Business Ideas

I’m often struck at the stark difference between salespeople and advisors, how oblivious some people seem to be to the difference and the lengths some salespeople will go to present themselves as advisors. It’s a spectrum, and the differences can be a little fuzzy, but if we think of a benevolent family doctor / general [...]

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Mr Cheap is out of town and may (or may not) be responding to comments.  Rest assured, he’ll read each carefully once he’s back. This post, obviously, isn’t meant to be a comprehensive overview of networking. Entire courses, books and seminars have been devoted to that.  This is simply intended as a primer for people [...]

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I’m often struck by how rude people in customer service positions are.  I understand when people say “they have a tough job and they get fed up with it just like anyone else”, but ultimately if it’s the ENTIRE point of someone’s job to interact with the public, shouldn’t they stay nice (or at the [...]

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Eliminating the middleman is never as simple as it sounds. ‘Bout 50% of the human race is middlemen, and they don’t take kindly to being eliminated. -Malcolm Reynolds (Firefly) The Internet removes middlemen.  In many ways, this is the core of the wealth it has created, by putting buyers and sellers directly in touch with [...]

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Recently I was discussing with my wife an idea she had for an online business.  One of her hobbies is genealogy, which is basically researching your family tree so she had the idea of offering a genealogy research service for money.  I don’t know if this business idea will ever get going or not, but [...]

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Don’t forget to enter the SmartyPig $25 giveaway contest which ends on Thursday, January 28. Years ago I read the book “Raving Fans” by Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles. The idea behind it is techniques to go from satisfying customers to creating a consumer-cult of the style enjoyed by Apple, Tim Hortons or In-N-Out Burger.  [...]

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There are all sorts of good reasons to want to start a business. Often it’s also possible to start a business doing something that the owner personally enjoys: people who like creating artistic works might become graphic designers, those who enjoy writing might become ProBloggers, authors or copywriters, while those who like talking to people [...]

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When I start writing up a wacky business idea, one of the things I do is a quick search to see if someone has already done something similar.  I don’t spend hours on it, but I’ll look for 5 or 10 minutes.  In many ways it’s surprisingly rare to find someone is already doing what [...]

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I was talking to a friend recently and used the term “ramen profitable”, which she found incredibly amusing.  I realized that I had never used the term on the blog or posted about it, even though it’s a very useful perspective on starting a business. The term was coined by Paul Graham, and he discusses [...]

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Scott Adams writes some of his business ideas on his blog, and he says people react in one of two ways, they tell him either: it’ll never work dumbass or someone’s already doing it dumbass (and they provide a link). Both are valid reactions to any of my business ideas . A few years ago [...]

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Confucius says “Man without smiling face should not open store” When I lived at Bathurst and St. Clair, in Toronto years ago, there was a steady stream of new businesses opening and closing.  It was great for me, as I loved to try new restaurants, but it got to the point where I could tell [...]

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I was originally going to stop after 20 wacky business ideas, but I think some people enjoy them (and they’re easy posts to write), so I’ll keep going with them.  Sorry if you’re sick of the whole category of posts (I’ll forgive our regular readers if they skip THESE POSTS – you MUST read everything [...]

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One of the things that really impressed me when I first met Mike was HOW involved he was in the personal finance blogging community.  When he found a blog he liked, not only would he add it to his RSS reader and start following it (and commenting at it), but he’d dig in and read [...]

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In a comment on a post a while back MoneyGardener expressed interest in hearing some of the business ideas that I’ve had and never developed. Scott Adams writes some of his business ideas on his blog, and he says people react in one of two ways, they tell him either: it’ll never work dumbass or someone’s already doing [...]

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I’ve been reluctant to post many game or book ideas in the Wacky Business Idea series, just because every gamer or reader has TONS of ideas (which are usually pretty lame).  This is one of my best (although probably still lame) video game ideas. In the distant past, computer role-playing games (RPGs) were quite popular.  [...]

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Typically condos are made to be fairly luxurious accommodations.  As well as trendy features like granite counters and spa washrooms, they’ll sometimes have concierges and martini bars.  Each of these features has a cost, which gets passed along to the condo owners, typically as a high monthly condo fee.  As an alternative, this idea is [...]

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Notaries are used to authenticate documents, providing additional weight that they mean what they say they do (and are between the people they’re supposedly between).  I had this idea back during the dot-com era, and the core of it is that you build a company who’s primary purpose is to authenticate that documents were created [...]

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I recently watched the new “Dead Like Me” movie (it’s awful, I’m not sure if the people who wrote it ever saw the TV series).  On the Pirate Bay a commenter (derrrface) wrote asking everyone to buy the direct-to-DVD movie to encourage Showcase to resume the series.  Other commenters weren’t very supportive about his suggestion, [...]

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In a comment on a post a while back MoneyGardener expressed interest in hearing some of the business ideas that I’ve had and never developed. Scott Adams writes some of his business ideas on his blog, and he says people react in one of two ways, they tell him either: it’ll never work dumbass or [...]

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