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Business Opportunity - becoming an Independent ContractorWhat is a business opportunity? by Cedrick Brent
A business opportunity is your own special idea for a product or service you can sell successfully. In order to find your own niche as an entrepreneur, there are a few important things to consider. First, you should analyze the population changes and shifts in your local community that create market opportunities. In addition, you should carefully consider your own interests, activities, and abilities. This last part is especially important. Development of a product or service that will sell requires creativity and knowledge, so it’s best to draw your ideas from that which you know best.
The people a business serves are its market. Your market, for example, might be your friends, neighbors, classmates at school, or colleagues at your current job. What might these people want to buy? No one knows the answer better than you do.
You might not realize it yet, but you have unique knowledge that will help you to develop a business idea. Your everyday life is constantly providing information about market opportunities: What do your friends like? What do your parents do on weekends? What are some problems in your community? Answers to these questions might lead you to a business opportunity.
The great thing about entrepreneurship is that your success is not limited by your abilities or education. You should never feel that you are not good enough, or creative enough, or smart enough to succeed.
The goal of an entrepreneur is to figure out what he or she can sell that consumers need to buy. The most important thing an entrepreneur needs for success is a vision of what consumers need. Sometimes entrepreneurs can imagine, or envision a need that other people don’t see immediately. Think about some of the things we take for granted today, like televisions. The companies that invented and marketed the first televisions imagined an unprecedented home entertainment system. Before then, most families were happy with their radios, and didn’t feel a specific need for a new form of entertainment. But as you know, today most families have televisions – to the point where we almost feel like we “need” them. Another example: computer entrepreneurs saw a future with computers in every family’s home well before people could imagine using a computer regularly.
Changes in the business environment create opportunities for entrepreneurs. Successful new businesses are usually created to meet a specific need in the society. So, what does society, or the market, need? Let’s start by looking at shifts in the general population’s age and lifestyle.
Age: The baby boomers are aging. In the 80s, the baby boomers created a bulge in the population in the age category of 35 to 44. In the 90s, the baby boomers will be 45 to 54 years old. What impact will this have on the market? Most baby boomers have already purchased the basics for their home. In the 90s, if they buy anything for their home, they are looking for quality. In addition, the aging baby boomers will probably increase the demand for health care service.
The baby boomers produced a shadow baby boom, which includes current middle school students. In the 90s, the children of the baby boomers ranged in age from toddlers to college students. Although these children represent a smaller hump in the population than the baby boomers, many of them have more material possessions than their parents did at the same age. For example, children of baby boomers have more technological equipment than their parents did.
There are more elderly in the population than ever before. They need products and services that help them to live full lives. It is no wonder that the home health care industry and retirement housing is booming.
Lifestyles: With the increase in dual career families, time is very important. Dual career families are buying many products and services to help them save time running the household. House cleaning services, day care centers, and lawn care services are all becoming more popular. So are fast-food restaurants, particularly those that prepare entire “home-style” meals for take-out. Think about the young entrepreneur we mentioned above, who knows a lot about cooking and wants to start a catering business. She might decide to target her service to working families, providing nutritional meals for them to share.
Americans are becoming increasingly concerned about the environment and the importance of recycling. Many products come with labels that indicate if they or their packaging was produced in an environmentally-friendly manner. Other trends we might observe include interest in health and fitness, and an interest in the Internet and telecommunications.
You can turn into an entrepreneur by turning everyday experiences into business opportunities. Learn to look at life differently: If something is inconvenient or troublesome, imagine a solution… and there’s a business opportunity. If you use a product in a new way, you could redesign it … and there’s a business opportunity.
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