 |
Look around. You are
surrounded by businesses - and every one is a potential
money-maker for you. The stores and restaurants on the
street are obvious, the apartment buildings and single
family homes somewhat less obvious as businesses (as
opposed to investments), the other assets in the
community may be even more obscure. Check out, for
example, the utility conduits under your feet: phone
services, cable TV, internet service, electricity, gas,
water, waste water, etc. Each is a business. This page explains the fundamentals of how
each of these businesses works. Part of being an
entrepreneur is knowing how a lot of different businesses
work, what the essence of each enterprise is. We discuss
the most important 4 - 5 numbers for determining whether
a business is viable in your area, who you need to talk
to if you do seem to have a workable proposal, and
terminology you will need to discuss that business
intelligently.
Be sure to experiment with the Interactive Business Plan Applets that use
your basic assumptions to prepare a summary business plan
that can be used to discuss an idea with potential
investors and operators. These applets can be run in
under a minute, and go a long ways towards helping you
understand the fundamentals of the business in which you
are interested. A famous real estate investor, Sam Zell,
has commented that "If a deal doesn’t work on
the back of the envelope, it’s not going to work on
the ground". Our business plan applets are designed
to be your "back of the envelope". Current Applets available:
PKZIPped Microsoft
Excel 5.0 format.
Here's a listing of other businesses you can Start In Your Own Backyard:
- Community Ventures - Which Would Work in
Your Neighborhood?
Business ventures in the
community can be subdivided into those that
"export" goods and services to the
outside world, and those that serve the community
internally. A data management enterprise that
sells services to downtown businesses is
"export" oriented. It brings cash and
knowledge of current business practices into the
community. Internal community ventures can be
just as valuable. They prevent outsiders from
pulling cash out of the community (as with a
laundromat operated by a company from another
state). And they build a sense of local community
as residents visit each other more often.
- Government Reengineering - It IS Possible, and Everyone
Benefits
Programs run by government
agencies push cash and services into the
community, and suck cash and services out again.
Reengineering these flows (everything from
primary schools to recycling routes) has the same
aim as taking over physical assets: improve the
quality of life, and increase the net cash flow
to the community.
- Community Assets - Buying and Improving
Them
Getting control of a
community’s physical assets means you
have to know how to make the purchase, and also
what to do with the asset once you find it. In a
typical inner city neighborhood, for example
there may be an abandoned and decaying 10-unit
multifamily structure. Say the city housing
authority is offering it for sale, but you do not
know how to estimate the cost of buying and
operating the property. A quick software analysis
(click the "Multifamily" tool below)
shows that a purchase could probably be done with
no money down and would pay for itself.The goal with community assets is
twofold. First, fix them up so that they are
truly an asset. Run-down bus shelters are not
optimized: they may keep rain off waiting
passengers, but they also advertise "crummy
neighborhood" to outsiders passing through.
And they get residents used to sub-standard
facilities. The second goal is to make money for
people in the community, so that cash stops
flowing out of the neighborhood to absentee
owners.
- Community Liabilities - Remove the Negative,
and Create a Positive
And there are enterprises that
hurt a community. A topless bar or an open-air
drug market can depress values of assets for
blocks around. The "business example"
here is aimed at showing how other communities
have solved these problems. The tools attempt to
quantify the economic cost of the harmful
attraction, and also to give some insight into
the economics of those trades. (The "know
your enemy" approach). Not all of these
liabilities reflect on the community. Underground
storage tanks have a directly quantifiable affect
on asset values and can be addressed purely as a
business proposition.
- Personal Development - Raise Gross Community
Capital (GCC) While Developing Human Capital
|
