Seven Businesses You Can Start Tomorrow

Forbes:

When her husband lost his job in 2002, Christine DeLuca rented out two of the beds in their Woodstock, Vt., home. She ran the makeshift bed and breakfast (and ate into their savings) for a few years before upgrading to a larger house on a farm in nearby Quechee. Open on weekends since August, the Inn at Clearwater Pond, with four rooms and an adjoining cottage, has pulled in roughly $8,000 a month in revenue.

“I didn’t know a thing about running a bed and breakfast,” says DeLuca. “But [it] came very naturally to me because I love to entertain and have people in my home.” DeLuca aims to triple those revenues by operating at full capacity (the Inn is at 50% now) and having guests during the week.

You don’t need a fancy pedigree or specialized set of skills to launch a business. Some start-ups require more capital than others, of course, and all companies demand care and feeding. But if you can muster the courage, do a bit of research and secure a tax identification number (so Uncle Sam can take his cut), you can be your own boss.

Low-tech ventures that work best tend to target a devoted customer base and offer an easy-to-grasp product or service. Take dog walking (as in, walking dogs).

A former Unisys call center representative who went back to college in his late 30s, Kevin Meadows started walking dogs part-time while attending St. Edwards University in Austin, Texas. A friend told him about a stockbroker in San Francisco who quit his job to start a dog-walking service. Rumor had it the guy made six figures carting dogs on a flat-bed truck to a park so they could run around for a few hours a day.

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Photo by Comstock.

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