#111: 7 Types of Side Business Entrepreneurs: Which is Right For You?

Show Notes

It’s time to rethink the traditional career idea. Better yet, it’s time to unlearn and relearn a totally new way of thinking about your career. Gone are the days when having one career and one source of income would take you to retirement and beyond. Today, it’s about diversifying your career and one way to do that is through entrepreneurship. 
In this episode, Nola Boea and Lori Vajda share 7 types of entrepreneurial opportunities– each one with its own unique set of benefits and challenges, so you can determine which one best fits your personality, skills, interests, and lifestyle.

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In This Episode You’ll Learn 

• Why career diversification is a better way to think about your career.
• Once you develop an entrepreneurial mindset, you’ll start to spot opportunities for making money everywhere.
• How a side business can can set you up for monetary success.
• The 7 types of side business entrepreneurs.

Key points Lori and Nola are sharing in this episode:

• (03:01:21) Four questions to ask yourself to determine you ‘why’ for starting a side business.
• (07:10:29) There are many sub-business entrepreneurial models and opportunities that many people haven’t yet considered, but should.
• (10:54:50) How to think like a scalable startup entrepreneur.
• (15:42:33) The online entrepreneur, as well as these three other unique side business formats, are changing the traditional business model.
  

Resources 

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Nola: You're probably familiar with the adage, don't put all your eggs in one basket. Right? Well, the expression typically emphasizes the value of not pinning all your future aspirations or hopes on a single course of action. Yet, professionally speaking, that's exactly what most of us do. We pick a career track or a company to work for, and then: you get pigeon-holed. You don't get the promotion or worse, you become victim to a recession or stagnation or even a layoff. Well, if you've been wondering how to protect your career path as well as diversify your income stream, we've got the answer: entrepreneurship in small businesses. But here's the thing, you may not have realized. Just like there are different leadership style. There are different types of opportunities to be an entrepreneur. Stay tuned friend, because in this episode, knowing which type of small business model best suits your personality, skills, circumstances, and goals is an important step on your road to professional success and personal satisfaction.

[00:01:04] Announcer: You're listening to the Sticky Brand Lab podcast where time strapped professionals like you learn how to create a business you love in as little as three hours a week.

[00:01:15] Lori: By far, the most common type of entrepreneur is the small business owner. In fact, more than 99% of all entrepreneurial enterprises are small to mid-size businesses that are privately owned. And here's a few more numbers you might find interesting. More than half of small business owners are age 55 and older. While small businesses exist in nearly every industry, here are a few that dominate. Food and restaurant services, retail, business services, health, beauty and fitness. So Nola, typically, it is women who start those types of business marketplaces.

[00:01:58] Nola: I have heard that, and I suspect it is directly correlated to another statistic that says, women entrepreneurs actually make less income than male entrepreneurs. And that is because those are some of those industries that are most volatile to economic roller coaster, so people are spending less. These are the ones that are going to have to tighten their belts. And that's my opinion. Apparently, it's there. This is a little bit of a side note, but it helps you to think about maybe doing something a little non-traditional .

[00:02:32] Lori: Also helps that that's part of what we are going to be talking about today.

[00:02:36] Nola: Yes. One of the first things that someone interested in starting their own business will definitely need to consider though, is your why. So, is it just because you want to make money? And I hope that that's an and not the only reason.

[00:02:51] Lori: Although it would be perfectly okay if it is.

[00:02:54] Nola: Okay. Another podcast is coming. Is your why because you want to make money and also help the world? Or is it that you want to create a certain type of lifestyle for yourself? Or is it because you have this burning idea and you just must bring it to fruition? Or is it that you want to be your own boss?

And owning a small business, even a side business, it's no easy feat. But the number of people, particularly women, leaving their nine to five jobs to explore their passion and become entrepreneurs, it's grown. And that's one reason this is such an exciting time to start a business. From social entrepreneur, to solo entrepreneur, to a scalable business owner, and everything in between, women, entrepreneurs touch every industry.

[00:03:46] Lori: So Nola, why do you think more women are becoming entrepreneurs, today than ever before?

[00:03:52] Nola: Well, especially women who have reached their pinnacle in their career path. I think that they're deciding that they're not done developing, and one of the only ways to expand their professional development, even their personal development, is through entrepreneurship. They may have found that their pinnacle is actually much lower or just not as advanced as maybe they want to go, and entrepreneurship is one way to just keep growing their career path. What do you think?

[00:04:21] Lori: I think you're hitting onto something right there. Because typically men that have always gone into entrepreneurship have had role models in doing so. And women haven't had those. So here, they’re kind of jumping in blindly, but there are a lot of programs or services out there encouraging that. So, while it's true that most people do start a business or start as a way to make profit, it is often for more personal reasons, such as a desire to make an impact. Even a social impact. In fact, the top three motivations for a large percentage of women who want to start their own business are: they want to one, pursue their passion. And I don't mean passion, here's my hobby. It's passion, as in being a business founder. Taking my expertise and doing something with it. Something that I love. So that's what I mean by pursuit of passion. To gain financial independence. So when you work for someone else, there's kind of a cap to what you can earn. More women are looking at entrepreneurship, maybe not as their sole business, but as a way to generate multiple streams of income.

And three, it increases their flexibility. And Kelly Alvarez Vitale when she was on here, really talked about not wanting to have that structure of 9 to 5. If I'm a morning person and I want to get all my work done and start at five in the morning, I should have that ability so that I can have the afternoon or evening to do as I please. Same with the other side of that spectrum. If I'm a nighttime person and I can get the majority of my work done late at night because that's when my brain lights up, I want that flexibility. So entrepreneurship allows people to create a business that works for them.

[00:06:17] Nola: And what you named, the passion, independence, flexibility, those are solid motivations for starting a business and for exploring entrepreneurship. When most people think about entrepreneurship, however, they typically think about businesses that fall into one of four general categories. They think of your government definition of small to medium size businesses, which is anything up to 250 employees. Or they think about those large enterprises that are launched by popular founders. Think Colonel Sanders and how that blew up, I don't mean like blew up, but I mean like

[00:06:50] Lori: blew up literally.

[00:06:51] Nola: Blew up in scale. Or they think startups such as all of those scalable unicorns that are big enterprises now. Or they think about social enterprises. Doing something that helps people and, and they mostly think of those as maybe starting a non-profit within those broad categories. However, there are a variety of sub-business models, which is really exciting because it opens up a huge opportunity for people to start a business that fits their skill set, their passion or their interests, as well as the lifestyle they want to achieve. But before we talk about the different types of small businesses you can start now, here are some general characteristics that we want to point out.

[00:07:36] Lori: Yes. To begin with, keep in mind that these are very broad terms. Generally speaking, people who start their own business, in the past anyway, have done so as being their primary source of income. In other words, they run it to support themselves and their families. And when you think about it from that standpoint, you often think of family run businesses, right? My family has a few of those in the background. My grandfather with his brother-in-law started a business. So you see that happening.

When it comes to small businesses, most founders typically earn a modest income. They aren't looking to scale their business, nor do they have any need for venture capital. Really, it's about being their own boss. Small business entrepreneurs typically own and run their own businesses and traditionally hire either family members or local emploiyees. And the amount of employees tend to range from 10 to under 50, if you will, on average. But there are a subset of solo or micro enterprises that have fewer than 10, and you'll see that from like accounting firms, small legal attorneys that might focus in a niche area kind of thing.

So the typical small business owner is someone, when we think of it, we all utilize those services. Our hair salon, our favorite boutique shopping store. An independent insurance agency. Our local neighborhood restaurant, dry cleaner daycare. You get the idea. And you were just talking about this, Nola. in getting familiar with your own community and recognizing the independent owners of restaurants, and you were talking about exploring some Christmas shopping.

[00:09:34] Nola: That's right. Little gift shops and bookstores and just run by locals in a small town. Yeah, it was very great.

[00:09:42] Lori: So while many solopreneurs are self-employed, individuals, you can also be a freelancer providing services like PR and marketing, digital websites, all sorts of things.

[00:09:58] Nola: Well, my grandfather for example, you had mentioned your background. Mine was a barber and a plumber. So your one grandfather was both? My one grandfather was both a barber and a plumber.

[00:10:12] Lori: I love that. That's pretty awesome.

[00:10:14] Nola: From our way of thinking, you no longer have to start a business for the sole purpose of providing support for yourself or your family. In fact, we think that there are many reasons to start a business, including just the desire to solve real world problems. Not everyone who starts a business even wants to scale it into something bigger. You might be someone who just wants multiple streams of income.

[00:10:39] Lori: Absolutely. So whether your goal is to start a side business that serves individuals as in a B2C, business to customer, or businesses as in b2b, consider the following types of entrepreneurial opportunities.

The first one to think about is the scalable startup. With this type of side business, your focus is on being able to create a starting business that can be both replicable and scalable. From the very beginning, you're planning how you will take this idea. And you're not thinking, let me just test it out in proof of concept, but your testing is to see if other people could take on and own it and run it. So here the hope is rapid expansion with big profit in return. And those are just people who naturally have big ideas all the time. They don't have any desire to run a business for the long haul. They just want to get their idea out into the world with the goal of selling it. So what comes to mind here are often the disruptor types of entrepreneur. And this is you if your idea is to change the way people think about getting things done or even doing things. So your motivation comes from the unique nature of the business idea. And I'm going to give you an example here. What comes to mind with disruptors? If I say that Nola, what's one business that comes to mind with a total disruptor type?

[00:12:16] Nola: Well, I think Airbnb is like the classic example.

[00:12:19] Lori: Exactly. Once something like that, the shareable. Economy, if you will, launched, other people started to see ideas. And one recent one that I came across is Touro. Are you familiar with Touro? I don't think so. So, about a year ago we actually used Touro. Turo is a car sharing service. Not everybody needs to use their car to get to work anymore. So you could rent your own car out. Touro is an app for renting out your car. Used it with great success, have loved it. That's an example of a disruptor. Tech startup ideas are often what we think of when we envision an innovative and scalable business. But that's not necessarily the case. Take for example, Full Harvest. Through their online marketplace, this business provides restaurants and other suppliers with extra or flawed produce.

[00:13:22] Nola: Cool.

[00:13:23] Lori: And it also fits our next category, which is social entrepreneurship.

[00:13:28] Nola:
So in the case of social entrepreneurship, that's when the company founder creates a business with the intention of making a positive social or environmental impact, just like Full Harvest is. But other examples include online ethical marketplaces, which give interested customers a place to look and buy ethically produced goods. And we had a guest on our show, Jennifer Moreau, who on episode 61, revealed to us her whole motivation behind starting World for Good, which sources the materials and the creativity behind her bags. Another example of a social enterprise is when you have an innovative product that's not only in demand, meaning there really is a void in the marketplace, but it also solves a social problem. We had a guest on our show, episode 93, Shannon Goldberg. She came up with a product, Izzy, which is the first, probably the only zero waste beauty line. It's subscription based, and it engages in what's defined as a circular economy. In other words, it keeps materials and products in circulation as long as possible through that subscription model. And she was on episode 93. Another example, you might think of it as a more traditional service, but it really is having a positive social impact, and that's when you provide a service to those with special needs. And that could mean anybody from the elderly to those living with physical, mental, or emotional disabilities.

[00:15:04] Lori: All of those are social enterprises, and I think one of the mistakes people don't consider when they're thinking of entrepreneurship, is thinking that a social entrepreneur is a non-profit. You can have a for-profit business that does good.

[00:15:20] Nola: Absolutely.

[00:15:22] Lori: In the line of the special needs. A good example of that, it's a toothbrush for people who have challenges with their mouth, so you don't have to open up or move your jawline in a certain way. And that was an innovation that came, I believe, out of Korea.

[00:15:41] Nola: Wow.

[00:15:42] Lori: So, another format that's changing as far as entrepreneurship is the online entrepreneur. Here is a cost-effective way to take your first foray into being a business owner. And that is allowing you to create products based on your knowledge or a platform where you act as an aggregator for others who are coming together to solve a problem. And depending on what type of online business you create, you might not have any inventory. So I'll give you an example of one where you're not going to have inventory, and another one where you might have inventory. The first one is online courses. Sharing your knowledge through online courses becomes a service you provide to people interested in learning the skills that you have to teach them.

And one of them that I came across was an artist. Bob Ross was a good example of a painter who had a technique and then went on to sell his style of art. That would be a good example. I saw another artist who is selling currently an online course. And she's self-taught, and it's not just landscape. She's developed courses to show people how they can learn without any talent in art

[00:17:04] Nola: that's really good because when I think of online courses, I think more of like learn project management or learn marketing, but learn how to paint landscapes? That sounds awesome.

[00:17:14] Lori: You bring up another really good point for online courses is I know that there was a whole platform for teachers who were selling lesson plans. And depending on what your niche was for selling that lesson plan, that's how it was aggregated.

[00:17:31] Nola: Very cool.

[00:17:31] Lori: So you can use your professional knowledge to create platforms or courses or templates. So here's another idea. But you might have inventory, and that is the online clothing business. So from here you might upcycle or resell clothes in a way that makes an impact because you are repurposing garments in order to avoid filling up landfills.

[00:17:58] Nola: Which is a great example of a social enterprise and it could be clothes or furniture or other kind of salvage type of things or antiques, but the whole point is repurposing it. Avoiding landfills. I love that idea. Another opportunity for entrepreneurship these days is app development. And these days you don't even need to know how to code in order to at least create the prototype. So there are even platforms out there where you can create one with, it'll do the coding for you. And this is something that's really great if you have one of those burning ideas and you just want to see it through to fruition. And from there you can then decide, do I want to monetize this? And there are different ways to do that as well. So, app development.

[00:18:42] Lori: Another idea is turning your passion into profit. How about taking your passion and combining it with well-planned tours, location visits, cultural immersion, basing it on your own experience? I'll give you an example, Nola. When I was working on my graduate studies, in a mental health nonprofit, the executive director, this woman and her husband used to love biking. And they would go all over the world on these biking tours. Over time, they started planning out their own itinerary for their own biking tour. They would do it with just their friends or some family members. Over a longer period of time, people actually started asking them to join their travel when they would go on these tours so that they could go in small, trusted groups. Well, eventually this became a way for them to monetize their excursions. And what she said is it was a way for her and her husband to do something that they love without having to pay for it. Because what they did is they just expanded it for a small group and the group that they were taking actually paid for her and her husband to do this biking tour, so they turned it into a small business.

[00:20:02] Nola: That is a great example of something that you're passionate about and turning that into profit. While you were talking about that, another example of someone who's taken their passion and turned it into a side business, is somebody we interviewed early on. Natalie Westinskow. She had a knack for interior decorating. And people would ask her, Can you just make our office a little bit more attractive? And nowadays she, people hire her out to either redecorate their house or a particular room or stage their home that they're getting ready to sell. And what she does too, is she'll often take some of the old furniture that somebody's getting rid of, and repurposed that for the next client. It's just, again, passion to profit. Right?

[00:20:50] Lori: Yes. And she went on to get her real estate license.

[00:20:52] Nola: Yes. And in the show notes we'll have the link because the actual episode number does escape me. But if you listen to her story, she ended with, I've taken the real estate exam seven times. People keep telling me I should quit and I know I'm meant to do this. And guess what? She passed it and she's a realtor right now.

[00:21:12] Lori: Yeah. She's inspiring. She's a creative, inspiring person in general. Highly recommend listening to that one. Our final couple of ideas are those we think are worth exploring. They're entrepreneurship in a very different light.

[00:21:28] Nola: With the spin.

[00:21:29] Lori: So the first one, yes. The first one I want to share is called imitation entrepreneurship. This also is known as adoptive entrepreneurship. Here a person takes what someone else has done previously and improves upon the idea. You often will see this in ideas that came too early to be adopted into general practice, so they got abandoned. But someone else comes along, remembers it, and then they improve upon it. It's ready for a current market and they bring that to fruition.

[00:22:05] Nola: Another opportunity or twist in entrepreneurship I could say, is what we're calling the Lifestyle Entrepreneur. You may also have heard these as digital nomads or solopreneurs. But it's different from being strictly an online entrepreneur. The focus isn't that I've got an online business. The focus is, I am able now to work from almost anywhere, thanks to cloud computing and laptops and smartphones. Flexibility is the goal. And the types of businesses that can fall under this category are many, including freelancing, running those online courses, having those e-commerce businesses, for sure. But the whole thing is that you're obtaining flexibility to work from anywhere.

[00:22:52] Lori: You know, when we recently did a trip to Portugal, there's a whole community of people that have moved from other countries to Portugal. It's an NFT community. Because the tax allocations are more friendly in that location. Wow. But in general, people who are nomads, we tend to think of them as being young and strappy. That's not true. They cross the boundaries of age. You can have retirees, to students who just want to live a lifestyle that they are projecting out into the world and they're finding that they can create a business that supports that.

[00:23:37] Nola: That's awesome.

[00:23:38] Lori: It is awesome, and I can't wait to see how the future evolves here. So we've got a bonus for you, listener. There's one other possibility you don't often consider when you think of entrepreneurship, and that is the INtrepreneurship. That is bringing your entrepreneurial, innovative idea to your workplace. Research shows that people with entrepreneurial mindsets are what employers are looking to hire. So here the intrapreneur is a self-motivated, action-oriented employee who thinks outside the box and works as an entrepreneur within the company that they currently are employed. So some companies naturally hold brainstorming sessions where individuals and teams can come together and come up with concepts to present. And then the employee whose ideas accepted may get rewarded for their contribution in the form of profits. So even though they're an employee, Entrepreneur idea becomes the source of additional income. And, way, way, way back in the day, before the internet, which now today sounds like we're talking 19th century, but

[00:24:58] Nola: We're ancient.

[00:24:58] Lori: Yeah, that's not the case. I actually worked for a hospital system, who had, you know, those idea boxes where you could drop ideas in? Well, they specifically had those boxes around, and if you could come up with a money saving idea and the organization could actually follow through on it. You got a percentage of the savings your idea held for the company. You got a percentage for the first year. Whatever amount of money they could save, your percentage came from that savings. It was great.

[00:25:37] Nola: Well, listener, we hope today's episode helped you think about starting a side business in a whole new light.

[00:25:44] Lori: Thank you so much for listening to this episode. We hope it inspires and encourages you to take the first step and start your entrepreneurial journey so you can create your best and most exciting life and business. If you found the information shared here today helpful, let us know by posting here where you're listening, or on our Facebook page.

[00:26:05] Nola: Not sure how to turn your idea into a profitable side business? Contact us at stickybrandlab.com/contact. We'd be happy to help you.

[00:26:13] Lori: Be sure to come back next Tuesday and every Tuesday for another informative, inspiring, and motivating episode. And remember, actions create results. So tap into your desire to create a business and brand you love by taking 1% action every day. Small steps, big effects,

[OUT-TAKE]
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Those disruptor types. First where, uh, take two, take three.