Finger on the pulse of the world: 6 hot entrepreneur ideas
Yoga LeaksYou've got the urge to start a business. And you know the world is changing and evolving fast. What kind of business should you create that will strike the evolution iron while it's hot?! (if you know what I mean)
You might want to look under these rocks.
Beauty and Health
One word: Brazil.
Spa’s are few, and their beauty products are steeped in parabens, perfume, and mineral oil. Health food stores are reminiscent of those from western countries thirty years ago. The economy is booming. They want what the west has enjoyed all this time.
Create a spa. Work with the abundant offerings of fruits from the Amazon. Incorporate the knowledge of the beautiful Indian culture.
A friend of mine spends a lot of time with a local Indian tribe that has recently settled in Rio de Janeiro. One of the Indian men draws Indian patterns on her arm or back using their traditional method and clays. It’s beautiful. Can you imagine your spa guests receiving this cultural gift as a part of your service? Doesn't everybody want to return home from a holiday to show their friends exactly how close to exotic they got?
If creating a skin care line is not for you, Eminence, L’uvalla, Phyts or any organic skin care company will set the starving organic trend on fire. Success will beat your door down, if only to try your Jabuticaba exfoliation and wrap and Indian tattoos.
Benefits: There’s little competition in this cashed up society.
Cost: Maybe your soul. The insanity of bureaucracy is a delicious roast pig with an apple in his mouth. Only it’s your head and you look relieved to be there.
Espresso Bar
I know this is incredulous, but many countries still can’t serve a good cup of chino. While any random Melbournite or Seattlite can lead a conversation about coffee notes, under tones, origins, current trade trends, and favourite private roasters beyond any common level of interest, many countries still offer a cappuccino that simply tells you, “I came from a single button press”.
Everybody loves a well made cappuccino. You don’t need to open a café. Make a stand-alone espresso cart. Build a hole in the wall with no signage. The no-sign will be your sign, and it will make your business very sexy!
Benefits: Barista is up there with DJ and Creative Consultant as the world's sexiest job. Global coffee prices have fallen consistently in the past two years.
Cost: The grim reaper of audition lurks behind the milk steamer and coffee grinder. I have yet to meet one career barista without industrial deafness.
Raw Milk
This is totally underground at the mo. You'll need to find cows with whom you feel a strong affinity towards, then learn how to milk them. Surf the crest of a wave destined to 180 the current boring, pasteurized a.k.a dead milk industry. From Hippocrates to WW2, this white blood, a stem cell of sorts, nourished and healed millions.
With lactose intolerance on the rise, and studies proving the enormous difference between milk from the supermarket and milk from the farm, raw milk is going to be in huge demand.
Lactose intolerant people can drink raw milk. It’s filled with beneficial bacteria, vitamins, protein and enzymes. Soon people will move past their deer-in-the-headlights reaction to fear mongering mantras of lobbyists. Of course it is still milk from a cow meant for their calf, but that fact will not hold back this trending tsunami.
Benefits: You will get major hipster kudos for working an enterprise that is original and earthy (and illegal in some states).
Cost: The piercing wails of witch hunters at the Burn Raw Milk Farmers at the Stake festival in the US is still in it's wind-down phase. One needs to have, in want for another word, cojones.
Tourism
It’s no longer about hundreds of tourists. It’s not about how many stars you can offer. It’s about singular, authentic lifestyle experiences. Can you give visitors a taste of what your lifestyle and culture is like?
Package your micro-tourism business to include the best food (possibly caught or harvested by the guests themselves) accommodation and transport. Offer venues and destinations that are local hot spots as opposed to tourist traps. It’s not a new concept, but the endless possibilities have yet to be tapped.
Short on ideas? Look at how Australia promoted itself with the World’s Best Jobs Campaign. Tourism operators created experience packages : to the VIP party scene, gourmet food and wine hot spots, and secret natural paradises.
Benefits: One no longer needs a few hundred thousand dollars to start a tourism business. Social media will be your best friend. If you're the kind of person people like to be around, and you enjoy showing them a good time, you are half way there.
Cost: Not every location is made equal. If you live in Chernobyl, Juarez or Kabul, try the Espresso Bar idea.
Conscientious Killing
It takes a special kind of person to want to get into the business of killing things. But if you open a humane animal “processing” business, you will make a killing! Sorry.
Thanks to various social media streams, consumers are being exposed to the inhumane treatment of current meat production. In turn, demand for conscientious and humane animal meat production is a caterwaul that calls entrepreneurs who have a stomach for this sort of thing.
Korin is one company forging their way into this market with amazing success. Their business is chicken and they care for them meticulously. Korin owns a church on the property where employees make regular supplications to honour the animals who died “not for greed, but for the betterment of human kind”. Once a year the farm also holds a festival to celebrate the sentient beings who were sacrificed, in the hope that this will help them re-incarnate to a better station. It’s a Japanese concept.
Benefits: Low if any competition.
Cost: They're pretty obvious.
Superfood
Fresh spirulinaIt’s the future of our food industry. Live, dense nutrition. Eat less. Free your energy and time for more important ventures. Spirulina, chlorophyll-dense grasses, sprouts, acai, and quinoa - eat a little and your tank is full.
The Big Pharma consciousness is showing major cracks in the mass hypnosis. People cure their various cancers using “alternative” methods; mostly by switching to a superfood-dense diet and cleansing. The superfood industry is in its infancy. The world is their oyster. Actually the world is their spirulina smoothie.
Benefits: This industry is wide open for innovation.
Cost: One needs to grow or access quality raw superfood materials.
Business by another name
Is bartering ; now the main currency in my island nation.
Most people who barter agree that it is a far more satisfying consumer experience. Some might exchange their home-grown beetroot with the neighbour’s raw milk. Or the fish caught by the retiree two doors down will swap his extra few for a bag of salad greens. Though not a new idea, bartering is seeing a strong resurgence thanks to new global economic and cultural challenges.
What entrepreneurial ideas do you think should be on this list?
Reader Comments (14)
What a great article Pres. !!!
You do have a way with tapping this wave of human consciousness. Great question at the end. I would have to think more small-time clothing designers. First we have to get out of the idea that success = selling a shirt for a thousand dollars to some celebrity. "Small time" is the new "big time".
Wood. Hardwood, timber. The earth's air is dirty. Trees are being ripped out by the football field daily. Wood has become a rare construction material. I know a few people who have started "farming" hardwood trees from Brazil that grow fast. They can harvest as early as every 15 years. Low maintenence too. A great retirement option I think.
Hi Becky,
I can already see this trend starting. That's a relief! I can see stalls in markets, of home made, beautifully designed clothes. I often find myself wishing that they don't become "discovered" so I can still buy their affordable pieces of art. Thanks for your comment xx
Hi Johnathan. I agree with you about how scarce timber is becoming. It's definately a win-win with the timber/air quality offering. And you are right, retirees would be the perfect farmers for this crop. It's a nest egg of sorts (as long as a bushfire doesn't come through). I would love to do this myself in a few more decades. Thanks for your comment. xx
Home cooking for others .
Many people work long hours at the office and just don’t have the time to prepare proper nutritious and healthy meals (for themselves or for their families). As a result they consume fast food or ready-meals, leading to poor health and weight problems (even to obesity). Others would like to prepare more nutritious meals, and to live a healthier life, but just don’t cook well (for example, don’t know how to make tasty vegetarian dishes).
Health conscious working mothers and Hi-Tech workers (mainly at big cities) would love to know that there is a proper healthy meal, waiting for their family, upon their return home.
If you are any good at cooking, the Idea is to come 1-2 times a week to a family and cook them meals, for the next few days, in their own kitchen (using their own pans and pots). The menu for each week is agreed by both sides the day before (or is left up to the cook to decide). The ingredients are bought by the customers (according to a shopping list E-mailed by the cook) or by the cook (on his way in – this way the ingredients are always very fresh!).
We are not talking about gourmet meals but rather simple, preferably healthy and fresh home cooking that will be loved by both children and adults (With time, you will know what dishes each family like best).
A single cooking session should take no more than 3-4 hours, so you can easily “squeeze” in 2 families a day (if you really want to do that...)
Benefits: Working independently (no restaurant chef/boss crawling all over your back). You don’t have to purchase any equipment (as you use their kitchen stuff). You can choose the customers (families) that you enjoy to work for.
Cost: Cleaning after...
Hi Domo. A well thought out idea. I would just love someone to bring me a homemade organic mother-of-all-salads and jumbo size vege juice. I hope you consider me a customer if you start something like this. xx
A community owned bank which is not connected with any other banking system. It makes it's own rules, interest rates etc. Keep them small transparent and responsible.
Brendan. I was hoping someone would come up with a banking idea. I hope this happens sooner than later. It's a system based on trust, but that's the fundament of a community anyway. Small will be their strength. I'm starting to see a trend here. Thanks for your comment.
A new facebook. Social interraction without the suspicion, want for money, and secrets.
Removal of the stock exchange.
A new way of managing the new surge of small business so they can still be internationally successful (but still by word of mouth), and not pressure people into seeing their adds.
Ban adds. Period. They're invasive.
"Its a jungle out there and everyone is cutting it down. So how to survive and make a living??
Find sustainable energy. Accept nuclear power and run with what capitalism is leading us to:
Spying by drones, going faster towards everything, from beginning to end with one long high in a western society where the majority of people are more interested in what Justin Bieber eats for breakfast rather than what their own liver looks like. High tech, high speed, easy access, fast buck, consume the celebrity.
You could 'survive' making coffee from a cart, but do you want to stand in the burning heat/freezing cold for 12 hours a day to earn $1 per cup, when the mogels are cutting down the jungle and making squillions simply buying and selling money. Money that doesn't even exist.
I love your idealism, but I would tinge it with what exists already. You have to make lots of money to be free!"
Hi Nicky. Thanks for your comment. It's fantastic that we are all thinking about the future like this. Some thoughts on your comments:
Freedom - the ultimate prize - is currently being re-defined. It used to mean money to do anything. But the world is arriving at a precipice, and its resources becoming exhausted, so the game of acquiring money, power, and 'freedom' has to change.
"The world has enough resources for everybody, but not enough for a few"
Consumption of fashion, fast culture, nuclear power, quest for billions at the expense of globally-owned resources, will soon be replaced (I predict) by the small business, which will give limited return, but just enough for a comfortable life for those who own it.
Global branding, corporate power will be threatened by smaller, higher quality products of the same kind, made by a community-based company who promise a kick back towards some environmental project. Their advertising will bleed the ideology that it's a small, sustainable company with no carbon footprint.
The gift of the fast communication and exposure of everybody's secrets (drones, wikileaks, hackers) is a game-changer. We have to go small, local, honest, and re-think what it is to be 'free'
What do you think Nicky? I look forwards to your insight.
Freedom to do good and be good. If you are busy making money and feeding your family, how free are you just by chosing a lifestyle? I have made money, now I am free to help others: to mentor, to teach, to do things for others for free, but I still have a realistic approach on how this world is going to survive or develop.
The past is dead, anarchy creeps in insiduously and as all us yoginis know, the future is just imagination. So how are you imagining it? No war, well I vote for that, but who is listening. When we lobbied against the Iraq war on the streets of London did Tony Blair listen? No, "they" had weapons he said, of mass distraction. And this from a 'civilised' country. And by the way we need schools and hospitals in England if anyone is buying. Here the urban future does not hold much for impoverished youth who roam in packs with knives and gangs. They are more concerned with survival than eating greens and brown rice.
Hi again Nicky,
I gave your last comment a lot of thought yesterday, especially on the subject: 'what is freedom'. In the past people sought freedom, defined roughly by not being obligated to work, and instead, spend time how one wishes. But it appears that many wealthy people found themselves with endless free time, and still without the sense of freedom. Outwardly yes. But inwardly? Many appeared lost.
From their example, a lot of people have come to re-define freedom as "meaning". To find ones meaning in life can be liberating, even if their time is consumed by work and family committments. If they find meaning in what they do, they might feel that constant sense of freedom within, while being busy with what makes them passionate.
From what you indicated about your life, it's a perfect example of what I hope the future will look like for more people: make your own money with something you are passionate about, make enough to sustain your lifestyle and family. Make enough so as to not depend on government systems. If the excessively wealthy people did this much, the earth wouldn't be in it's dire straits with stretched resources.
You benefitted your community with your work. Now you are lending your wisdom and time to help others in your community. I feel optimistic about the possibilities for people, including myself.
As for England ignoring your war protests, that mistake is behind us. I hope we have all learned from such a disaster, and our race is wiser. Evolution happens slowly, doesn't it. We are only as evolved as our most down-trodden people, not unlike those impovrished urban youth you mentioned. If we are one big living organism, they are the free radicals. The only way to fix them, and in turn ourselves, is to take responsibility and care.
Awesome feedback Nicky. Thank you for taking the time to comment. xx
You and Nicky should get a room! Or at least grant her a visa to your nation for bilateral talks.