Day 9: Take Away Pain, or Fulfill a Dream

Today I spoke with my sister Heidi about the organic baby clothing market.  Heidi and her husband Rob own a business that sells baby and toddler clothes from designers to retailers.  Heidi told me that they carry one organic line and it doesn't sell well.  She also explained to me that right now the organic children's clothing market is really saturated (there are a lot of people doing it) and there are few making any many.  Manufacturers and designers are closing down all over the country.  She echoed what mothers I've spoke to have said; in this economy they're unwilling to pay extra for organic.  So with this information I'm going to let that product go.  Also, as far as the imdb for music goes, I don't think that business idea will work for what I'm going for.  It's a great idea, but websites like that get all of their income from advertising, which requires much more time that I'm wanting to give, and isn't a product.  I could maybe charge for use of the site, but I don't know how useful that would be.  Plus there would be huge upstart costs, way more than I have or am willing to pay.  It could be good for a second business or one down the road.

I needed inspiration today, so I galloped into a wooded glen, then after dropping off Katelyn at 24 Hour Fitness, and punching a wicked snow storm in the face, I decided to go to Borders bookstore.  While there I was looking around for some product ideas when I came across a book called Instant Income.  While reading this book I realized that I had missed a critical teaching from Tim Ferris (author of 4-Hour Workweek) that I had brushed by.  Tim and the author of Instant Income said not to create a product then try and sell it to a market, but first to find a market then find a product that market needs.  This book Instant Income said that everyone is looking for 1 of 2 things from products and services:

1.  Something to take away people's problem
2.  Something to help people fulfill their dreams

In other words, find a niche, then find a way to either alleviate pain, or fulfill ambition.  With this knowledge, I venture forward.

On the other end of this, I read a book called 101 Ideas for At Home Business or something like that.  In it, I found an idea for a business that could so easily be automated.  A wake up and reminder calling service would be SO easy to set up and automate.  All I would have to do is set up the website, market, get customers, then find a VA company that works in teams so that I can have someone working around the clock to give calls and reminders.  I wouldn't even hire a VA until I had a client, so I would have almost no start up costs.  Clients would likely pay a monthly fee, discounted if they signed up for a yearly fee.  Anyway, that would be really easy to do so I may think of doing that in addition to the product business.

Here's where I need your help.  There are already wake up calling services that are probably completely automated, how can I differentiate mine?  Expanding to be not only a wake up service, but also a reminder service will branch it out.  There are some reminder services that also give reminders of birthdays, anniversaries, meetings, etc to clients.  They probably do this too, but we could also offer to email, fax, call, or even call a neighbor with reminders.  Call centers are easy to automate, and are a primary function that businesses use VA's for.  Any ideas on how I could differentiate a business like this?  Or do you know a need in a niche I may or may not be a part of that needs filling?  If you give me a suggestion for your niche, I can apply it to mine.

Peace of Schmidt:
First of all, check out the new OneRepublic CD, its incredible!  Secondly, you can use www.shopify.com for an all in one online store.  Shopify integrates with other services so you can use it to take orders and money, plus it has a simple to use website design function like wix or wordpress.  I'll probably use it and integrate it with paypal.