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Business Ideas

Small Business Idea – Start a Concierge Business

August 7, 2022 Comments Off on Small Business Idea – Start a Concierge Business

Do you know someone who’s so busy that they’re constantly saying things like “I’d pay someone to do this for me” or “I need more hours in my day!” or even “I wish I could clone myself” ? If so, what that person really needs is a personal assistant! Concierge or Errand businesses are a growing trend. Although the economy isn’t in the best shape, people are still leading very busy rat race type lifestyles. From busy working moms to jet setting professional singles – they all have a need for an extra set of hands or person to remind them of important appointments or tasks.
 
Starting a concierge service is going to take some work and creativity on your end. Although most people have a need for this type of service, some have a hard time justifying the expense. Your marketing and client acquisition strategy will require you to effectively demonstrate how easy their life would be with you on their team! Here are a few tips to consider when planning your Concierge (errand service) business:
 
1. Start with a business plan: You don’t need to spend a lot of money on a business plan – in fact, with this type of service business – you can write one yourself. You will want to write out the vision you have for your company, as best as possible – note any start up costs, price points, target demographic and market.
 
2. Discover your start up costs: Start up costs associated with a concierge business are surprisingly minimal. Like with any business, one of the first steps you’ll take is setting up your business legally. This means you will need to check with your state and local commerce offices as well as the IRS for any licensing and tax requirements. The cost of a business license in most states is pretty low ranging from $25 to $100. After you’ve established your business legally you’ll want to create your website and marketing materials. Depending on your level of technical and graphic expertise you may be able to do this on your own for nothing at all. However if you’re like most people, it’s something you’ll end up outsourcing. You can find a reputable website designer at places like GetAFreelancer to do your website for under $500 with matching business card and brochure templates for a little bit extra. It’s also advised to invest in business liability insurance. Depending on the range of services you offer, you’ll likely spend a lot of time driving around – if your current car insurance doesn’t recognize your vehicle as a business/commercial vehicle – you may not be covered if you get in an accident while doing company functions. All in all, the estimated start up costs for a concierge business would be under $1500.
 
3. Develop your legal documents and contracts: Because of the nature of a personal assistant concierge style business – it’s important to have contracts and agreements between you and your client. For example – you may offer a car pooling service shuttling kids to and from soccer practice. You’ll want to have a signed agreement that authorizes your clients children to be in the car with you.
 
4. Decide on your range of service: A concierge can offer a wide range of services. As long as it’s legal – you should remain open to any type of assignment. Typically concierge services are divided into two categories – corporate services and personal/individual services. The types of services you offer a business will vary from what you’ll offer an individual. Corporate services may include things like courier services, event planning, travel planning, and transportation arrangement. Those types of things are often duties handled by executive secretaries, but many businesses choose to save money by hiring a concierge business instead. Personal services include gift shopping, cleaning services, relocation assistance planning, dry cleaning pick up, house sitting, reminder services, appointment making services, grocery shopping and many others.
 
5. Decide your price point: Most concierge businesses charge by the hour, with $25-30 being the going rate. It’s also wise to offer monthly package rates. This will help you secure long term contracts, particularly if you require a minimum number of months to sign up. Your packages should include a guaranteed number of services and/or hours per month – with an extra fee being charged for services or hours over.
 
6. Put your best foot forward: With your business cards and services brochures in hand – you’ll want to hit the ground running with your marketing strategy. Word of mouth is always the best way to grow a business – it’s free also! The first impression will be the lasting impression for potential clients, because of this you should be courteous to a fault! You want clients to know that you are a trustworthy and responsible individual. Your appearance should be well-kept at all times, answer your phones in the most professional manner and always be organized.
 
The sky is the limit when it comes to starting a concierge business, it will be challenging in the beginning – but that’s the case with any new venture. Don’t give up and always keep a smile on your face – you never know, you may be talking to your next client!

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Profitability

New Business Ideas – How to Find That Winning Idea to Start a Business

July 4, 2022 Comments Off on New Business Ideas – How to Find That Winning Idea to Start a Business

A good business idea will often be borne out of your experience. Have you observed people experiencing a problem or frustration, and do you have an idea that might eliminate or reduce that problem. The richer your experiences and the more observant you are, the more you are likely to come up with workable business ideas. Take an inventory of your experiences; of all the work you have done, paid or unpaid, and of all the games you have played, did you encounter problems looking for a solution?
Start with your resume and expand it as follows:
A� Add all your activities so you have a detailed resume. Don’t limit this to work. Include games, chores, and any other activity that engages you.
A� For each job or activity state what you accomplished. Remember this is not for an interview; it’s just for you so be honest.
A� State what you like most about the job or activity
A� State what irritated you or your coworkers most about the job or activity
A� If you interacted with customers write down their frequent complaints
A� For every irritation or problem that you list, think of and write down a way that you could eliminate or reduce it
A� State the primary purpose of the job or activity and ask yourself if there is a better way to achieve that purpose.
This exercise will get your creative juices flowing and may result in your winning new business idea.
Always allow your brain some down time. You will spend a lot of time thinking about and perfecting your idea for a business, but often the best ideas come to you when you are in a moment of rest or mental inactivity. When you are done working on a problem, the mind continues to work on it in the background, but you must give the mind space and time to do that work, which means taking a break from active mental work.
While I urge giving your mind rest time, if you wake up in the middle of the night with a great idea get up and write it down. When you are out and about always have a means of recording those ideas that run across your mind unbidden. Sometimes you get a great idea in an unlikely place, but after hours of other activities, and distractions you forget about it. Your note pad will keep these potential business ideas from slipping through the cracks.
If you are still not coming up with any ideas don’t give up; keep thinking about it, but most importantly, you must be actively living and observing. Try to broaden your experiences and become more observant. If you have work experience, but no formal training, take some business courses. If the reverse is true and you have business training but no work experience get to work. If you can’t get paid to work, do some volunteering. This is not to suggest that you wait until you complete a course or get a certain number of years in experience before you start your business, but while you work on your idea broadening your experience in these and other ways will be helpful.

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The Business

Start A Net Business – What Not To Do

June 6, 2022 Comments Off on Start A Net Business – What Not To Do

Starting a net business is an incredibly easy and simple thing to do. People get great ideas every day and decide to build an online company to sell products and services. They’ll probably build a website and wait for the money to start rolling in…
The problem is, they’ve already made a terrible mistake that will most likely end up with them failing. Everyone overlooks the most important part of any net business. Traffic.
Without traffic, no one will ever see your website or product and you won’t make sales. Building a web business without doing keyword research is like building a brick and mortar store 100 miles from the closest town. No ones ever going to see it. What a lot of newbies don’t realise is that securing a page 1 listing on Google can nearly be impossible for certain keywords.
How you should start a net business.
1) Get a great internet business idea…
2) Establish what people in your niche search for when they are looking for products
3) Do keyword research for your niche using the Google keyword tool. If you can find phrases that have low competition and high monthly searches (above 1,000) then you know that you can at least compete for traffic.
4) If there aren’t any low competition keyword phrases then you should give up with that niche. If there are, go ahead and build yourself a website.
Believe it or not, that is the easiest part of your net business experience. The hard part now is using internet marketing techniques to get your business in front of as many people as possible. What is so hard about this stage, is how long it takes. People get into online business thinking that they will find leads and sales straight away. The reality is much different. Branding yourself and setting up an internet presence will take anything from 6 months to 2 years.
If you can understand that it will take a while then you will have a far better chance of creating a successful web business.

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Income

Start Your Own Aluminum Can Recycling and Advertising Business

May 20, 2022 Comments Off on Start Your Own Aluminum Can Recycling and Advertising Business

With people’s attitudes toward recycling and prices for aluminum and other metals at near all-time highs, a Tampa Florida entrepreneur’s business idea as reported by The Tampa Tribune, 09/24/12, may have just the right timing.
Being an apartment building painter for 15 years entrepreneur Dennis Gallagher noticed that apartment renters had no easy and convenient way to recycle their aluminum cans. Now thanks to Mr. Gallagher, and his business idea which became his own aluminum can recycling and advertising business he calls the Green Can Project, they do.
The Green Can Project places large plastic containers around apartment buildings giving people an easy opportunity to participate in recycling their aluminum cans with all the proceeds going to a local charity.
Since the recycling proceeds go to charity, Mr. Gallagher apparently plans to monetize his business by selling advertising space on the barrels to local businesses around the area.
This idea for an aluminum can recycling and advertising business seems to this writer that it has the potential for duplication in other areas of the US and in other countries as well, with the added benefit that an enterprise like this would probably only require several thousand dollars to start on a small scale.
It should be relatively easy to place attractive containers at many types of locations free of charge considering the public’s current level of interest in legitimate environmental issues.
Gaining advertising accounts would be the more difficult task but calling on businesses in the general vicinity of where their ads would be placed might very well meet with the greatest success, at least in the beginning.
Someone interested in starting a business like this would, among other things, have to find a supply of inexpensive but appropriate barrels, work with a good printer, or better yet have your own printing equipment to produce the advertising signs and/or banners to attach to the barrels, and have the means of hauling the cans from the barrel locations to the recycling centers.
Once up and running you might get help from businesses who would request barrels be placed at their locations just to participate in a good cause, and if advertising on the barrels produced good results then ad sales should eventually get easier as you build good testimonies from customers and have word-of-mouth advertising working for you.
With 200 barrels placed at locations and $50 dollars per month in ad revenue from each one, an entrepreneur might have a $100,000 operation going in a short period of time?Business Is Booming For Entrepreneurs Cleaning and Repairing Foreclosed Properties

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Business Plan

The 3 “Must Do’s” Before You Start A Small Business

May 18, 2022 Comments Off on The 3 “Must Do’s” Before You Start A Small Business

So you’ve got your small business idea and you want to start a small business. What do you need to do to get your small business off to a flying start?
I am going to share with you what I believe are the 3 most important things to consider when starting a small business, especially a bricks and mortar business.
1. Research
You will need to carry out thorough research on the products or service that you are going to be selling. When I started my first business more than twenty years ago, my original business idea was to open up a pet shop. I wasn’t actually sure whether there would be a demand for that type of shop, so during one of my week’s holidays I actually parked in the main shopping street for 6 hours a day for the whole week and carried out thorough research including:
Counting the number of people who visited the shops each day.
Speaking to shoppers to ask whether they felt that there was demand for a pet shop in that area.
Speaking to other shop owners in the locality to ask for any tips that they could give me on the best ways to start a retail business.
Checking what other competitors were doing in order to offer better.
Checking location i.e. making sure that there was a market for what I was selling within a given area and that I could achieve the desired profit margins within that location. Location is very important when considering a bricks and mortar business as property leases and the prices that you can charge for your goods or services, are largely governed by location.
Needless to say I did not open a pet store but I opened up a chain of convenience stores instead based on using the same research techniques.
2. Create a Good Business Plan
You can have the best small business ideas in the world, but you will seldom get them off the ground without financial backing. In order to gain that all important backing you will first of all need to present your potential lender with a business plan.
Do not be out off by this. All too often you will already have the business plan already in your head and will merely need to put in down on paper. Some things that you need to include when writing a business plan are;
The product or service that you are going to provide.
Who your targeted customers are going to be.
The cost to make or buy the product to sell on or how much it’s going to cost you to provide the service that you are going to be offering.
Your operational costs including rent, staff, fuel, vehicles, equipment, stationary, materials, legal fees, advertising etc, etc. You will need to ensure that you list them all.
The location where you are going to be offering your goods or services.
3. Financial Planning
Financial planning for a new small business is not just about how much money people they spend but more about planning the amount of sales that you hope to make each day, the purchases you will need to make, and the income that you expect to make after deducting the overall costs of trading. Many small businesses fail in the first year of trading because of poor cash flow. Below are some suggestions of how to avoid cash flow problems within your first year of trading:
Create a “small business cash flow forecast. Simply write down all of your expenditure costs for each month for the first year of trading and then add them up. Then write down what you think you will achieve in sales. Deduct one from the other and this will provide you with the targeted amount of sales that you will need to make in order to break even or make a profit.
If you don’t feel confident to create your own cash flow forecast, you could ask an accountant to do it for you. They could also create a profit and loss statement for you at the same time.
It is advisable to have some emergency funds set aside when starting a small business. Every new business needs money to get started, even if is only to buy stock or stationary.
If possible try to allow a sum of money equal to the projected turnover for the first year of business to allow for any cash flow problems.
Get the best deals from your lender. Some banks like Nat West and HSBC now offer free banking for 2 years for all new small businesses. Check out a few banks as they all offer something unique.
Don’t be disheartened if you get a few refusals. Just remain focused on your business idea and remain confident in your approach when discussing your business plans with the business advisor.
I can remember when I started my first business, eighteen lenders turned me down. However I didn’t give up and eventually a bank manager situated 90 miles away believed in my passion and drive to start my own business and decided to lend me the money that I needed.
So there are, what I believe, are three most important things to consider when you start a small business.