Business Ideas for Young Entrepreneurs- StrategyDriven

Starting your own business is a huge risk. You’ll need a lot of money upfront and your chances of success are fairly slim in an increasingly competitive business world. If you don’t get it right and your new company goes under, you stand to lose a lot of money and you could easily end up in a difficult financial situation. That doesn’t mean you should shy away from starting your own business, but if you’re putting everything that you’ve got behind it, you’ve got to be careful. Certain industries like hospitality or any retail business that sells high priced luxury items have a high failure rate, particularly in times of economic hardship when people are cutting back on unnecessary spending. However, there are a lot of industries that sell goods that people will always need, regardless of their economic situation. These are some of the safest industries to start a business in.

Consulting

Businesses always need a little help so consultants are never short of work. Finding customers in the first place is one of the major hurdles that businesses face when they start out but with consulting, it’s likely that you’ll already have some contacts that you can use to find work. If you’re thinking of becoming a consultant, it’s important to remember that you’ll need a good amount of experience behind you so if you’re fairly young and you haven’t been in your field that long, you’re not ready to be a consultant yet.

Food Industry

A restaurant is a difficult business to start but most other food businesses are pretty safe. There’s a lot of competition of course, but once you establish yourself you should be able to find a good customer base. Vegan and vegetarian markets are seeing rapid growth at the minute so that’s a great area to break into. However, there are a couple of issues with running a food business; you’ll need a lot of startup capital. If you’re storing and distributing food, you’ll need a large facility fitted out with insulated wall panels to keep everything cool and then you need to buy a fleet of vehicles to deliver it all. There are also a whole lot of rules and regulations involved with manufacturing and distributing food and you can quickly get shut down if you don’t follow them.

Energy

Another thing that everybody needs is energy to power their homes so it’s a pretty good industry to get into. You might struggle to gain traction to start with because there are already a lot of large, well-established companies that hold most of the market. Having said that, smaller energy companies have started to grow in popularity over the last couple of years because the larger companies aren’t always offering the best prices. You should also consider the impact of alternative energies. As environmental concerns grow, more people are using green energy instead. In a few decades, green energy will take over fossil fuels and the companies at the forefront of that revolution stand to make a lot of money. Now is the best time to start your own green energy company before larger businesses corner the market.

Construction

Housing shortages are big news at the moment and governments are under pressure to do something about it. That means that construction companies have a huge amount of work on at the minute. A construction company is prone to downturns from time to time but if you land big contracts, you should be able to sustain yourself through the low periods. Getting your first few jobs in isn’t too difficult if you make use of contacts through family and friends. As long as you do a good job, word of mouth should help you gain some traction. Quality of work is the most important thing when you’re trying to start a construction company because one bad review can completely kill you. When you’re starting your own construction company you can do it with relatively little financial input to start with if you do some smaller jobs on residential homes. Once you start turning a profit, you can move onto larger work and eventually start landing those big contracts.

Senior Care

The average age of the population is creeping up all the time due to advances in medical care and that opens up a lot of opportunities for businesses that offer services that cater to them. If you set up your own senior care facility you won’t be short of residents and you can charge a good amount of money to residents that are staying there. Alternatively, you could think about setting up a home care service for senior citizens that don’t need to be in a care home but still need a little help with their day to day tasks. The benefit of setting up a home visit business rather than a care home is that you don’t need to spend as much money upfront. You don’t need to rent a building and if you start out small, you just need to pay your travel costs. Once you’re earning a little more money you can start taking on a few staff members.

Delivery Company

Online retail is one of the biggest industries in the world right now which means there are a lot of products that need delivering. You won’t be able to land contracts from big websites like Amazon because you can’t meet their requirements but smaller sites are well within your reach. The startup costs are fairly high because even if you only start out with one truck, it’s going to be quite pricey. The best thing about running a delivery company is that you can work across a lot of different industries. If one of your main customers starts to lose business and you aren’t getting as much work from them, you can move into different areas that are doing a lot better. Being able to spread yourself over different areas means that you’ll rarely struggle to find work.

Social Media Marketing

Social media has fast become the main platform that almost all businesses use to market their products, that means there is a wealth of work available in that area. A lot of business owners make the mistake of thinking that it’s easy to get business by just making a couple of posts a day, but they’ll soon realize that it’s not that simple and they’ll call in an expert. That’s where you come in. If you’ve got good marketing experience those skills are transferable and you’ll be well equipped to run a social media marketing company. It’s a good low risk business to start because you can do it from home to begin with. You don’t need any extra staff to fulfil your first few contracts so running costs are next to nothing. You may need to hire office spaces for meetings etc. but you can do it on a one time basis whenever you need to impress a client. You should be aware, however, that there is a lot of competition out there so it can be difficult to find work to start with. One of the best ways to make yourself stand out from the crowd is to focus on platforms that businesses might struggle with. Most people are fine with Facebook and Twitter, but they aren’t so good at Instagram or Snapchat. As these platforms get more popular, the demand for social media marketers that know their way around them is increasing. By positioning yourself as an expert on those platforms you should be able to get more work.

Tutoring

The education system is getting a lot tougher for kids and their workload is increasing all the time. There’s also a lot more focus on qualifications so it’s more important than ever for children to do well. That’s not always easy when the workload is so intense so a lot of parents are opting to get tutors for their kids to help them along a little. If you set up a tutoring business, you’ll find it fairly easy to get work, especially if there is a competitive school nearby. You can market yourself online without having to spend too much money and you can deliver your sessions via video chat or do house calls. Either way, you don’t need to spend money on expensive office space or lots of staff. As long as you graduated high school, you’re qualified enough to be a tutor. You can make a little more money by tutoring college students if you have a degree.

The key to finding a safe business idea is identifying consumer needs that are immune to economic downturns or changing trends. The other thing to consider is the startup costs and running costs. There is a risk of failure in any business so any companies that need a lot of financial input upfront are always going to be dangerous. Finding a good balance between security in an industry and low running costs is the best way to decide on the right business for you.