Need a business idea? Run With It shares unused business ideas from successful entrepreneurs, including the exact steps they would take to launch them. If you're looking for a ready-made business idea, proven founders are sharing them every week on Run With It.
Actual Recycling with Dmitry Dragilev
If you like the show, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts!Nuggets: Pick a business that you can grit through Sometimes grit is less intense and more zen. A reserved but committed approach can help you maintain energy on your project for the long haul. Action Steps: Create a simplified Process Flow Diagram (PFD) for how recycling is done today Research values of each stream in the PFD Target the points at which you can amplify the most value. Incorporate some hard numbers in your research. Who pays for raw recyclable material, how much do they pay, and why? Research companies that incorporate recycled materials in their products or packaging. Find out the price points they pay. How do they make it profitable? Start a small local project where committed recyclers can contribute to special recycling containers and be tracked and get credit for their contributions. Raise some funding on the merit of the idea to test feasibilities. “Do good” projects like this may attract funders who strive to make a difference and care less about short term profitability. Follow through on these action steps and email us your results at update@runwithit.fm. You'll get exclusive access to a private Facebook group of action takers and one listener will earn a free mentorship call with our guest, and potentially, a business partnership.Links: JustReachOut (Dmitry’s PR connection company) Criminally Prolific (Dmitry’s personal website) Terry Gross interview with Kate O’Neill Allbirds (more sustainable shoes) Pela (eco-friendly phone cases) Method (eco-friendly soap) Recycle More E-Waste with Anders Ankarlid A Good Company Dmitry Dragilev is the founder of JustReachOut- a platform which has helped 5000+ brands and small businesses pitch journalists and get featured in press all on their own without the help of PR firms.
Gamify Review-Generation with JB Kellogg
Nuggets: A Software as a Service (SaaS) needs to be so easy your grandma could use it If you’re in a fear mindset, make a plan. No matter how great the plan is it will help you get into action, which is a much better state. If you want your business to grow, expect your marketing budget to expand ahead of growth. A stable marketing budget reflects a stagnant business. Action Steps: Start with a plan. Understand the basics of why and how this business would work before moving forward. Create a mock up by getting bids from UI designers. Invest in creating a product that you can launch to a small group of enthusiastic clients. Aim to use your first clients as evangelists that can spread the word to others on the benefits of the product. Create compelling case studies and document customer stories. Once you’ve dialed the product in and garnered effusive praise from your evangelists, start selling to other business owners. Follow through on these action steps and email us your results at update@runwithit.fm. You'll get exclusive access to a private Facebook group of action takers and one listener will earn a free mentorship call with our guest, and potentially, a business partnership.Links: JB Kellogg’s Website Marketing360 (Madwire’s marketing platform for small businesses) Paul Graham’s Do Things That Don’t Scale Ray Dalio’s Principles JB Kellogg is the Co-Founder & Co-CEO of Madwire® which he started when he was 28 years old and, with the help of a championship team, grew the company to over 100MM+ in revenue and 500+ employees in under 10 years.
Improve the Shower Experience While Traveling with Nir Bashan
Nuggets: The first step is often to build your self belief and overcome your fears U.S. business travel is a massive market ($1.6 trillion); business travelers took 462 million trips in 2013 Action Steps: Find a similar product and try to sell it to one of your appropriate connections—a frequent traveler—using the marketing and branding you intend to ultimately use. Get feedback via forums that business travelers use; ask what they think about the shower experience. Connect with an engineer on Upwork and hire them to design a prototype Utilize a Kickstarter or landing page to fundraise and test out your marketing ideas. Try mimicking a humorous & successful brand like Dollar Shave Club. After proving and tweaking the concept, build a larger market through giveaways, social media and influencer marketing (e.g. trade a tool for reviews or photos of influencers using it). Settle on a price point at which it will be “impossible to say no.” Develop more extensive distribution channels and make your way to airport gift shops and luggage retailers. Follow through on these action steps and email us your results at update@runwithit.fm. You'll get exclusive access to a private Facebook group of action takers and one listener will earn a free mentorship call with our guest, and potentially, a business partnership.Links: The Creator Mindset nirbashan.com Nir Bashan is a world-renowned creativity expert. He has taught thousands of leaders and individuals around the globe how to harness the power of creativity to improve profitability, increase sales, improve customer service and ultimately create more meaning in their work. Nir has spent the last two decades working on a formula to codify creativity.
Audio-Driven Workouts with Colin McIntosh
Nuggets: This idea is so exciting because it’s a platform that expands both sides of a marketplace; it makes it easier for fitness instructors to get their content out, and easier for people to work out remotely Don’t forget about the incredible power of puns in branding and marketing. Action Steps: Create a business overview/plan including the product, points of differentiation, value proposition, etc... Create a financial model with some basic assumptions to ensure that the idea will be profitable Validate product/market fit (before spending serious money or seeking investment dollars) Create a basic landing page with the value proposition and run Facebook ads to it Use the data collected from ads to inform and iterate on the financial model Follow through on these action steps and email us your results at update@runwithit.fm. You'll get exclusive access to a private Facebook group of action takers and one listener will earn a free mentorship call with our guest, and potentially, a business partnership.Links: Sheets & Giggles Startup Financial Modeling via Startup Rocket ATHLEAN-X Six Pack Promise Nike Run Club App Colin McIntosh is Founder & CEO of Sheets & Giggles, a pun-based, eco-friendly bedding brand that launched in May 2018 on Indiegogo with their first product: lyocell bed sheets made from eucalyptus trees. In their first 6 months in business, they received over 6,000 orders and nearly half a million dollars in revenue. They won first place at Denver Startup Week 2018, have since gone on to make and raise millions of dollars in revenue and venture capital.🎙️ Podcast hosting provided by Transistor. Want to start your own podcast? Get 15% off your first year by going to transistor.fm/run
Up-End the Printer Industry with Kent Wilson
Nuggets: James Dyson approached incumbent vacuum manufacturers with his idea for a bagless vacuum cleaner. They shot him down because “they sell bags” Even if your business is starting small, imagine the pitfalls you may encounter if it must rapidly scale. Be obsessed with your customers. It will arise from natural curiosity and even a bit of natural insecurity. Action Steps: Find co-founders who complement your skill set; can save a ton of money over hiring everything out in the beginning Talk with home printer users to learn what matters most to them and how you can service them better than incumbents; build a list of potential customers from these conversations Create a Kickstarter campaign to presell the idea to your list Get a better printer designed and prototyped Find a manufacturer who will make your product Raise money as needed to fund manufacturing (that will likely be the expensive part of this idea) Follow through on these action steps and email us your results at update@runwithit.fm. You'll get exclusive access to a private Facebook group of action takers and one listener will earn a free mentorship call with our guest, and potentially, a business partnership.Links: Built to Sell The Automatic Customer Everyone’s favorite Office Space printer scene RV Snap Pad Kent’s LinkedIn Kent Wilson is the co-founder and CMO of RV Snap Pad He is in charge of all key growth marketing strategies and tactics, such as conversion rate optimization, social media marketing, search engine optimization, and brand messaging.
Launch a Major Domo Service with Jason Cherubini
Nuggets: There is a rich “non-adulting” economy wherein you can make money helping the continually youthful avoid or manage actual adult take so they can focus on other stuff. Homeowners typically spend 1-4% of their home cost on maintenance every year The existence of products like “Home Warranties” demonstrates a need for homeowner support for caring for their home. Action Steps: Decide on what basic tasks you can start with. Find out what contractors charge for the tasks on your list. Create revenue projections. Decide on what your company’s fee would be: 15-30%? Piece the technical aspect together. Follow through on these action steps and email us your results at update@runwithit.fm. You'll get exclusive access to a private Facebook group of action takers and one listener will earn a free mentorship call with our guest, and potentially, a business partnership.Links: Dawn’s Light Media Money Plane Jason’s LinkedIn profile jasoncherubini.com Jason Cherubini is the founder of Seraphim Associates International, a management consulting firm focusing on technology based startups, and a founding partner of Dawn's Light, a media production and financing company. He has held multiple faculty appointments in the United States and Europe, and is an avid proponent of the EdTech industry.
Integrated Wealth Management & Tax Strategy with Justin Winter
Nuggets:Most of the tax code is there to help citizens save money by incentivizing behaviors that would benefit our society Action Steps: Find experts to partner with who are already providing advanced tax strategies for their clients industry conferences authors forums ask business owners for recommendations Be willing to pay for high-end tax strategy and accounting specialists on your team Bootstrap from a simple system that implements simple, cheap, accessible technologies like Asana, Artable, and basic CRMs to create a client flow. Aim for ~$5-6K annual average customer value Scale to 100 customersRun Facebook ads to a landing page offering this service Raise money (approach VCs and offer 20% for $5 million, for example) Follow through on these action steps and email us your results at update@runwithit.fm. You'll get exclusive access to a private Facebook group of action takers and one listener will earn a free mentorship call with our guest, and potentially, a business partnership.Links: Boostopia Wealthfront Betterment Hasan Minhaj Patriot Act episode on taxes Justin Winter exited his prior company after growing to $22 million in annual sales to focus on a new problem. Boostopia is an all-in-one support operations platform that unlocks the power of your support data inside your support ticketing system to transform both your team and customer experience.
Recycle More E-Waste with Anders Ankarlid
Nuggets: Pursuing socially responsible business ideas can be quite lucrative - A Good Company is doing over $220k/month in revenue When you want to change someone’s behavior, positive reinforcement is much more effective than chiding them Action Steps: Investigate how waste is currently processed Find out what value is involved and to whom value is added or extracted in the waste management process (e.g. are governments financially incentivised to minimize the amount of waste they have to process. Research the value of raw materials present in common e-waste items Research human behavior and how positive reinforcement may play a role in modifying consumer behavior. Research Best Buy’s e-waste recycling program Why are they doing it? Are they making money? Are there creative ways to manage this process, like adding rfid chips to electronics for identification during disposal. Can you fine or reward consumers to incentivise proper disposal? Research similarities to CO2 cap and trade proposals and map how a similar system could work for e-waste Speak out against companies who are making it difficult to recycle and/or reuse their electronics Follow through on these action steps and email us your results at update@runwithit.fm. You'll get exclusive access to a private Facebook group of action takers and one listener will earn a free mentorship call with our guest, and potentially, a business partnership.Links: A Good Company Starter Story interview Citizens Climate Lobby Anders Ankarlid is CEO of A Good Company, a serial e-commerce entrepreneur, and a father of three. He has worked in e-commerce for more than a decade and he’s an activist against mindless consumption.
Exchanging Social Currency with Ed Vincent
Nuggets: The key leverage point of blockchain is the decentralization of valuation. Millennials value experiences over things. Don’t implement emerging trends unless they’re necessary. Many great ideas sit around waiting for the right time to flourish. If you get in too early, there may not be infrastructure to support them. Action Steps: Understand social currencies Research social currency issuers (Roll) Find out the use cases that would apply. Who would want to issue social currency? All individuals? Influencers and celebrities? Small businesses abandoning punch cards for social currency? Find out how market makers work on traditional exchanges. (The individuals that set the buy and sell prices of various stocks). Engage with a platform like Steemit that currently use blockchain to exchange value for user created content Follow through on these action steps and email us your results at update@runwithit.fm. You'll get exclusive access to a private Facebook group of action takers and one listener will earn a free mentorship call with our guest, and potentially, a business partnership.Links: FestivalPass Ed Vincent’s LinkedIn profile Roll Steemit Rapper Akon Shares Whitepaper for Upcoming Cryptocurrency Ed Vincent is an entrepreneur with over 25 years business, technology and management experience including 6 years banking and valuation experience. He founded an e-commerce business in 1999 which was sold to a competitor in 2001. He’s a Repeat Founder including the businesses SimplyEngage, myProducer, & Predict Ventures. He is Currently the Founder & CEO of FestivalPass.
Performance Review Software (for Remote Teams) with Cory Zue
Action Steps: Offer performance-improvement consulting services to businesses in order to figure out a system that works for this idea validate that a boilerplate process will work for different businesses determine pricing Draft a business plan around the idea Create a no-code version of the performance review system Follow through on these action steps and email us your results at update@runwithit.fm. You'll get exclusive access to a private Facebook group of action takers and one listener will earn a free mentorship call with our guest, and potentially, a business partnership.Links: Cory's Personal Website Saas Pegasus: The Django Powered SaaS Template Toggl Jason Cohen on Designing the Ideal Bootstrapped Business Patrick McKenzie Cory Zue is a software developer and entrepreneur. These days he mostly works on SaaS Pegasus: the Django SaaS boilerplate. He also made Place Card Me—which is becoming the best way to make printable place cards on the internet. Jason Cohen on Designing the Ideal Bootstrapped Business
Become a Franchisee at a Huge Discount with Lucas Root
Nuggets: Like the real estate market, there are franchise brokers to facilitate deals. But you can also do the legwork by approaching franchise owners yourself. In the midst of pandemic, many of them are likely onsite. A typical franchise cost is nominal (somewhere between $20,000 and $50,000). But many franchises, like McDonalds, will not sell to you unless you have a minimum of five years operating costs. Action Steps: Research rent costs for commercial spaces with the best walkability in your area. Walk into a prospective franchise location and ask the owner about his or her experience within the franchise. Follow through on these action steps and email us your results at update@runwithit.fm. You'll get exclusive access to a private Facebook group of action takers and one listener will earn a free mentorship call with our guest, and potentially, a business partnership.Links: SGIC Consulting Lucas’ Instagram Lucas Root is the founder of SGIC Consulting which helps clients build and implement a high-performance strategy to achieve the maximum growth potential possible.
Building an Ecommerce Growth Engine with Erin Hooley
Nuggets: Only two missing pieces can stop you: mindset and skill. Find out which one you need and fix it. You can tackle anything. Learn Erin’s three levers for growth in ecommerce: Traffic, Conversion Rate, Average Order Value. Always highlight your most popular and highest selling items. Don’t try to push your less popular products on clients up front. Throw in the towel only when you’re working on something that conflicts with your higher order goals. Find the opportunities during moments of great change. Where are people changing their habits and how can you turn that into a business opportunity? Action Steps: Document Erin’s system for ecommerce growth Pitch ecommerce owners on implementing the system for free for one month Experience is the best teacher: create your own ecommerce business to test out these principles Partner with a master of ecommerce and sell their system as part of your agency model Follow through on these action steps and email us your results at update@runwithit.fm. You'll get exclusive access to a private Facebook group of action takers and one listener will earn a free mentorship call with our guest, and potentially, a business partnership.Links: Bailey's Blossoms Peyton Bre Conquering Chaos (Erin’s Podcast) Erin Hooley, President and Founder of Bailey's Blossoms a brand that reimagines infant and toddler fashion. She also founded Peyton Bre, a clothing company for tweens and teens with a call to empower young girls to feel confident and beautiful. She’s also a motivational speaker and a mom of six!
[Inside the Business] AwardWallet with Alexi Vereschaga
Nuggets: Find out the behind the scenes relationships building and negotiating sometimes necessary for successful software entrepreneurship. Social media is the new TV after work. If you want to start a business, delete all your accounts. Going the extra mile on business development often pays off big. Balancing a freemium model is tricky: listen to the episode to hear how Alexi thinks about it Use a B2B2C model to get other businesses to sign up your new clients. Action Steps: Alexi’s biggest pains are managing business development and marketing (these are not his strengths) and managing relationships with big corporations, specifically 3 big airline companies. Use this information to consider what kind of businesses could support him and help his business thrive. Do you have business development skills or business and userbase growth skills? Maybe you could join Alexi’s team and fill in a central gap. Do you know someone that could fill that role? Is there a business in understanding what startup companies need out of additional team members and then finding the right match for them? Do you have an understanding of how to manage business relationships between small startups and large corporations? Do you know how to make it a win-win? Again, perhaps you can fill a role on Alexi’s team or help find the right new team members to fill in the gaps. Email ideas for what Alexi can do to address the concerns raised during the episode Follow through on these action steps and email us your results at update@runwithit.fm. You'll get exclusive access to a private Facebook group of action takers and one listener will earn a free mentorship call with our guest, and potentially, a business partnership.Links: AwardWallet The Travel Secret The Points Guy One Mile At A Time Auto Slash Alexi Vereschaga is the co-founder and leads the development efforts of AwardWallet, which he launched in 2004. AwardWallet provides a free service that helps you manage your reward balances and travel itinerariesFrom its inception, Alexi has been AwardWallet’s product visionary. He is focused on continual improvement of AwardWallet to meet the needs of its 651,000+ global members and to respond to the evolving rewards program landscape, which is reflected in AwardWallet’s recognized leadership in rewards management.
A Modern Staffing Agency with Aaron Michel
Nuggets: Stalwart staffing companies are doing ~$25 billion in revenue annually VCs are looking for great teams moving really fast toward the critical assumptions of their business Great two-person teams are often formed from one person with industry experience and the other with technical know-how If you’re a nontechnical founder, one of the hardest parts of starting a company is finding a phenomenal technical cofounder and get them to leave their terrific job to come work on your idea Build a product that gives users a much better experience than Action Steps: Estimate Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) for both sides of the marketplace Brainstorm/research what customers will want, what their engagement would look like, and estimated churn Follow through on these action steps and email us your results at update@runwithit.fm. You'll get exclusive access to a private Facebook group of action takers and one listener will earn a free mentorship call with our guest, and potentially, a business partnership.Links: 1984 Ventures Aaron Michel on LinkedIn PathSource Indie Hackers interview re Key Values Test Interviews TrustedHealth Toolbox Aaron Michel is a partner at 1984 Ventures, a seed stage venture capital firm in San Francisco. He was selected earlier this year as one of venture capital's 40 under 40 by Venture Capital Journal. He's a Harvard Business School and Harvard Kennedy School alum and sold his last company, PathSource, in 2017.
Connecting Independent Software Vendors and CRMs with Steve Benson
Nuggets:Successful businesses are started by people just like you; they go home and watch Netflix with their significant other, etc... Action Steps: Compile list of ISVs from Salesforce App Exchange Contact ISVs to validate this idea (listen to David Cristello or David Hauser episode if you need more help with this step) Raise Angel money and/or apply to Startup Accelerators Hire ~4 software engineers Build MVP Follow through on these action steps and email us your results at update@runwithit.fm. You'll get exclusive access to a private Facebook group of action takers and one listener will earn a free mentorship call with our guest, and potentially, a business partnership.Links: Salesforce Insightly Zoho Mulesoft Kloudless Cloud Elements Quickbooks Badger Maps Steve Benson is the founder and CEO of Badger Maps. After receiving his MBA from Stanford, Steve was Google Enterprise's Top Sales Executive in 2009. In 2012, Steve founded Badger Maps, a software company that helps Field Sales People optimize their routes and schedules to save time and be on time so they can sell more. Steve is also the host of the Outside Sales Talk podcast where he interviews industry experts on their top sales tips.