A Monday musing ….
.… while some of my friends are at the Detroit Tigers home opener this afternoon (one of them even sent me a photo of the baseball field in a text message – I hate that guy), I was getting into a Monday start-of-the-week groove while still thinking about the calm & quiet Sunday birthday that I just celebrated yesterday. I did a whole lot of nothin’ on my birthday, which is exactly how I’d planned it. Ah, peaceful quiet bliss.
Then it struck me like a sage entrepreneurial lightning bolt (or was it more wafting over me like a calm, warm sea breeze?). Anyway, my birthday wasn’t exciting, in fact some would call it dull. But it was perfect & met a need in my life (the marketplace) with a bull’s eye.
I was reminded of the great wisdom shared by Norm Brodsky on StartupNation Radio and in this article on the 3 criteria for starting up a business:
According to Norm, the first criterion for starting a business is that the business concept needs to be well established.
“At least 100 years old,” says Norm. “You don’t want to spend a lot of money educating people about how to use your business. It’s to your advantage that people know that the business concept exists, how to use it, and where to find it.”
Well, there certainly ain’t nothing sexy about that. Norm talked about how walking through Paris one day he & his wife were attracted to a section of town that sold nothing but cashmere sweaters. Too much competition to start up a cashmere sweater shop of your own? No way, says Norm. That’s exactly where you want to start up. You’ve got customer traffic immediately, now you just need to offer better value than the competition.
Norm’s business is document shredding. New & sexy? Nope. Dull & boring? Yep. He’s bringing in millions.
Starbuck’s sells coffee. New, sexy? Billions.
So, what’s your dull & boring small business idea?
