Career Guide: Start a biz with minimal risk
Consultant to collegebound students and their families. The hysteria around getting into the "right" college seems only to be accelerating. It's become almost de rigueur for upper-middle-class parents to spend thousands of dollars on a consultant to help pick out the colleges to apply to, fill out applications, and obtain financial aid. This business requires little money to start, but be sure you're willing to market, market, market. That could mean, for example, doing free workshops at suburban public and private high schools, as well as at places of worship in upscale areas.
Mission-critical repair. Newspaper and magazine printers can't afford for their machines to go down during a print run. Yet these massive machines have many moving parts and are trouble-prone. That's the sort of repair business that can be lucrative. Other examples: machines used in hospitals, especially in operating rooms, commercial airplane engine and avionics repair, parking meter repair.
Government contractor. The government is an excellent customer. It pays its bills and often is less price-conscious than private sector customers. An excellent introduction to becoming a government contractor is at www.captureplanning.com.
Online Dating Consultant. For many people, nothing is more important than meeting Mr. or Ms. Right. And to do that, ever more people are turning to online dating. But they often struggle writing their profiles and getting good photos to post. That's where you come in. Advertise on singles sites.
If my child were starting a business, I'd advise him to ignore the conventional wisdom dispensed by MBA schools. They encourage people to tackle intellectually interesting innovations because they're fun to discuss and because the professors aren't risking any money. But in the real world, key to a business's success is risk reduction. Above all, that means don't innovate; replicate.
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