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Mind Your Own Business: Volume 2 What Business Should I Start?


Welcome back to Mind Your Own Business Saturday where I take your business related questions and try to give you a halfway useful answer. Paul C. writes. 


?I want to start a business, but I don?t know what I should do. How can I decide??


Well Paul, I see this question or some variation of it all the time in business or side hustle related groups on Facebook, so I want you to know that you aren?t alone. 


It is unclear if you have two or more business ideas that you are considering, or if you are hoping I will give you a suggestion. I don?t have a business idea for you because I don?t know what opportunities exist in your area or if you have the skills to take advantage of them. Instead, I?m going to see if I can help you by adjusting your mindset a little.  


I believe that one of the greatest keys to wealth and business is your mindset. You have the desire to start a business, and that?s an amazing start! Most people remain content to work their 9-5 jobs their whole lives until they retire, and for a lot of people there is nothing wrong with that. You however have a spark of something else in you. 


I want you to change the question in your mind from ?what business should I start? to ?What problem can I help other people solve??  Every business should solve a problem. It could be a restaurant to solve the problem of hunger, or a plumbing business to solve plumbing issues (thank you plumbers for your hard work). Landscaping, electrical, computer tech, and pretty much every business be it service or retail strive to solve some kind of problem. 


Wait, what problems do retail stores solve? They solve people?s need or desire for products that solve a problem. Do you need a new air filter to give your home cleaner air and save money on your HVAC? You need a retail store that sells them. Bix box stores like Walmart solve the problem of having to go to 20 stores to get all the things we ?need?. In the process, they present us with options to buy things we didn?t even want when we walked in, but may still buy. 


So my suggestion is that you look around your community, or in the online circles that you follow and ask yourself what problems you can solve in them. Actively watch for issues. 


One of things we did when we needed extra money to pay for a move and an extra place to live before we had renters in the old house was to watch the local FB groups. What were people asking for help with? In our situation there were a lot of people asking for Housekeeping services. It was something within my wife?s skillset to do so we started a cleaning business. 


Within a couple months of starting it, she had more work lined up than she had time to do, and she made pretty decent money doing it. 


Once you find a need, write a business plan. You need to know if your business idea even works on paper. How will you find customers? How much will you charge? How many customers do you need to break even? How many customers do you need to replace your income? How many do you need to breakeven, pay yourself, and grow the business? 


Each is a milestone that you need to have clearly defined because if it looks like you need 6 months to a year before you can get paid, that could impact if it is feasible for you to take on this business venture.


If that happens, look for related goods and services that you might be able to add to the business as either new customer streams or just upsell income. For instance, in my wife?s cleaning business we also offered carpet scrubbing services. We owned a semi-professional carpet scrubber (like what you rent at Walmart or HEB) so we had a secondary service where we would scrub carpets for an additional fee. If we hadn?t owned the scrubber, we could have rented one and worked that cost into the bid. 


With the music store, we used lessons as a primary product. The money we made off room rentals was enough to pay the rent nearly every month. Repairs then often paid the electric bill. We had several other ?extra? services we could offer that didn?t cost us much to implement and made us extra money. 


If you were considering a bakery, why not have a coffee bar or something to go with it. Ideally each would not only bring in traffic for itself, but also lead to sales from the other. 


Anyway, once you are comfortable with it working on paper, step back and take another look at the idea. Give it a week or so where you don?t think about it or look at your business plan. 


Why? I want you to come back to it and look at it with fresh eyes. Make certain the assumptions you made were realistic. I find that I have a lot of tunnel vision when I get focused on an idea. Stepping back and returning allows me to look at the big picture once again. Any ideas I have during my cool down period are noted and slightly fleshed out though because you don?t want to lose a good idea. 


Then find a businessman, banker, or other professional in that business that you trust not to steal your idea and run it by them. You want to hear dissenting remarks because that means they are actually considering your ideas as opposed to someone who says ?looks good?. If you don?t hear something like ?I like it, but have you considered?? then you need to find someone else. 


Take the input and consider it. See if their suggestions fit your business model or if they impact it enough that it no longer works on paper. (I?ve been there.) 


Once you have a problem you can solve, a way to solve it, and a way to make money solving it. It is time to decide if you are going to act. If you do? Keep your expenses small in the beginning. It is tempting to want to make a storefront look like it has been around forever, but from my experience you are better off growing slowly. 


Remember, you are growing a business, and every expense needs to push your business forward. If a proposed expense doesn?t add value to the business, don?t do it. There will be time for beautification. There will be time for better vehicles or tools. Day 0 is generally not that time. 


Additional Resources for Business and Personal Mindset Changes: 



Anyway, thank you Paul for your question, and I hope I?ve helped in some small way. For further enlightenment on how to Mind Your Own Business, I?m the Debt Busting Cowboy, and I?ll see you next week.