Great question, especially coming into the holiday time when kids have extra time and will be tempted to use it on social media and other consumption-based tasks.
You want them to be creative but you also need to be wary of telling them to follow their passion when it comes to business.
They need to find something that they are passionate about but they also need to find something they have skills in and something that people will pay them for.
My top tip: deep empathy and noticing.
These two traits are the building blocks of many great businesses. Let me give you an example. Your daughter works at a local cafe but really wants to start a little business. She’s been inspired by YouTube creators and lifestyle bloggers and the early suggestions are all around selling clothes and doing makeup reviews. Sounds like it might work but she’s missing a great opportunity right in front of her.
With her (growing) powers of empathy and noticing, she goes to her next shift on the lookout for anything that people are struggling with or anything that could be made better. What does she see with her new eyes?
She thinks about:
How her boss is always having a hard time with allocating shifts and having people wanting to change shifts
People with plastic bags from shopping at the local supermarket
Parents trying to get their children to sit still at the cafe
People buying their coffees once a week
Next step…what could these insights be used for? Some business ideas might be:
Learn how to use shift planning software like When I Work and then approach a few local businesses and offer to set up their staff scheduling for them for an upfront cost plus monthly support in case they need it
The alternative to plastic bags are often jute bags. Could your daughter look at Ali Express and find a manufacturer to sell custom jute bags? Perhaps get a designer to add your local town name in a stylish font and see if local stores would stock them
Busy parents with noisy kids, you’ve got to have compassion on them. What about selling cafes a pad & pencil kit so small kids can do something while they wait? Don’t go buying anything yet. Prepare a single page of the concept and ask 10 cafes if they’re interested
People buying their coffee once per week. Perhaps they don’t drink much or perhaps they drink it from home during the week. Maybe a monthly coffee subscription business that your daughter could set up for each local cafe. She could create a small website for each cafe using subscription management software and then the orders go directly to the cafe. Revenue could be upfront for the setup and then a percentage of each sale.
A few ideas based on empathy and noticing. What ideas have you noticed lately?
We’ve done some research into modern ways to track ongoing subscription payments for software and three choices to reseaerch further are: Cardlife (apply for a business mastercard that links to the app). Pricing starts at $49 per month Bobby 2 (download iOS app for free and pay for in-app upgrades) Truebill (an app that connects …
Question: I am running an Airbnb business, since I need a team work software, I tried Asana. But it will be more helpful if it can automatically generate cleaning tasks from Airbnb calendar. Since we need to inform cleaners to do cleaning every time when the guests check out. Do you know any other software …
Further details of question: I’m looking for a combination of systems that can automate a lot of the administrative mundane tasks needed in a sales/contract cycle. I suspect there would be lots of integrations using apps like Zapier to connect things like-calendar, leads, emails (auto email generation), notes, tasks, invoice, payments etc etc.
It was so interesting looking at all the ways that people try to set up their wine club software for their vineyards. It should be relatively simple to run a wine subscription from your site but there are quite a few features that wineries want to have for their wine club member management: Integration with …
What business should my teenage daughter start?
Great question, especially coming into the holiday time when kids have extra time and will be tempted to use it on social media and other consumption-based tasks.
You want them to be creative but you also need to be wary of telling them to follow their passion when it comes to business.
They need to find something that they are passionate about but they also need to find something they have skills in and something that people will pay them for.
My top tip: deep empathy and noticing.
These two traits are the building blocks of many great businesses. Let me give you an example. Your daughter works at a local cafe but really wants to start a little business. She’s been inspired by YouTube creators and lifestyle bloggers and the early suggestions are all around selling clothes and doing makeup reviews. Sounds like it might work but she’s missing a great opportunity right in front of her.
With her (growing) powers of empathy and noticing, she goes to her next shift on the lookout for anything that people are struggling with or anything that could be made better. What does she see with her new eyes?
She thinks about:
Next step…what could these insights be used for? Some business ideas might be:
A few ideas based on empathy and noticing. What ideas have you noticed lately?
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