Video Transcript: Ideas for a Business: Some Options

All right. You are a person of enterprise and you want to do something. You want to support your family, you want to have more free time to do ministry and you're thinking of trying to figure out what it is you might. So we're thinking about ideas for business. And I want to give you some options, some categories with which you can sort of think about things.

1.Products you make

Stuff like food. I know some guy who is great at making pies. Maybe he could start making some pies, start selling pies here. You can go to restaurants and sell your pies. In the United States, it's difficult because the food people, the government people want you to have a commercial kitchen. You can't just bake the pie in your own house. The government is making it really difficult for people to do entrepreneur-ish things. So maybe your church is a place that you could do it. You could tithe from your profits.

The goal here is you're not starting some big developed business. You're just trying something out. Maybe you don't have everything perfect. Everything isn't quite right and if you got bigger, you'd have to do different things. But just do something. See if it works at all.

Making clothes
My wife, back in the day, when we had kids, she made kids' clothes, and she sold those clothes at different boutiques.

Books
I write books and I sell books. You can easily create your own book. You can stick it on Amazon. I get paid from people in Europe, all over the world, people I don't even know just because it's on there.

Courses
I have a friend that I play a sport with. His name is Eric. He basically goofs around most of the time. Hes’s got a mailing list of some 10,000. He was into real estate. He made some tapes on how to sell houses, so every month or so, he just does a blast to all these email people, and they buy his tapes on how to sell real estate. He made up a course, and he just sells it.

Art
I have friends who get into art. They set up shows, they go to markets and they set up their stuff. I have one guy who just has his art pictures in his truck. He just drives to restaurants one after another. He just brings in a few, talks to the owner and says, "Hey, would you like to put these up? You can keep them in your restaurant for free. I'm putting art on your wall. Then if you'll help me sell them, I'll give you a cut." That's what he does. He's retired, but he needs to make some more money, and that's what he does.

Some products you make
Crafts - whatever it is you make. My wife does quilting, sewing, all these different crafts. You can somehow figure that out.

Cars
My son has some Willys Jeeps and I have a '68 Dodson Roadster, and it needs to be fixed. Probably it's not the way to make money.

2. Products you buy to resell
Making your own product, it sort of works. I do that with my personalized bibles. I get bibles printed, but then I have to make the cover, I have to print the cover, I have to laminate the cover, I have to glue the cover onto the book, I have to cut. In some ways, I have to make this product, and it's a lot of work. If you're going to make crafts and food and all these things, if you want to have a restaurant or something like that, it's a lot of work. It's a lot easier to just buy someone's ready-made product and just sell that.

So where do you get a product? Well, there's stuff from China. Here in the United States, you can just order stuff from China. Four years ago, I was playing badminton, and I snapped my Achilles heel. My Achilles heel just snapped in half. So it had to be re-attached, and I got a boot thing, and I couldn't walk on it for months.  I got this knew scooter that had handlebars with a break, and then you could just put your knee on this thing and you could push it and roll around. My wife and I went on a cruise right when I was using that thing, so I took it along. Everywhere I went, people stopped me. They said, "Where do you get that? Because I had a problem with my foot. I know somebody who has a problem with their foot," or "They hurt themselves," or "They sprained their ankle," or something. But I had scores of people coming up to me, saying, "Where can I get something like that?"

I was curious. So what I did is I Googled me,  and I looked into manufacturers in China, and I discovered that you could pick these up for $50 if you ordered 100 of them. I looked online, and the cheapest one I could find online was $300. So I could buy them for $50 and I could undercut everybody. Let's say I just put a Google ad thing when anyone types in knee scooter, my ad would come up - $150. Cheaper than anybody. I could kill it.

There are all kinds of products like that. It's stuff that you bump into. I didn't start out going, "Lets' see, how could I start a business in knee walkers?" I happened to need a knee walker. I happened to have the problem. Because I had the problem, I got into the thing. And because I was curious about it, because there was a lot of interest in it, I followed up on it. I did a little bit of research to figure out how you might do something.

3. Finding products that you could resell

Bibles and books
That's what I do. I print bibles - the Jesus Bible, the Sampler Bible, all these different things. I put my own personalized cover, and most of it is something that someone else prints and I just re-sell it.

Healthcare related stuff
Here's a tip. Find out who makes what in your town and see if you can sell any of it. Your town has a lot of entrepreneurs, people that are making-- just visit every single factory in your village, or your town, or your city where you are. See each one of them.

There's a board member of Christian Leaders Institute, he's one of the largest suppliers of dehydrated fruit. It's incredible. Dehydrated blueberries and strawberries. It's unbelievable. I've often thought, I'm busy with ministry. I don't have time for this. But I can't help but think, "Wow! There's a business there." I could get all that stuff wholesale, re-package it and then sell it in a store that says something like, 'Healthy treats for kids at school,' or something. Kids are eating all this garbage, and cookies, and so on. This would be a healthy treat or something. I don't know. Would that work? I don't know.

What I'm saying is I'm paying attention. I see who makes what, and I ask myself, "Is there a way that I could re-do it, re-package it, resale it in some format that someone else is not doing?" You could do that in your place.

4. Personal services
Cat sitting. I had a guy working for me at The Bible League then he moved to Seattle. So he did a little work for me in Seattle, but he needed to make a living. He and his wife decided, "We're going to cat sit." People paid him to go spend half an hour with their cat when they were on vacation or gone for the day or whatever it was. For three/four hours a day, they would just take care of a cat. They made a living doing that.

Shopping for people
A lot of people don't have time to get out and shop. You could do the shopping for them. Old people's homes. There's a lot of people getting old in our country, and they need all kinds of services and there are things people can do for them. A lot of older people would pay just to have someone come and talk to them for an hour.

Doing hair, bringing meals, carpet cleaning, all these kinds of personal things that people need.

5. Whole trades
Building and materials and things like that.

Roofing
In the United States, it's a thing that a house needs every 15, 20, 25 years. I had seminary with a friend when I was in seminary back in the day. He lived in the bottom part of a house, and my wife and I lived on the top floor. He needed to make money to go to school and everything. So he decided to be a roofer in the summer. What he did is he just drove around and he looked at people's homes. If he saw a roof that was falling apart, he would just go to the door and knock on the door and say, "Hey, I can do your roof half price what everyone else does. "

So they said, "Okay."

"I have to do it this week."

They'd say, "Okay." What he'd do is have the company deliver the shingles right to the place. He'd bring his ladder over there and with a hammer and the nails - he didn't have a gun or anything like that - with a hammer and nails, he just went and did it. He told me with the first roof that he did, he didn't know how to roof. So he got the shingles and he turned the shingles over. There on the back of the shingles, it explained how to roof a roof with shingles. That's how he did it. That's how he learned. Then from then on, he took the bus to the place and he did it. He did it by hand. He made an incredible living.

I mean, you can just drive around and see home after home after home that needs a roof, and if you could offer it at half price, you'd have more work than you could possibly handle.

Steel beams
I put steel beams because my brother and I, we bought a cottage together. We're rehabbing it, and the whole front looking to the lake was sort of closed in. So we wanted to eliminate all the space. It had windows and things blocking the thing. We wanted the whole thing open, so we looked into it. We found a company that told us exactly what steel beam we needed – 17-foot beam - so that there's nothing blocking the view. We found out that people would charge $3,000 to put this beam up. We bought the beam for $240. We had three people. We lifted it in place, put it in place, shored it up, did whatever we had to do to secure the thing. It took us half an hour.

You could start a business with that. You could just go to cottages – at least here in the United States - all the lakes and find a house that is sort of blocked in terms of its view, go in and say, "Hey, we could put up a beam for you for $1,000. Others will charge $3,000. We'll charge you $1,000."

What did I know about steel beams before I did this? Nothing. I knew nothing. But having done it, now I know where it is, I know the company that does it. They give you a discount if you do this. They tell you exactly what beam you need for the situation. They do all this work. You just have to deliver it and put it up, and you can make a killing.

I didn't know anything about it before, but now I do. If I wanted to start a business, it's sitting right there.

Painting
You can paint houses. You can paint interior, exterior. The money, the startup is nothing. You need some brushes, some rollers, buy some paint, and off you go. You don't have to buy all kinds of equipment. You can just get going. People will give you work if you do it well and if you're cheap enough.

Lawn care, carpentry, power washing
I had a good friend, that's what he did. He just bought a $300 power washer and he went to mobile home parks. He went to somebody, and said, "Hey. I'll clean your mobile home for $50. I'll tell you what. I'll do yours for free if you can get 10 of your friends to pay me $50." So that's what the guy did. He went over there one day, got paid $450, did all ten of them in one day. That's how he got his start in life.

6. Education related

That's another area to think about.

Tutoring
Maybe you're really good at something, you know a specialized kind of education: math or science or whatever it might be. And you can help others who want to learn this. You can charge them money for that.

7. Church-related ideas

Lighting
I mentioned that in a previous video. I learned about LED color lighting. It's very cheap, it's very simple. But people don't know anything about it. The average pastor knows nothing about it. The average church knows absolutely nothing about it. I can go to 100 churches and all of them have old lighting. None of them have new lighting. It's not that complicated, but people don't know where to begin, they don't know where to get it, they don't know what they should get or what they shouldn't get. If I wanted to start a church business of lighting, I could just visit almost any church. I could show them what it could be, what they have, and some of the deficiencies of what they have. They just don't notice. Churches just go on autopilot, but they don't know what's possible. Once they know what's possible and once a few of them do it, they all want to keep up with the others around them.

Sound
Same thing with sound. Churches have pathetic sound on average. And there are certain things that you can do. If you hire a contractor, they'll charge an incredible amount of money. You could definitely undercut all of that. But you have to learn something about that.

Banners
We put banners on the outside of our church. We want to say something to our community. I know how to do banners now. We have a guy in our church. He has a big printer. But you don't need all that. You can find ways to print it up, but churches just don't do it. They don't know enough about it to get off the dime, and if you became the guy that could make it happen, you could make it happen for a lot of different churches.

Decorations, wedding planner, funerals

Visitor connector
It is so hard to get visitors to come to a church. And when they finally come to a church, what do we do with them? What do we do with a visitor? We send them home with a bulletin. What could we do? If I wanted to help out churches and I wanted to start a business that helped out churches, I would go to churches and say, "I will be your visitor guy. I will keep track of your visitors, I will send letters to your visitors, I will bring the cookies to your visitors, I will give them the thing that you want to give the visitors, I will monitor their progress, I will manage the whole process of the person coming to your church for the first time to becoming a member at the church. I'll handle that whole thing. It'll be my job, number one. And you don't pay me unless I'm successful at this."

I'll tell you, if someone came to my church and said they would do that, I would hire them. I would definitely hire them. Because we work so hard to get visitors and then we drop the ball. We don't have a big plan in place. The church staff, they're busy with all kinds of other things that they don't own this particular thing. So you can possibly make that a business.

Business to business
Doing taxes for businesses, doing seminars, cleaning, decorations, data entry, all the different ways you can help out a business.

Recreational and hobbies
Recreation or hobbies. I play a new sport that's a fast-growing sport here in the United States. It's called pickleball. It's with a racquet or a paddle. It's like tennis, but half the size of the tennis court. There are some weird rules. So a lot of older people are interested in and getting into it. It's going like crazy in Florida and other places. I know people that play at my level that charge people $50 an hour to help them improve their game. Sometimes there are two or three people in the class and the class lasts a couple of hours. They make $50 an hour just helping somebody with a game.

Would I want to do that full-time, eight hours a day? No. But these people will do it two, three hours a day and make a good supplemental income. Is there something that you know? Is there some hobby that you do that you could do? You could teach people painting or whatever it is that you're into.

So there are all these different ideas of how you might start something. But again, number one be curious. Ask questions. Talk to people out there. There are ideas everywhere you look. You just have to start thinking and asking people questions, and finding something, and trial and error. Just keep trying, keep doing it. You can do it. Thanks for listening.