Image Courtesy of enggul
In my previous post, I mentioned that starting your own side business is your best insurance and retirement plan. And I’ve also linked to 3 lists of excellent business ideas you can start during your spare time. But I’ve not mentioned what are the characteristics of the most ideal business. So in this post, I’m going to talk about the 5 characteristics of the most ideal business.
5 Characteristics of the Most Ideal Business
1. Minimum cash. Risk in running your own business is inevitable. While you don’t have to risk the no-paycheque days running a business only during your spare time, there is still a risk of losing your start-up capital should the business fail.
So the most ideal business is one that you can start with very little money; one that doesn’t require you to risk your life savings.
Commonly, service businesses such as designing, consulting, coaching, programming, and the likes, are some of the kind of businesses that require a low start-up fund. Sometimes, you can even start one with no money down.
However, that doesn’t mean you can’t start a business selling physical products with very little money. If you choose to sell your products online instead of a brick-and-mortar shop, you can indeed start with very little money.
A good example would be Steve Chou of MyWifeQuitHerJob.com. Steve and his wife started their online wedding linen store with a mere US$629.90. They’d literally risked next to nothing to start their online venture.
2. Minimum risk. Risk in running your own business is inherently tied to the amount of money you put into the business. So if you’re not putting a lot of your money in it, you’ve dramatically lowered your risk.
Also, starting a business that you can run on the side eliminates the risk that comes with quitting your day job to work in the business full-time.
3. Minimum time. You may choose to spend as much time or as little time you like to work on your side business on a daily basis. This is the beauty of a part-time business. Of course, the more time you spend on your business, the sooner you’ll see the results.
However, the core concept of minimum time is that you’re able to eventually set up your business to run on autopilot without requiring much of your involvement.
4. Minimum management. To achieve this, you need to develop a system to run your business. You’ll also need to outsource and delegate your work effort once your business has begun to generate enough profits to hire your own staff.
5. Minimum Energy. With minimum time and minimum management involved, minimum of your life energy will be required. You can then choose to invest your time and energy in other areas of your life which you care a lot about such as your family or your hobbies.
If you’re wondering now whether there’s really such a business, well… Plenty of Fish, an online dating site, is one such business. Its founder, 30 year old Markus Frind, works one hour a day and brings in US$10 million a year, of which more than 50 percent of it is profit.
Incredible huh?
What’s also incredible is that, Frind started Plenty of Fish with no money, no plan, and scant knowledge of how to build a Web business. All he had with him was a burning desire to have something stable (he had had six jobs in three years after graduating from a technical school) and his exceptional programming skill.
Here’s an excerpt from an article published on Inc.com that tells the story of this amazing 21st-century fairy tale:
Today, according to the research firm Hitwise, his creation is the largest dating website in the U.S. and quite possibly the world. Its traffic is four times that of the dating pioneer Match, which has annual revenue of $350 million and a staff that numbers in the hundreds. Until 2007, Frind had a staff of exactly zero. Today, he employs just three customer service workers, who check for spam and delete nude images from the Plenty of Fish website while Frind handles everything else.
Amazingly, Frind has set up his company so that doing everything else amounts to doing almost nothing at all. “I usually accomplish everything in the first hour,” he says, before pausing for a moment to think this over. “Actually, in the first 10 or 15 minutes.”
To demonstrate, Frind turns to his computer and begins fiddling with a free software program that he uses to manage his advertising inventory. While he is doing this, he carps about Canada’s high income-tax rate, a serious problem considering that Plenty of Fish is on track to book revenue of $10 million for 2008, with profit margins in excess of 50 percent. Then, six minutes and 38 seconds after beginning his workday, Frind closes his Web browser and announces, “All done.”
All done? Are you serious? “The site pretty much runs itself,” he explains. “Most of the time, I just sit on my ass and watch it.” There’s so little to do that he and his girlfriend, Annie Kanciar, spent the better part of last summer sunning themselves on the French Riviera. Frind would log on at night, spend a minute or two making sure there were no serious error messages, and then go back to sipping expensive wine. A year ago, they relaxed for a couple of weeks in Mexico with a yacht, a captain, and four of Kanciar’s friends. “Me and five girls,” he says. “Rough life.”
As Frind gets up to leave, I ask him what he has planned for the rest of the day. “I don’t know,” he says. “Maybe I’ll take a nap.”
To read the full story, check out the article And the Money Comes Rolling In. It’s an interesting read and highly inspiring.
Enjoy. 
Cheers~
If you enjoyed this article please vote for it on StumbleUpon, bookmark it on del.icio.us and Digg it. I’d appreciate it!
You can also have my latest articles sent to your email by subscribing to my blog via my RSS feed so that you won’t miss out on any of my articles.
Related Posts You Should Read
on Jul 28th, 2009 at 11:02 pm
Hi Mark,
When I was in school, my dad told me that people who say that they did not study much and got an A were lying because they usually did study. I never forgot that and I get very cautious when someone tells me that they made a lot of money and did it without much effort. That said, it was a thrill to find the following quote in that article that you linked to (which was absolutely wonderful):
“I spent every waking minute when I wasn’t at my day job reading, studying, and learning. I picked out ‘enemies’ and did everything I could to defeat them, which meant being bigger than them. I refused to accept defeat of any kind.”
To reach the point to make something look simple and for the business to run on its own, it takes a lot of dedciation and work to get to that point. Frind perfected that.
Thank you for a great read!
on Jul 29th, 2009 at 12:04 am
Hi Nadia,
What you said reminds me of the old adage “If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is”. While Frind’s story may sound too good to be true, I have no doubt that it is indeed possible to build up a business to the point where it runs on its own without much of the founder’s involvement.
In Frind’s case, he’s probably taken it to another entirely different level. Probably even better than Tim Ferris.
Cheers~
Mark
on Jul 29th, 2009 at 3:51 am
[...] This post was Twitted by fullpotentials [...]
on Aug 1st, 2009 at 2:09 pm
Hi Mark
Yes, it can be done with little money. I build a my computer business in 94 with $300 dollar in my living room, years later it became a corporation and 12 years later I was able to sale that company and retired.
But I have to say, for me I had to put my nose to the ground and I did work very hard to make my business what it is.
May be other have the easy luck, but not I.
Thanks for sharing.
Giovanna Garcia
Imperfect Action is better than No Action
on Aug 1st, 2009 at 5:10 pm
Hi Giovanna,
That’s awesome! $300 startup, cash out in 12 years, I think that’s something many small business owners would be looking forward to. But the sad fact is, many of them are just making a living from their small business. Their business may not be worth enough to allow them to retire comfortably.
I’m not surprised at all that you’ve worked hard to make your business what it is. In fact, ALL business owners I know work hard to run their business. Probably Frind is the only one having it easy.
Cheers~
Mark