Tim Ferris vs. Entreprenurial Premise

OK so the title sounds a little weird but I think I have a valid question. I've been bouncing around ideas to start an e-business and I'm excited because I'm taking action. But I'm also making sure that the money and time I'm risking is going to be worthwhile.

MJ's post about finding the right entrepreneurial premise is awesome and I love re-reading it. But I think I haven't been able to find a middle ground between that and Tim Ferris' theory of his entire book.

In my own situation, I've realized that finding a need and helping people is the only way to build a worthwhile business that will rake in profits. But I've also realized that every time I brain storm ideas for a business platform, I only come up with businesses that are just self employed jobs that only I can do.

On the other hand, I took in Tim Ferris' theory and I looked into drop shipping and I've found that it is possible to build a passive income business. The problem is that I would be entering mostly a saturated market even if I put a marketing niche on a specific audience. Furthermore, I wouldn't really be solving a need thus I would have a passive business with a small income.

For example, I could sell drop shipped musical supplies. I'm a guitar player and beginning drummer and I have knowledge in this area. I could put a niche in the market for a certain genre/style of music. But in the end, a bunch of other sites could be selling the same products for cheaper and I wouldn't really be solving a problem or need that isn't already being taken care of.

But if I chose to just keep a good entrepreneurial premise and forget about Tim Ferris' theory, I could probably make a large amount of money but it would be completely dependable on myself. If I chose to create or even resell a product, I would responsible for all the orders and shipping. The moment I left for college the business would die and so would all the profits.

As you can see I can't seem to find an e-business model that can solve a need while it not becoming a job. Is there such thing that exists? I realize that e-businesses that sell software are obviously fulfilling a need and are passive, but what about entrepreneurs who aren't able to create their own software and resell it?

In the beginning, most businesses will start off as self-employed endeavors.

However, as you grow, you will be able to delegate tasks to EMPLOYEES. Employees will work; you will manage. If your job will be as simple as shipping products that you have on inventory, I'm pretty confident you can find another high schooler or young kid to do that for you. They'd happily take $15/hour as that is a great wage for somebody that age.

Then, there's customer service. You can offer an 800-number and either outsource the calls to an answering service, or you could hire another person to handle that side of your business. You can get a BlackBerry/Smartphone/iPhone and handle email concerns right away yourself, too.

Any business can become passive. Just about any business can become Fastlane, too.

The key to all this? Systems.

Genius, Rep+

I've been working a lot on this lately. Come to find out I have a bunch of idiots working for me

I think it's faily safe to say EVERY business you start, starts as an S (no matter how short of time it is). It is up to you to change it to a B through documenting and writing down step by step processes. "Do this, then do this, then do this... If this happens, do this, if that happens, do this."

Building a business is like being a good programmer. You need to be logical in structuring everything. A programmer uses the same IF THEN rules when coding their stuff.

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"Make as much as you can for as long as you can. Whoever has the most when he dies is the winner." - Lawrence Garfield in the movie Other People's Money

Sorry to interrupt but If anybody has any books on this topic (systems and process management), I´d love it if you´d share it with us. Books about business process management

Have you considered selling knowledge rather than consumable goods? For example instead of selling musical supplies, consider selling tried and true methods that you’ve learned to make learning how to play various types of music more fun and easier to do. This may be an over simplification, but I think you get the general idea.

Make access to the information member based, with just enough free examples to let folks see what they will get if they become a member. Once you have the information compiled and published on your site, you have very little overhead or workload associated with the site.

Enjoy the Ride
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