I think I'm in a great situation, but I have no idea where to begin.

[saavoss]

Currently, I work in a desk job. There is no social element to my work. I have only been out of college for 6 months, but I know this isn't something I want to do for the rest of my life. I am not in a huge rush to shake up my life, but I do want to transition towards a career where I have a greater level of autonomy. I am looking for concrete advice on how to get started.

I have three key questions:

1. Do you need a brilliant idea?
2. If I wanted to start a conventional business (dry cleaner, vending machines, etc), do I need to have a detailed technical understanding of the industry before beginning?
3. How do I recognize what is needed in my community?

Any general advice is appreciated. Here is some information about myself:

Interests
-I feel like I could enjoy working in any field, so long as I had control over my own work. I do have some interests, but most of them seem difficult to apply to a business (economics, public policy, journalism, debate)

Finances

-I currently have a steady "9 to 5 job" as a public policy researcher. My job is not very demanding, and I could see myself putting in an additional 20 to 25 hours a week trying to get something else started.

-I don't earn that much currently (~$40,000 before taxes), but I have an extremely low-expense lifestyle. I live at home with my parents, and can bike to work when the weather is nice. This allows me to save a large portion of what I earn.

-My fiance is an economics Phd student. She makes around $20,000 per year, but will probably make close to six figures when she graduates in a couple of years.

-Combined with my fiance, we currently have about $40,000 in savings (mostly in mutual funds). I could probably pretty easily get another $40,000-$60,000 from family, if I had a really good business plan.

Contacts

-Most of my friends are in academia. I know some people in consulting from work. My father is the president of two medium sized construction companies, so I could probably access tons of contacts through him. However, I don't know anything about construction, and have never really shown an interest. I also don't really want to end up working for him (even indirectly)

Location
-I live in a suburb northwest of Washington DC. I currently am not willing to relocate.

[saavoss]

Also, I'm 23 years old.

Thanks!

[Steve B]

It sounds like you have everything in place except for an inspiration. Your low expense lifestyle is your biggest asset in my opinion. You are in the very envious position of having the ability to fail a couple times as long as you don't lose too much of your savings. Most people HAVE to have a certain level of financial success almost immediately so they can cover the $1,000 mortgage payment and other associated expenses.

To answer your questions:
1. No, you don't need a brilliant idea. This is the thing that held me up for 20 years. I thought I had to have a brilliant idea before going into business. You just need a half decent idea and a lot of hard work. Or, you can take something that already exists - buy it, and tweak it a little here and there and improve on it.

2. No, but you need to know enough to understand when/if someone is lying to you. Obviously, the more knowledge the better. But, you can hire someone that knows the stuff you don't know.

3. That's a more difficult question. Sometimes if there is an unfulfilled need in your community, it's because others have found it wasn't profitable to fulfill the need. Other times, there seems to be plenty of people filling a need in a community, but someone new still can be successful if they do it a little better or faster (i.e. pizza shops). I think this is where you have to find a happy marriage between the needs of your community, the profitability of an idea, and something that you can be passionate about. It took me twenty years to find this and the profitability part is still in question.

To give you an example - a friend of mine makes a decent living picking up dog poop. He wasn't the first with this idea and it's probably not under the category of a "brilliant" idea. He had another source of income at first and a low expense lifestyle, so he could afford to lose money for many years until he built up enough clients. He didn't know anything about his field (there is actually a bit more to it than you might think). He is now a poop expert! The need was obvious - he did the rest with hard work. His low prices have kept all other competitors from getting established because they can't afford to lose money for several years. He still doesn't make a ton of money, but he has employees do all the work for him, he just answers the phone and does the marketing.

[Freelancier]

My father is the president of two medium sized construction companies, so I could probably access tons of contacts through him. However, I don't know anything about construction, and have never really shown an interest.

Looking for your first "great idea"? Start with the above. Your dad already has two businesses going and he has a problem that he knows that someone should be able to solve for a pretty reasonable price, but there's no one in the market that has solved it right. Just ask him what that problem is and then brainstorm with him about possible solutions. Don't worry about "working for him", that's just "23 years old" talking. I know, because I was there, too. And my dad drove me nuts as I created stuff to solve his problems. But it gave me a lot of knowledge and experience that I couldn't easily replicate any other way. And if his two businesses are your first two customers, that's two more customers than you'd have otherwise. And he likely knows a lot of his competitors and would provide contact info and references for you. So everyone wins. And once you get a few more clients, you get to run your business your way and reap the rewards.

[AlexB1]

You're exactly right that you're in a great position to start sorting things out. I wouldn't quit the day job by any means, since it sounds like a good, flexible gig (and frankly it's good to get some "real" working experience - most people hate the first 6-12 months of their first real job, but that doesn't mean it's a bad thing). In terms of figuring out what your community needs I'd just make sure that you are out and about in your community as much as possible. Wander around, try to shop all local. Figure out what frustrates you and what needs fixing. There's a great example of a community near me where a husband / wife team started selling fresh roasted coffee to all the local restaurants. It wasn't like there was no coffee in town, but they wanted something better and created it.

[KristineS]

Wow, these are good questions, and I think it's wonderful that you're asking them at 23 instead of at 43 or 53. Puts you very much ahead in the game.

In answer to your questions:

1. You don't need a brilliant idea. You do need an idea that offers something that hasn't been there before. As Bill said in his example with the pizza shops, sometimes it's just doing it faster or slightly differently than others have done whatever it is.

2. If you want to start a business like a dry cleaners or something, you probably don't need a detailed technical understanding, but it couldn't hurt to do a lot of research before you start so you understand how the industry works, who the players are and what the potential pitfalls might be. Also, keep in mind, there's a lot of difference between owning a dry cleaners and working in one. If you're just planning to be the owner and have employees that's a lot different than if you're going to be the guy behind the counter every day.

3. Again, I'll have to echo what's already been said. Look around your community and see what's missing. Start up Twitter and Facebook profiles and connect with local people and ask the questions. What's missing in our community? What would you like to see become available? Twitter and Facebook can be very powerful local community builders if used properly and social media allows for a wider range of feedback for a larger group of people.

Also, don't be so quick to dismiss your interests as potential business opportunities. I'm sure there are business owners who would love to have public policy issues that may impact their business explained to them in a way they could easily absorb. There are also a lot of small business owners who could benefit from public speaking lessons. The advice about doing what you love has become kind of cliche, but there is a lot of truth to it. Sometimes you just have to take what you love and figure out who to make money doing it.

[billbenson]

Let me toss out an idea that I don't think has been done before for discussion. I don't plan on doing it regardless, so I don't care if somebody steals it.

Retailers are going out of business or converting to online businesses at a record pace. One of the biggest pain in the buttish (excuse me for making up words) parts of buying online is returning the product. You've taken the TV set out of the box and there is a problem with it, or clothing doesn't fit properly. If you bought it from Walmart it's easy and they are everywhere and take anything back. This isn't the case even with big players like Amazon. In fact returning something bought through Amazon. I finally gave up with trying to return an item bought through Amazon a while back. It was only $20 but...

So here is the business idea. Start a business that specializes in returning items. Kind of like a UPS Store that specializes in returns. The customer doesn't have to box it back up, fill out paperwork etc. Vendors from Macy's to the most obscure business register with them. If the business grows, in the end it could end up being a selling feature for the retailers. Kind of like have a secure site logo on a website. There are all kinds of multiple revenue streams possible for this.

As I said in the beginning, I'm not going to do this so I haven't done any research. I do see it as an emerging need going into the future.

To keep this relative to the OP, does anybody think this or some variant of it is a good idea and if so, how would you approach it?

[MyITGuy]

To keep this relative to the OP, does anybody think this or some variant of it is a good idea and if so, how would you approach it?

Not too sure about that one?

Online retailers normally have to issue an RMA before a return can be processed, and this would usually be linked to an account where the member needs to provide a username/password and would be tied back to other personal/financial info. Maybe if you had a large enough presence you could pitch the process to these big online retailers...but that would take a bunch of capital.

I would also find it hard to differentiate from the existing shops that do this...I.E. The UPS Store and other pack and ship locations. I take my products to them and they care for the boxing/packing and shipping. I know the guys quite well at my local shop and they are constantly dealing with AT&T UVerse equipment returns (Under a contract)...so you have a big player already as competition.

[Business magnate]

Hi saavoss, you did some serious self-examination and self-analysis to figure out what you want. That's great first step. I'll try to answer some of your questions...


I have three key questions:

1. Do you need a brilliant idea?
2. If I wanted to start a conventional business (dry cleaner, vending machines, etc), do I need to have a detailed technical understanding of the industry before beginning?
3. How do I recognize what is needed in my community?

1. No.
2. You don't need to be PhD or professor, of course, it would be useful to know something about the stuff, but you will never know absolutely everything, you can find someone who knows and hire them to help/mentor you, and you can use books, internet, etc.
3. Anything can be needed anytime. I would reformulate the question. "What type of business interests me?"


Interests
-I feel like I could enjoy working in any field, so long as I had control over my own work. I do have some interests, but most of them seem difficult to apply to a business (economics, public policy, journalism, debate)

Everything is a business.


-Combined with my fiance, we currently have about $40,000 in savings (mostly in mutual funds). I could probably pretty easily get another $40,000-$60,000 from family, if I had a really good business plan.


This is big advantage for you. Although you must be extremely cost-consciousness - down to pennies.


Contacts

-Most of my friends are in academia. I know some people in consulting from work. My father is the president of two medium sized construction companies, so I could probably access tons of contacts through him. However, I don't know anything about construction, and have never really shown an interest. I also don't really want to end up working for him (even indirectly)


"It's not what you know, it's who you know.." If you don't get results with them, you can find a new one.