fair to say that this business is suited to somebody who can be tactful and assertive, but not too bossy. You won’t get asked back regularly if you come across as bossy.

What skills will I need to be good at this business idea?

Obviously you will need to know about checklists, Gantt charts, and flowcharts, etc.

And you will need to know about modern ways of working, because your client companies will be relying on you to bring in very productive ideas such as online to-do lists, co-working tools such as Slack, and how to work with team members who are either permanently off-site in a different country perhaps, or are not in the office every day.

What’s the trick to making this business idea work?

I hope you spotted the trick to making this work. The trick is not to go in and just offer a one-off service and bill them for a couple of days, but to make yourself part of the team, so that you’re regularly coming back.

The other trick is about positioning yourself.

If your marketing says that you’re an organiser or an office manager, you won’t be able to get the big bucks. If you call yourself something like a process engineer or productivity consultant, that automatically makes you a higher end service, and something which you can charge more for.

Give this some thought; you don’t want to make the mistake of positioning yourself at too low a level when you first get going. Because it’s difficult to come back from that later on.

How much money would I make?

If it’s just you working in the business, I think that you could turnover probably around £35k. Remember that you won’t be billing every day, and a substantial amount of your time will be spent on marketing to get new customers in. Your expenses would be very low so most of this £35,000 would be pre-tax profit for you.

Great variations

Think about bringing other people into the business and helping you with this.

You might have somebody who you can team up with; you pay them a salary, and they do all the notetaking, process mapping and interviewing. This makes your life much easier, and you can handle more clients.

That would be the natural progression and the way that you can make the business more profitable. If you had a couple of helpers on board, you could raise your profit levels to around £50k pa.

Other things to remember

A quick note to remind you that you’ll probably need professional indemnity insurance to do this type of work, partly to cover yourself, and partly to reassure your clients, some of whom might ask for it.

Great business ideas – get them now

If you read this and thought “yeah, that’s a great business idea, but it’s not right for me,” then you should take a look at my library of great business ideas over at my New Business Ideas Collection.

I’ve written up “recipes” or “how to do this” guides to tons of great business ideas.

There are little sideline businesses, ones that can be scaled up (like this one) and some mega, make me a million type businesses.

I’ve put out this great business idea as a free sample to show how the New Business Ideas Collection works, so if you want to delve into more of these, you should definitely take out a trial subscription and have a look at some of the other great business ideas like this one that I’ve written up for you.

Here’s how it all works…

Some more words about small businesses: 

How small businesses can create a good workplace culture

Understanding your business environment

Photo credit – Processes by Jer Thorp

The post Business processes for small businesses appeared first on The Joy of Business.

This article is completely different.

Today I want to tell you about the business ideas you don’t want to do.

The business ideas everyone else is doing

You want to avoid the business ideas that are commonplace. I’m sure you know this already, in fact you might have already tried some of these ideas.

But if there are a million people doing wedding planning, prescription medicine delivery, or commercial cleaning in your area, these are ones to steer clear of.

And don’t get me started on the really commonplace ones, such as wedding photographer, dog walker or massage therapists. I can guarantee you that there’s either very limited demand in your area for these ones or that people have very limited budgets to pay for them.

Even for the ideas in my New Business Ideas Collection that I think are unique, my first advice when thinking about setting up a new business, is to research what the competition might be like near you.

The business ideas where there’s no money

You’re in business to make money, right? If you don’t make money from the business, then it’s a hobby. It might be a really rewarding hobby where you get to help people, or do interesting work, but I’m afraid that in my opinion, it’s not a business unless you’re making money from it.

So you need to make sure that there’s money to be made in the business idea that you choose. You’re going to be spending the next year, three years, 10 years of your life on this business and putting everything that you’ve got into it, so it’s essential that the company you set up can reward you financially.

You know that the commonplace business ideas I’ve been talking about are less likely to make you money, because this competition or because people won’t pay what you need them to pay. But even with something that appears to be completely new, with no competition in your area, you need to do some research to see if it will make money for you.

And remember that the amount of money that you want to make now might be different to the amount of money that you want to make in five years time, so your new business has to be able to grow financially over time.

Here are some of the business ideas I think you should avoid because is very little money in them:

• Cleaning company. Even if you think there aren’t cleaning companies near you, individuals and businesses will always be a bit mean when it comes down to cleaning. They just won’t want to pay much for your services
• Cake making. This one is probably ruled out because of the competition, everyone else is doing it to. But I would rule out cake making because it’s a labour-intensive, and because the ingredients are more expensive than you might think, so your gross profit ends up being pretty low
• Anything advertised as “home-based”. This one sounds great doesn’t it? I can work from home, I can work while I’m looking after the kids, all I need is a computer and an Internet connection. There are hundreds of people out there offering you help to set up a “home-based” business. Don’t fall for it.

You might well start your business working from home. I did. I work with businesses which are turning over hundreds of thousands of pounds, and the business owner happens to work from home. But that’s for the convenience, flexibility or for personal reasons.

Anything that starts with the idea that it’s a home-based business idea, in my experience, is an itsy-bitsy tiny little business which isn’t going to make the money that you need to live on.  It’s the idea that’s important, not the fact that you can run it from home.

Following your passion

There’s nothing wrong with setting up a business because you’re passionate about it.  I’m passionate about business advice, and helping people to make more money and have more fun in their work. But I’m also passionate about my allotment, reading books, walking in the countryside, and I get very excited when I see a heron spearing fish in a stream. There’s no way I’m going to make money out of my allotment or that heron I saw.

Don’t be misled by the advice to follow your passion, unless your passion reveals a really good business for you. In particular, avoid these kinds of businesses:

• Making crafts. The craft market is flooded, particularly at the lower end. Just take a look at Etsy to see how many people are selling things they’ve made. Some of the Etsy sellers are making good money it’s true, but those will be the people who are either getting other people to make the items for them, or they are very highly skilled and have developed a unique product that people will pay high rates for, such as expert leatherwork.

Unless you are a true expert, with 10 years plus experience, or you’ve developed a product which is definitely unique and will sell the high prices, I’d avoid the craft side of the business, no matter how passionate you are about it.

Follow one of the other ideas in the New Business Ideas Collection, one which will support you financially and give you enough spare time to do your crafts as a hobby. Of course if you want this hobby to pay for itself, you can always make it into a sideline business, but don’t rely on it to pay your mortgage.

• Writing. This is a funny one, because you’ll see that I’ve identified writing (especially copywriting) as a key skill in many of the business ideas.

If you can write compelling copy on your website, or on your product packaging, like Innocent drinks have done, that’s a definite bonus.

But it’s very difficult to make your living from writing, despite the claims of the independent publishing industry, or the people who tell you that you can make 10k a month from blog writing. Some people are talented, and lucky because their books take off and they can support themselves with the income, but even those people would still be better off financially running a proper business.

And the blog writing business idea is definitely a myth, the days of affiliate sales and making money out of e-books are long gone, if they ever even existed. There is demand for good copywriters, especially people who can write search engine optimised copy, or people who can write in a very niche area such as medicine or technical research.

You can therefore make a living from your writing this way, but you’ll never get rich being a copywriter. The very best copywriters I know struggle to make more than 50 K a year, and most copywriters are earning a lot less than this. Think twice before adopting this as your new business idea.

• Food-based businesses. I get people coming to me all the time, because they want to open a cafe, sell canapes, run a deli, set up a restaurant. I spend a lot of time politely, but firmly, telling them not to do it. Inside, I’m screaming “no please don’t do it”.

Lots of people, including me, love food, love cooking food, love sharing food with other people. It would be great to have a life preparing food and having people love what we’ve created, wouldn’t it? Except it doesn’t work out like that.

Running a food-based business is high-risk, extremely hard work both mentally and physically, and, although some restaurants are successful and make oodles of money for their owners, this is actually rare. It’s usually the landlord or the investor who makes that restaurant into a successful chain because of their business skills who ends up with the oodles of money, not the person doing the cooking.

Unless you have a lot of experience working in a commercial food environment, and substantial investment which you can afford to lose, plus a truly unique idea, please don’t even think about a food-based business, even if this is your passion.

Here’s a great blog about why following your passion is crappy advice. These guys put it much better than I would.

Businesses that don’t scale

For some people it’s not a problem if the business doesn’t scale.

If you’re looking for something which will support you and your family with a reasonable income and you’re happy for it to be you working in the business and you don’t want to expand it, that’s great. Just be aware that this will limit what you can earn.

So I have included businesses in the New Business Ideas Collection where it would be difficult to scale up and create a bigger business.

But mostly, I’ve tried to give two versions, with version one based on one or two people running the business. Version two is based on creating a bigger business, probably involving other people, either right from the beginning, or later on once you got the business up and running.

My advice here, is to look to the future.

As much as you can, get your crystal ball out and try and think forward 10 years. If you can create a business which suits you right now as a one-person business, but has the capacity, if you want to, to bring in other people or expand over time, that gives you more options.

You might not want it right now, but try not to get backed into a corner and set up a business which is impossible to scale.

I hope this has put you off!

If this has put you off diving into a business idea which won’t make you money, and won’t make you happy, that’s great news for me. I’ve saved you from wasting years of your life running a mediocre, boring business.

And if it’s left you thinking “But where do I find all of those great ideas that will make me money and will make me happy?” then have a look at my New Business Ideas Collection, and try a trial membership for just a fiver. There are tons of great ideas, and none of them are even a tiny bit mediocre or boring.

Some more business tips

Why you can’t plan to pivot

New Business Ideas – ones that work

Photo credit – No matter how cute these dogs are, don’t set up a dog walking business, by Alan Alter

Photo credit – a beautiful heron by Heather Smithers

The post The business ideas you don’t want to do appeared first on The Joy of Business.