Small businesses account for half of GNP, contribute to overall economic growth and social development in all countries.
“How do I identify and establish the right small business category? You ask.
This article examines the top 10 cool small business categories
Let me show you a 5-step action plan to identify the type of small business that suits you.
1. Health and Physical Fitness
You have heard it said that “A healthy nation is a wealthy nation.” That is the reason for the private sector’s participation in health care services.
Embrace Global, a nonprofit organization in San Francisco developed a baby warmer sleeping bag used as an incubator for premature babies born in remote villages without electricity. Most premature babies in underdeveloped countries die due to a lack of health care facilities.
Another health and fitness small business idea is senior home care.
2. Food Delivery Services
Food delivery service is one of the most profitable small business ventures in modern life. In developed countries, meals are delivered to customers on wheels. In developing countries’ rural settlements, food service is delivered on heels.
Yvonne A. traverses the length and breadth of a local market delivering food on heels. Yvonne has done this now for the past six months as she waits to go to university next year.
“Mom started this small business as a pilot project to subsidize the family income, three years ago” Yvonne reveals during an interview with a local newspaper reporter on location. Small business food delivery service also caters for wedding ceremonies, birthdays, and social functions.
3. Show Business
“There’s no business like show business,” Irving Parking, the great American Philosopher, and Social Chronicler argued. The entertainment industry offers plenty of small business categories up for grabs to make passive income during 9-5 office working hours. Retirement marks the end of active office life, but your life continues with or without office life.
Show business provides lots of opportunities with great promises for income-generating activities such as selling antiques, photographs, or dance studios as a small business to start.
4. Cash for Craft
Ken retired from teaching after 35 years of teaching arts and crafts, but his passion for this vocation stuck on him as the human shadow into retirement. He spent most of his free time in retirement drawing.
Ken figured out that the cost of paint and canvas was nothing compared to the thrill of doing what he loved. He entered one of his paintings in the annual local contest and was short-listed in the best top ten talents. He did not win the grand prize. However, this contest opened the door of opportunity to start a small business selling paints.
Ken can’t think of a better fulfilling and pacifying activity as drawing and selling paints, two decades down memory lane.
Your life is at a crossroads. You are caught between a rock and a hard stone to decide the next big career step.
Whether you are starting out in the job market or preparing to retire, listen to your inner voice nagging you to identify a suitable small business idea. You won’t regret taking up and turning a craft into cash.
5. Online Dating Expert
Life revolves around relationships. A romantic relationship is the most popular of them all.
Romance and leisure have taken a new direction with the introduction of online dating. Gone are the days of snail mail when you had to wait a week or more for a letter from abroad.
You are in touch with your significant other through social media marketing – Snapchat, WhatsApp, and Facebook 24/7. You have a knack for creating credible content, online dating is the next big opportunity for small businesses. Online dating customers need easy-to-read and understand content to go with the profile photo in the preliminary stage of establishing a romantic relationship.
Popular online dating sites such as Tinder need content to attract new customers and keep in touch with regular clients. This is part of any business brand marketing strategy. Here is an example of Dating in Dubai online dating website content.
“You’re looking for a discreet dating destination. Dubai is the perfect place to cool off your feet, lie comatose with your date on the beach.
Dine-in Dubai exotic restaurants; dance the night away cheek to cheek prior to taking a night cup at one of many exquisite hotel rooms in the city. Online Dating in Dubai offers all these, plus a great deal more…” Your phone rings off the hook as an online dating expert with this content
6. Web Developer
Most automobile mechanics, radio, television, phone, and computer technicians are freelancers in the small business industry. A freelance computer technician develops websites for other businesses on demand.
He/she is also on hand to repair and maintain regular and new clients’ machines from time to time.
Small business start-ups need hints and tips to improve product quality or service delivery. A well-developed website is a small business one-stop-shop. Freelance web developer with a good record in the field is in great demand to assist businesses to achieve their overall objectives.
Online-based business owners and staff do not have face-to-face meetings with customers, except during zoom, but that too is remote. However, clients and customers frequently interact through the website.
The website gives online businesses identity, provides a platform for interaction, marketing, and selling products/services.
When online businesses grow, your freelance website design small business also grows.
7. Life Coach
“Her dad, got you a book to read,” Melanie, Sam and Martha’s firstborn twin daughter announced, as she placed “Awaken the Giant Within,” book by Anthony Robbins on her dad’s hands. Sam had never heard or read a book on self-improvement.
Reading “Awaken the Giant Within,” by Anthony Robbins transformed his life overnight and opened the door to life coach freelance writer in his restricted silent world of the deaf.
“Whether we realize it or not, each of us carries… a mental blueprint picture of ourselves…down to the last detail,” Dr. Maxwell Maltz, wrote in “Psycho-Cybernetics.”
You are an expert in one area of life.
“Opportunity is everywhere, but it is fleet of foot. Even if you have the vision to recognize it, without a fast decision on your part, it will be gone,” Napoleon Hill wrote in his book “17 Principles of Success.” You have read self-improvement books and your life changed. Why not share the same benefits with others through life coach personal training business service.
8. Freelance Writing
“Good writing is clear thinking made visibly,” Bill Wheeler said.
Freelance writing is the easiest small business opportunity to break into. It is also cost-effective. Starting a freelance writing small business is made easy by technology. Technology is turning passive content consumers into active producers.
Imagine what you could do with $400 freelance writing one blog post at home.
The freelancing writing field is huge. You can freelance as an event organizer, (for weddings, funerals), and double up as photographer/videographer. Freelance writing is flexible, fun, and gives your small business financial cost-effective opportunity with great returns on investment.
Freelance writing pays over and above your dreams. Try it out and be the judge.
9. Second-Hand Clothes
Cherif Habib and Stephan Jacobs, two Wharton MBA students, set up and ran Kembrel’s online clothes store while in school. Kembrel online store sold clothes at discount prices to Millennials on Facebook.
This small business success story was founded on identifying specific customers’ needs and providing solutions to meet that need.
Modern lifestyle cost of living is pushing you to reduce expenses. Buying second-hand items such as clothes, furniture, a car are one way of keeping inflation under control.
You are unique, so are your clothes.
You don’t fancy wearing the same type of clothes that look like a school uniform in the company of others. That is another reason you desire to purchase cost-effective clothes only available in second-hand clothes outlets. Unique clothes make you stand out in a class of your own.
“What do you think of my new dress?” A lady asks her man if he hasn’t commented on the lady’s dressing. Or,
“How do I look?” These questions express a lady’s inner desire to get noticed.
Shopping for second-hand clothes from small clothes business outlet meets customer’s need to wear unique clothes. Your small business stands a chance to gain by buying second-hand clothes in bulk at throw-away price and retailing them at a good profit margin.
10. Recycling Specialist
Mass production of electrical and electronic devices presents a big e-waste challenge. Devices become obsolete with the introduction of new ones in the market. Why let valuable materials go to waste?
Turn your waste into profit through recycling. Monterroso Company in Houston, USA is giving a new lease of life to electronic devices no longer used in the market. This company sells recycled computers from plastics.
Take this 5 steps action plan to establish your model today.
Five-Step Action Plan to Establish Your Small Business Model
How do you establish your small business model?
Step 1- Single out the right market
The right market for small business products/services goes beyond identifying locations and to know customers.
Let’s say your small business aims at offering self-improvement services to company employees and students in higher learning instructions. You know the location of these institutions in the area.
Next, reach out to specific departments of these institutions. Get in touch with the curriculum development of higher learning institutions and the communication department of company/companies earmarked for this project.
This action improves the chances of converting passive customers into active consumers.
Step 2 – Identify customer’s desires and satisfaction.
Who are your customers? Where are they? What problems are they facing? How best can the small business meet those needs?
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a method of managing business and customer relationship in order to gauge customers’ opinion on product performance service delivery in three ways:
One, customer survey outcome assists to improve product quality and service delivery to match and meet customers’ needs.
Two, the information gathered from the survey shows small business performance in relation to competitors in the market.
Three, customer opinion outcome, determine whether or not you are achieving the small business objectives to provide quality customer care and products.
Step 3 – Study the market and competitors
“To advance our careers, we’re expected to promote ourselves unabashedly,” Susan Cain wrote in her book, “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking.”
You don’t have the gift of gab. Don’t let it stand in the way of running a successful small business. Be sure to introduce your product/service into the market. It might take a while before you reap the benefits. Hang in there. The small businesses will blossom with time.
Step 4 – Distinguish Small business unique selling point.
Every small business is unique. Define your small business’s unique selling point. Read. Research, Google to know what other competitors are doing, then offer a better deal.
If you’re in the hotel and hospitality industry, your passion is to present pocket-friendly healthy cuisines.
Step 5 – Small Business Trial Runs Action Plan
Picture this: You walk into a car manufacturing showroom to get information and view car models on display.
The salesperson gives you a tour of the showroom to show you different cars on the house for sale. She/he then opens the door of your preferred car, shows you the interior décor of the automobile, and encourages you to sit inside. Then, she/he hands you the car key,
“Take it for a spin.” You don’t want to miss this test drive opportunity for the world. You might not get another chance soon.
This test drive takes place prior to launch the small business. Product/service testing is done to have peace of mind that you chose the right business idea, because, after this test, it is business as usual.
Final Thoughts Before Ending
If you are ready for small business, small business is ready for you. The good news is that there are hundreds of small business categories in operation around the world. The news is that start-up business failures stand at 90% annually, according to economic survey experts.
Small business failure is caused by a lack to identify the right small business category and not taking a 5-step action plan to establish your small business model, discussed in this article.
