You'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?