The Grass is Greener for Eco-Friendly Business Ventures In The Next Decade

Green is more than just a fad--it's a paradigm shift that's changing how we live today, and how we will live tomorrow. A "green" business plan draws on natural resources sustainably, developing products and services in harmony with the environment. Here are five business ventures that would leave a small carbon footprint--but make a big impact on the market.

Bamboo Fashion Boutique
The market for green fashion is growing faster than...well, bamboo. Bamboo is revolutionizing fashion as a sturdy and sustainable fiber for clothing. The plant can grow several feet a day, and is ready to harvest within three to five years. Customers like bamboo because it is soft, inexpensive, and socially responsible. Mother Nature likes it because the robust, hypoallergenic weed can be produced without chemical fertilizers or antimicrobial treatments. Tap into the bamboo boom by opening a green fashion boutique. Capture window shoppers with a Main Street shop, or tap into the worldwide market with a Web storefront. Web Designers can help you build a Web site armed with online credit card processing capabilities.

Green Housecleaning
Cleanliness is next to godliness--assuming you trade the caustic chemicals for eco-friendly cleaning products. Homeowners are willing to pay a premium for housecleaners who leave the environment unharmed and the toxins out of their home. Your green housecleaning service can offer total tender loving care (TLC) to your client's home and the environment. To go the extra mile, offer houseplant maintenance services--plants clean the air of carbon dioxide and emit oxygen. Logistics are the number one challenge in running a housecleaning business. Keep your cleaning staff coordinated and your customers happy by investing in a call center to answer calls and schedule weekly appointments.

Eco-Marketing Consulting
As green fever sweeps the market, businesses are scrambling to publicize their commitment to sustainable business practices. Entire brands are built on green values--Whole Foods, Patagonia, and Ben & Jerry's ice cream, to name a few. Today's businesses need a capable marketing specialist to manage their eco-friendly image. Internet advertising offers a zero-impact means of getting the word out without killing trees. Internet Marketing companies can help you with search engine optimization and pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns. For a full eco-marketing service, offer environmental certification management consulting. Certified Organic, Energy Star, and Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) are some of the high-profile certifications that can make or break a green brand.


Paperless Office Consultant
From medical clinics to law firms, businesses are afloat in paperwork. Efficiency and, in the case of health care, government regulation, demands a transition to digital records. Apply your project management and IT skills to help businesses go paperless. Depending on your experience profile, your consulting business may specialize in IT consulting, data processing, medical billing, creating electronic health records, or another field of expertise.To get your start, establish a credible Web site by hiring a web design firm that will help you with building an online presence and advertising your services and if necessary, take on a pro bono project to build your reputation.

Green Bike Shop
Highway gridlock and air quality concerns are driving more and more motorists off the road and onto alternative vehicles such as bicycles. Yet most bicycle stores cater to Spandex-clad athletes with racing and mountain biking frames unsuited to the urban commute.Your urban commute shop meets the need for business-suit-friendly transportation options. A selection of European bicycles with chain guards and Vespa scooters will help commuters get to their destination in style. For riders who put utility first, custom-build sturdy bikes with cargo baskets, coolers, and trailers. With bikes and scooters like these, customers will never miss their gas-guzzling SUV. Online Marketing is a great way to get the word out about your services. A locally-focused PPC campaign can also help establish you as your town's cycling guru.

By building an eco-friendly business, you're helping build a better future--and tapping into a vast emerging market. You can use online business networking sites to network with Green Entrepreneurs, Venture Capitalists and Industry Experts to build your green business venture for the next decade.

Path To Early Retirement For Under $5K

As 68 million American baby boomers start to retire, they are redefining what retirement means. For many, it doesn't mean they've stopped working, but rather that they are exercising more choice over how they work. According to a 2009 survey, some 67 percent of people who chose to engage in some form of work found it to be satisfying, and in three out of five cases, they were able to find jobs for what are known as "encore careers."

Picking the perfect second act for your career can involve trying an industry or a field that's always interested you, helping out with a cause that you believe in, or getting a chance to run your own business.

If it's running your own business that appeals to you, chances are you don't want to invest a large chunk of your retirement savings into a new business venture at this point. Therefore, the key is getting started with minimal  up front investment. This is very possible these days, depending on how you set up your business, and what type of business you choose to go into.

Getting Started on a Shoestring Budget

To start a business with relatively little up front capital, the key is to minimize fixed costs. Variable costs--expenses of the pay-as-you-go variety--are preferable because they allow you to ramp up your investment depending on how the business is going.

Here are some key tools for keeping fixed costs low:

• E-commerce Solutions. Who needs a business location when you have the Internet? The ultimate low-overhead storefront, the Internet gives you access to a world of potential customers. Utilizing e-commerce solutions is much cheaper than having a physical place of business where you receive customers. For example, it allows you to avoid the many expenses of having a retail outlet, such as rent, utilities, staffing, and insurance.

• Outsourcing Back Office Tasks. Rather than building a complete organization from scratch, try to outsource anything that isn't central to the unique value proposition of your business. For example, functions such as customer support, credit card processing and human resources are only needed occasionally or periodically. Therefore, it makes more sense to utilize outsourced call center services for telemarketing or customer support or HR outsourcing for human resource activities than to try to staff it internally.

• Use Social Media Strategies to Promote Your Business. Developing a full scale online social media strategy can seem overwhelming at first. But you can implement simple things by hiring interns to do the leg work such as starting a business blog or using Twitter, and tracking different programs making adjustments along the way.

Low-Cost Entrepreneurial Business Ideas


If the above are some techniques for structuring a business with minimum up front investment, what are some lines of business which lend themselves to getting started with minimal capital?

One rule of thumb is that services generally require less investment than manufacturers or retailers, though with e-commerce some re-sellers can operate cheaply if they have tight supply lines and add value in the process. Focusing on services, the following are some examples of businesses that might be right for the current environment, and can be started on a shoestring.

• Business consulting. If many retiring boomers are going to be starting their own businesses, why not use your business experience to help show them how to do it?

• Green consulting. People are striving to become more energy-efficient, for economic and environmental reasons. If you have expertise in this area, consulting with businesses and homeowners on how to reduce their consumption is a natural.

• Public relations. If you have media and promotional experience, you could be in demand with the new wave of entrepreneurs starting their own businesses. In particular, bringing knowledge of modern promotional techniques such as social media strategies could be valuable to these new businesses.

• Employment counseling. Between a weak economy and an aging population, there are many people facing a career crossroads these days. Helping them find the right niche can be a good way to make use of any personnel experience you have.

• Lead Generation. Sales Lead Generation is growing by leaps and bounds as far as start up industries are concerned. This is a very special industry that affords flexibility and freedom that is unparalleled. And, there is even a significant demand for highly specialized lead generation consultants to help companies generate qualified sales leads in this market.

Running your own business may not have been your parents' idea of retirement, but things are very different today. If you have the entrepreneurial itch, starting a venture might just give you the satisfaction and extra income to make your "golden years" more than just an expression.

Hot New Entrepreneurial Enterprises

Sometimes, smaller is better--just ask the micropreneurs flourishing in today's marketplace. A growing set of entrepreneurs are building successful businesses by serving a niche market. Micropreneurs aren't trying to become the next Bill Gates or Larry Ellison. They're thriving small-scale on the strength of a loyal customer base and utilizing social business networking and utility tools to help with sales lead generation.

Micro-Enterprises Rely on E-Commerce Solutions

Micropreneurs are rewriting the rules of small business--and they're relying on the internet to make their business model work. A New York Times feature on startups explains: "the Internet has given people an extraordinary tool not only to market their ideas but also to find business partners and suppliers, and to do all kinds of functions on the cheap: keeping the books, interacting with customers, even turning a small idea into a big idea."Thanks to a range of online small business resources, today's micropreneurs have the resources to build their venture on a shoestring budget.

With minimal upfront investment, you can:

1. Create an Internet storefront for retail sales. E-commerce solutions can create a Web site with point-of-sale (POS) capability. Online POS systems enables secure credit card processing on your site, allowing you to keep the doors open 24/7.
2. Reach your niche market. Online sales lead generation and marketing tools excel at targeting interested consumers and businesses.
3. Communicate with your customers via online business networking tools, a blog, or social networking tools. Social business networking sites offer powerful resources for finding your needle in the haystack, also known as your niche customers and partners. They can also help you keep in touch; today's customer service agents use online media such as twitter, facebook, tradeseam and email correspondence to connect with the public.
4. Need niche supplies or equipment to launch your niche business? Tradeseam connects entrepreneurs and suppliers of all stripes. You'll find business resources including manufacturing companies, international suppliers, and everything under the sun online.
   Web-based technology offers a range of resources for small business owners. Time-tracking software and online accounting programs are just two examples of today's affordable, productivity-enhancing business tools.
5. The Internet offers the reach and low startup costs to support a niche business.
   Spotlight on Niche Enterprises
6. For many micropreneurs, the Eureka moment--the business idea--derives directly from a personal passion. The following entrepreneurs built a following--and a profitable business--catering to like-minded individuals.

Specialty Food Carts
El Dorado tacos? Chow Fun to go? More and more specialty food carts are cruising urban neighborhoods, with offbeat menus to serve the random craving. Restaurant consultant Clark Wolf notes: "Mobile food is one of the hottest things going all over the country. Brooklyn has its ribs truck, Manhattan has its dessert trucks, and now Los Angeles has the cupcake patrol."
Specialty food carts rely on social networking tools such as Twitter, Facebook to broadcast their coordinates. The strategy seems to work. L.A.'s Kogi taco truck draws between 300 and 800 by tweeting its location in advance, "setting off a taco-minded flash mob."

Pedicab
A physically fit duo in Spokane, Washington has pedaled to success with a pedicab service. Cheaper and more eco-friendly than a cab, the bike-based taxi is finding no shortage of riders around the downtown area. To get the wheels rolling in your own leg-powered cab service, you'll need pedicabs, licenses, insurance, and a local marketing campaign. Once you've gained a loyal ridership, you can establish a call center or online-based dispatch service linking riders to your mobile phone.

Guerilla Marketing Agency
Seattle businesses looking to make a unique statement can count on Wexley School for Girls to get the job done. The agency uses off-the-wall guerilla marketing stunts to build publicity for clients. For example, they created a buzz around Copper Mountain ski resort by staging a National Snow Day with improv ski-patrol actors and fake snow. The stunts aren't for everyone; "either you get what Wexley is selling--a very particular sensibility and approach toward marketing--or you don't," comments an admirer. But the agency isn't looking for mass appeal: "Wexley is biting off little pieces, looking to take on a particular niche of a business."
Build your own businesses staging publicity events for businesses. Start with an eye-catching Website Design and online marketing campaign to get the word out. As the costs of running a business come down, micro-enterprises are flourishing. These small businesses focus on a loyal niche, taking advantage of online business networks to communicate with customers, source, distribute, and to manage the venture.

In today's Internet-driven economy, it's no longer necessary to chase the next big thing. A great small idea can take you even further.

Is Recession a Good Time to Start a Business?

While it might seem contrary, starting a business in a recession can actually be a good idea. With so many people out of work, people are struggling to find sources of income While many with that entrepreneurial drive are starting new businesses.

Is it time for you to start a new business? Here are some questions to ask yourself:

• Can this type of business thrive in this economy? People aren’t spending on luxury items, so that spa idea might not be ready to bear fruit. But think about what people are spending money on, or how you could save them money with a business idea, and then you have a winner.
• Do you know how to start a business? It’s not necessary you know all the ins and outs of running a business, but starting one in a recession means you need to be better prepared than at any other time. Read some articles on how to start a business, or take a class or two at your local community college. It’s important that you see beyond the idea to what it takes to start and manage a business such as the business resources required: accounting, human resources, internet marketing and recruiting that will go into your business. If you’ll have a retail or office location, overhead may be more than you originally guesstimated. Do your homework first.
• Do you have sufficient resources to help you? Resources might mean finances or financial services firms that helps you get commercial loans, business cash advance or a small business line of credit, . Or maybe it’s staff. Is your husband willing to help you get started until you can afford to hire help?
• Do you really want to start a business? If you’re just looking for a way to make some quick money, starting a business probably isn’t your best option. You might not even make money (most don’t for a few years; factor in the economy, and, well, you get the picture). But if you genuinely have passion for something, and are willing to put in the time and tears, by all means, get a plan and get going.

Bottomline

Start with a business plan before anything. Figure out what kind of investment you need for your business idea, who your customers are, how you plan to get customers for your business. Finally, how you will make money. Talk to other entrepreneurs, small business owners about your business idea, join an online small business networking site to see what they think of it. And most of all: good luck!