You can start commoditized non-tech businesses too

Lesson Details:

Video Transcription – I know that I've been suggesting a lot of ideas for you that are tech related and you might not wanna do tech you might just want to do something else and even though you have a tech background I try to bring you things that have to do with it but you're not you don't need to be stuck with anything like that so in this video I wanted to explain there's kind of three ways that I look at business ideas and one is commoditized another is innovative and another is a hybrid of the two and again you don't have to choose you don't have to get stuck on any single one so let's go over them commoditized ideas are things that just totally proven businesses let's say a cleaning business a restaurant a coffee shop a roofing business those businesses it's really clear how to run them maybe it's not immediately clear to you but generally there's widely available knowledge of how to run these businesses they've been successfully created in the past it's understood how to hire correctly how to price correctly if you just get someone who started that business before they can coach you through every part of that business and explain hey here's the right answer for every situation just almost not every every situation but most situations in that business because it's just such a common business and the the good thing about this business typically is that they are proven they're needed and they the bad thing of course is that they are boring you know it's like who wants to start a you know like a roofing business or a handyman business or a cleaning business yeah it's like you know it's not that exciting like a lawn care business yeah you make money but it's not like you're gonna have glory right you're not gonna be the Steve Jobs of of lawn care so that's kind of what what turns people off from these businesses but they are totally fine and they can be really good and if you become a good business person there's no reason why you can't be you know let's say you're a lawn care business but no reason why you can't be a multimillion lawn care business multimillion-dollar lawn care business if you just dominate lawn care in your city maybe in your county maybe in your state and that's a certainly a multi million dollar a year business you just have to execute it well enough and certainly there's a lot of business savvy that will go into that now the next kind of businesses ideas are innovative ideas innovative ideas are you know the new startups the new abs the new ubers out there and they're attractive they get a lot of attention they're sexy and often they're invested because they typically you know have high growth and they're typically online and so they're scalable and all that stuff the problem with innovative ideas is that they have this market risk they're extra risky because when you're creating something new you don't know if it's gonna work it's just you know you just a guess and you can make that your guess better by getting feedback and doing customer development all those tactics we discussed but again you don't even need to do customer development or get feedback from four proven ideas because it's proven like decades have proven that these ideas are necessary so those businesses are necessary so innovative ideas are carry more risk market risk don't know if customers will adopt this version of the business this version of the idea and then there's the hybrid business ideas the hybrid ideas are kind of a take on the to the commoditized and innovative so hybrid is like let's say you take a commoditized business like on tutoring business and then instead of having a tutoring business that's in person you can go and create a tutoring business online so you bring tutors from all over the world and you connect them with students all over the world and of course you get better you know better tutors better rates for the instructors maybe who knows so there's some advantages there it's easier way easier because people can do it from home so that's the hybrid of this you took a commoditized idea and you made it innovative and obviously that idea isn't necessarily new there's been online tutoring websites for many years now but it's just an example so something you can do for yourself don't be afraid first of all of getting into a commoditized business you can still make money there no problem it just has to be something that you're passionate about and you can always think about what are the commodities businesses and how can I innovate them how can I hide like I guess make them hybrids with new technology that's coming up with Internet with everything else that's coming up like the you know everything that's sort of around the corner' how can you have a new take on the old business and with every time there's a new technology that comes around yeah gives potential for you to uncover a new use case a new way to use something so that you can sort of turn that industry on its head like a revolutionizing industry have a new use case that's easier better make something better so sometimes new technologies really alter existing markets and that's something you want to look at as well those are the two takeaways here obviously the no problem getting into commoditized businesses and that you can always there's always ID opportunities to make hybrids of come commoditized businesses.