10 best ways to start a business

Good business ideas are all around you! Here are just a few ways to find the real opportunities to start your own business.

Business ideas are all around you.

They are lurking in your garage, in your basement, in your kitchen, and in your children's room. You'll find them in magazine ads, at your neighbor's house and at work.

They are right there in the vegetables you brought in from the yard... in the stack of papers next to your laser printer... in the back of your truck... and at the back of your mind.

You don't need to be a genius or an MBA to spot those ideas and turn them into profits, either. Identifying business opportunities is often as easy as identifying problems many people share and finding a way to solve them.

1. Do what you love to do


Businesses don't just happen. They are made. Whether you plan to profit by twisting balloons into smile-generating shapes or orchestrating the growth of multimillion dollar, multinational companies, your success relies on what you bring to the business. If you love what you do, your passion for the business will drive you to be knowledgeable, creative and persistent. On the other hand, if your feeling for what you do is lukewarm, 


your success will be, too.

2. Start With The Easy Stuff: Eliminate Expenses

 Don’t rent an office! – work from home. Or better yet work from the best free office with locations everywhere: Starbucks. If you need to meet with a client and are worried about seeming small time without an office, don’t be. Just meet them at a restaurant for a lunch meeting. This is what people with the nicest offices do anyway.

 Don’t hire lawyers, technical people, graphic designers, or assistants (see below)

Don’t hire any employees! – do it all yourself until you have some $ coming in the door.

3. Turn old standbys into new products

Truly new concepts are few and far between. Most new products or new business ideas are simply spin-offs of old ones. Inline skates is one good example. Essentially, they are ice skates on wheels. Or, depending on your point of view, streamlined roller-skates. Other new business ideas are nothing more than new ways of marketing mundane products. Take1800flowers.com, for example. Florists were around as relatively small, local stores for years --but then Jim McCann, who started with a single retail shop in 1976,  acquired the phone number 1-800-Flowers and developed a network of florists. The company saw an opportunity to grow online, and started selling through the early commercial online services, and then the Internet.

You may not have the money, management ability, contacts or desire to launch a major new product like inline skates or the energy or desire to turn your single store location into a multimillion-dollar sales organization. But you don't have to launch anything that large to start a business or introduce a new product.  You need to think about what people want to buy and how they would like to buy it.

Years ago when my kids were little, I made money selling beanbags. The twist? I designed them in the shape of frogs and I filled them with birdseed instead of beans to make them pliable and less lumpy to the touch. To attract attention at craft shows, I displayed them in various human poses (sitting up, laying on their side resting their head on their hand, or hugging each other, for instance). I could produce them quickly and kept my costs low by making the frogs from inexpensive fabric remnants. That allowed me to price the frogs low enough to make them great impulse buys for parents who wanted to buy a small, inexpensive gift for a child.

You can spin almost any skill or industry knowledge into marketable new products or services. 

A neighbor turned his skill at fixing cars into a repair and tune-up service. His angle? He was mobile. Customers didn't have to drop their car off at the shop. Instead, the "shop" (a van outfitted with tools and auto parts) came to them. Another acquaintance built a business by purchasing large quantities of chemicals and repackaging them in smaller quantities. 

4. Look for mundane money-makers

You don't need to create exciting new products or services to go into business, either. Millions of business owners profit by selling routine and sometimes unglamorous services such as window washing, car repair, sandwich making, building maintenance, house cleaning and plumbing. The key to making money with the mundane is to sell something your customers can't do, don't want to do, don't have the time to do, or can't get done well elsewhere.

Tip: one way to making really big money with mundane services is to develop a unique and reproducible method for marketing and delivering the service and then open up multiple offices, or franchise the concept. If you plan to franchise your idea or sell it as a business opportunity, retain an attorney early on who is familiar with franchise law and can help you steer clear of the pitfalls

5. Turn that hobby into cash

Do people ooh and ah at your handiwork? Whether you are a whiz at creating floral arrangements or at writing software, look for ways to turn your hobby into a business. You might want to manufacture your items in quantity, license them to other manufacturers, sell them by mail order, at flea markets or on consignment, or open your own retail outlet selling supplies to others with similar interests. 

Ask the reference librarian at your public library to help you find trade magazines pertaining to your hobby, and read those to generate new business ideas.

6. Turn a former employer into a valuable source of new business

Just because you leave a company doesn't mean it doesn't need your services. Companies often retain the services of former workers on a freelance or consulting basis. That way they get the benefit of trained personnel without having to pay payroll taxes and benefits. If you leave a company on good terms, ask about contract or freelance opportunities. Don't stop with contacts who work with the former employer, either. Call your former employer's suppliers and customers and tell them about your capabilities. Call their competitors, too. Stress your industry knowledge, contacts and skills. You may soon find that the income you earn exceeds what you made as an employee. 

7. Modify one of your existing products

Sometimes all it takes to create a "new" product is a slight change in an existing product. 

Harrison-Hoge Industries is a mail order company in Port Jefferson, NY, that sells fishing lures, inflatable boats and other outdoor gear. To expand their line, the company added a wide-brimmed, canvas hat called the Campesino to its catalog. The hat was a big success, but the owners of the company thought there might be more they could do with it. And there was.

They discovered they could adapt the hat to sell in specialized markets just by changing the hat band. As a result, they began to supply the Museum of Natural History and the Guggenheim Museum (both in New York City) with hats. Each museum's hat has its own distinctive hat band.

8. Reach out and teach someone

Do you  have a  skill  others want  to  acquire? Do  you  have  a  knack  for  explaining things so others can understand them? If so, don't give your expertise away. Start  charging  for it!

For  instance, if you  are a karate  expert, you  might teach  at  a  karate school  or open your own karate school. If you're a talented artist, you could teach art at home or in a school. 

Tip:: Make extra  money  selling  books,  supplies, or  other items  your  students will need to  buy to complete the course.

9. Make a website for your business

 Don’t pay a premium for a top end domain name, there are plenty of good ones left.

Test out your ideas by writing to a blog, you’ll get feedback on what people like and don’t like

 Don’t pay a premium for a top end domain name, there are plenty of good ones left

 When you’re ready to have your own domain, register it at domain.com and add this as a custom domain to your WordPress or Tumblr site.

 Get a free business website at www.wordpress.com or tumblr.com. It won’t be your own domain (it will be something like yourbusiness.wordpress.com) but…

 Get a professional website design for free with a wordpress theme that you can install with a few clicks (no programming knowledge needed)

10. Always be learning about business

 Go to a meetup.com groups in your city related to business/entrepreneurship

 Read all the best business books by getting them from the library

 Get 3 of the top 10 books on building wealth for free in PDF

 Make friends with other entrepreneurs and share material.

I hope this material, though theory, might help you in realty. Please feel free to comment, either good or bad, it might help in improving the blog.

10 ways to fight poverty

Top 10 Ways To Fight Poverty in America by Leslie Graham

There are immediate and longer-term ways to join the movement to end poverty in the U.S. Consider donating new and gently used clothes, books, toys, and cars (ok, maybe not new cars), for instance, or join an organizing or legislative campaign committed to poverty eradication and fulfilling the human rights of our nation's poor. What follows is a non-exhaustive list; please tell us how you've been successful in fighting poverty!

1. Recognize our shared humanity: Our desire to erase the poor through public policy only denies all of us full access to the government programs and services we expect. Too many of us do our damndest to not see the poor, or to blame them for their lot. This is psychologically reassuring, denying the reality that any one of us is at risk for losing our job or having a catastrophic accident, or being paid less than our co-workers, or making heat-of-the-moment choices that might lead to an unplanned pregnancy - all risks that can lead to rising costs, unpayable bills, prolonged unemployment, hunger, eviction or foreclosure. The current recession will kick millions of Americans (back) into poverty - are you one of the 4 million on "shaky ground"? Either way, opening your mind to your linked fate with poorer Americans is the critical first step in fighting poverty.

2. Educate Yourself! There are a handful of intertwined issues that compound disadvantage for poor Americans: a nationwide lack of affordable housing leads to displacement and lack of access to good jobs. The same can be said for our country's sorry state of public education, college un-affordability, dependency on cars and lack of public transportation systems linking jobs and residential neighborhoods. Racial injustice leads to housing end employment discrimination, denying low-income people of color full access to safe neighborhoods and well-paying, secure jobs, which reinforces their entrapment in low-wage work and in dangerous neighborhoods. In the latter the criminal justice system has become the de facto guardian for too many young black men. Domestic violence and policies restricting access to contraception and abortion disproportionately hurt low-income women. Through reading and outreach you can deepen your understanding of the anti-poverty aspects of workers' rights, immigrants' rights, women's rights, reproductive justice, environmental justice, racial justice and economic human rights movements.

3. Reframe the debate: You're going to see the phrase "economic human rights" (see Article 11) a lot around here. This is a somewhat dormant movement that's been revived in recent years, as anti-poverty and human rights activists coalesce around the reality that living in deprivation quashes people's human rights. That is, due to a lack of money and resources, people also lack access to good jobs, secure housing, quality education, adequate nutrition and good health, and full participation in society. Economic human rights activists fight for the fulfillment of these rights to housing, education, work, food and health, framing poverty as both a cause and consequence of human rights violations. It's powerful, and fits well with the concepts of social inclusion/exclusion. Think about it.

4. Speak Out! "Stand Up and Speak Out" is an annual global action against worldwide poverty and inequality. We need to be doing the same about domestic poverty. Speaking up and speaking out is what motivates all of us here at Change.org; it's the impetus behind the rise of poverty simulations in cities to raise awareness about poverty. Being vocal and being active about poverty and social inequality is a minimum daily activity for each of us in the fight to end poverty.

5. Join a campaign to end poverty:  Umbrella groups like the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign post actions needing support, as well as list member organizations nationwide that have their own initiatives and need for volunteers, donations and your commitment. See for different rights-based movements through which you can fight poverty.

6. Take legislative action: Most campaigns include a legislative advocacy component. Citizen-driven resources like GovTrack.us have search engines where you can research and track anti-poverty legislation. Support national and local non-profits such as the National Low-Income Housing Coalition, the Louisiana Association of Non-Profits or MA Interfaith Worker Justice in their efforts to develop and drive pro-poor, anti-poverty legislation in areas such as affordable housing and education, living wages, food security, universal healthcare, child care, Gulf Coast recovery, adult literacy, early childhood education, prisoner re-entry, and sanctuary for undocumented workers.

7. Volunteer: With kids, families, the elderly, the disabled, the homeless, women, and the mentally ill; in shelters, community centers, after school programs, prisons, and employment centers; teach literacy, resume development, job training courses, ESL classes, and computer classes; coach sports; serve food; provide counseling; help low-income Americans apply for the Earned Income Tax Credit this spring.

8. Donate: money, toys, clothes (especially sizes L/XL for women!) - including suits, food, cars, and furniture.

9. Join Boycotts & Support Unions: If you can afford it, join boycotts of corporations that exploit workers or prey on low-income communities. Furthermore, unions offer higher wages, benefits and economic security to workers in all economic brackets. For low-wage workers, union wages can make the different between living below the poverty line or rising above it. Support the AFL-CIO and Change to Win labor federations, and the Employee Free Choice Act, which could come up for a vote this spring.

10. Support Gulf Coast recovery: Katrina was the "tipping point" in the public's wholesale rejection of Bush. Pollster John Zogby thinks it will be the "defining moment" for at least a generation. Hurricane Katrina was the costliest and one of the deadliest disasters in American history, and it has permanently displaced almost 70,000 low-income New Orleanians (never mind their neighbors across the Gulf Coast) - that's almost 20% of the city's pre-storm population! Our nation was horrified by the depth of poverty and gross government negligence on display after the flood, yet in less than six months the phrase "Katrina fatigue" was in our lexicon. New Orleans was one of the poorest cities in the country prior to the 2005 storms. Its post-storm population is now more affluent, on average - and also more white. Close to 5,000 units of subsidized housing have been demolished; thousands more remain vacant and damaged. Less than 40% of renters across Louisiana now have access to affordable units; the homeless population in New Orleans alone has doubled - while most of the agencies that serve them are gone. The public hospital remains shuttered and slated for demolition to make way for a newer version of an existing operating hospital. The city is one of the deadliest in the country. Mobilizing around New Orleans and Gulf Coast recovery is a signature test of our commitment to fighting poverty and inequality.