Here are your sample stories....

Note: These are brief excerpts of case studies and articles recently reported in The Business Fastlane. For more details on these ideas and hundreds of others go to The Business Fastlane

Pooper Scoopers

Pet care and services are a huge part of the $20 billion pet-products industry, fueling consumer demand for everything from scoopers (2 million are sold a year) to self-cleaning cat boxes. Pet clean-up services say the market isn’t even close to being saturated because it is a job vast numbers of people are willing to pay someone else to do...pick up poop!

A real estate agent had problems cleaning the doggie poop out of the back yard when tenants vacated homes. He checked with other agents and found that they had the same problem. So he started his own pooper scooper business. He charges $40/month per dog, with discounts if you have more. If this sounds like the type of business you've always dreamed of running an Ohio mans claims earnings of $20,000/month scooping poop and even wrote a book telling how others can too. Happy Scooping!!

$450/Day Selling One Piece of Paper!

What could be better than earning $450 per day from a website selling a piece of paper? How about the fact that you don't even need to mail the piece of paper out, the buyers download it automatically after they buy from a website? Jim noticed that certain expensive items were being sold on a popular auction site. He reasoned that most people selling them had no idea of the potential legal pitfalls. So he had an attorney draft a legally binding sales agreement that protects the person selling the item. Then he created a website to sell the agreement to people selling this item for only $19.95. If you were selling an item for thousands of dollars, wouldn't you invest $19.95 in a legal document that was specifically created to protect you in the transaction? I sure would, especially when the alternatives are just taking a chance or paying a lawyer $100-300 to create an agreement. Great, simple idea, isn't it? How easy would this be to model? It doesn't get much easier! We'll give you many more ideas on how to find other products being sold that you could do the same thing for!

Dental Dollars

Gary provides a simple service to dentists. He spends a few an hours each week on this service and pockets an extra $2,600 each month by helping dentists repair a valuable piece of equipment that needs periodic work. Gary doesn’t actually do any of the repairs himself, he simply boxes it up and sends it out to a wholesale repair facility. When it comes back he delivers it to the dentist. He charges the dentists about $200 for the repairs. He keeps about $100 on each one. This may not sound like much, but all he does is answer the phone, pick up the part, box it up, send it off for repairs, and deliver it when it's done. Dentists love it because when this piece of equipment needs repairs, they simply call Gary to pick it up--and he does the rest. He already taught one of his relatives how this business works. There’s no reason you couldn’t do the same thing in your hometown. If you had 10-15 customers, like Gary does, and the dentists called on you several times a month (as Gary’s customers do), you’d be making a full time income … working part time!

100,000 Visitors In 10 Days to Brand New Website!

Publicity pro Mike Van Norden used some creative thinking and PR to get over 1000,000 visitors to a brand new website in a few weeks! Here's what he did. Several years ago, there was a BIG debate in Dallas regarding the re-naming of Texas Stadium, home of the Dallas Cowboys. The debate was whether to re-name the stadium, "Landry" Stadium after their beloved former coach. Mike and a friend quickly registered a website and set up an online "petition" where people could vote YES or NO on whether to re-name the stadium. He wrote a simple press release in less than 10 minutes, and faxed it to all major radio, TV, and newspapers all across Texas. Result: Soon all the Texas media and even ESPN TV were telling people to vote on Mikes website! In a very short time they received over 70,000 votes (with emails.) without spending one penny on advertising to receive $100,000+ in free publicity! Mike put "banner" ads for all of his products on the "voting" page of the web-site! He had over 100,000 click thru's, and over 50,000 visitors left their emails for future mailings. This resulted in many thousands of dollars in sales!! This is a great model to get massive exposure in a short time and build a targeted mailing list. The more passionate the story, the more publicity and traffic you'll generate. Keep your eye on the news.

Doggie Day Care

Often the way to create a successful business is to take the ordinary and make it upscale…and charge a lot more for your products of service. It seems in L.A. the rich and famous don’t have time to spend quality time with their dogs so they are paying enterprising people big bucks to do it for them. I’m not talking about ordinary dog walking or dog sitting services, I mean truly upscale “day care” services. One service charges $30/day and cares for about 50 dogs a day. ($1,500/day gross) Some offer things like giant dog runs with slides and tunnels, giant sand boxes and nap times with services like “pawdicures”, “barkmitzvahs,” and sleepovers. Some offer things like giant dog runs with slides and tunnels, giant sand boxes and nap times with services like “pawdicures”, “barkmitzvahs,” and sleepovers. But this is nothing, some offer “doggie weddings” complete with wedding cakes made from liver pate and dog food. A Rolls-Royce with leopard-skin interior takes the happy couple to a secluded park for their honeymoon. The cost …$300!

Booklet Queen

Back in 1991, a former music teacher named Paulette was trying to figure out a way to boost her sagging organizing business. She came across a simple "tips" booklet called 117 Ideas For Better Business Presentations. No long copy, just a listing of ideas and tips. She realized she could create a similar booklet containing organizing tips she collected over the years. In a short time she created, 110 Ideas for Organizing Your Business Life. With no money for advertising, the only way she could think of to sell the booklets was by sending a copy to magazines and newspapers, asking them to use excerpts and putting an invitation at the bottom for readers to send $3 plus a self-addressed stamped envelope. Eventually she went on to sell over 600,000 booklets without spending a dime on advertising. Today she helps others create booklets through her courses and workshops.

Welfare to Success

A former welfare mom, Nancy took her last $30 and turned it into a booming business. Last spring she was named SBA Welfare-to-Work Entrepreneur of the year for the state of MA. After living abroad for a number of years, she returned to the U.S. with nothing but a suitcase and her 2 month old baby. Never having more than dead end jobs, she desperately looked for a way to feed herself and her baby. She finally decided to use her knowledge of herbs-and her last $30 to start a business. She bought $30 worth of assorted spices, mixed them together and labeled them "Italian Spice Mix."The next day she took them to a flea market and by the end of the day the spices were gone and she had $200 in her pocket. She thought it was a fortune. She kept reinvesting her small profits and expanded into other spice mixes, soaps, wreaths, and scented gift items. 4 years later she was able to buy a home to run her business from and now employs several moms to help her meet her demand. Today her mail order herb business pulls in over $250,000/yr and continues to grow.

From Secretary to Multi-Millionaire

Back in 1977 Tiffany and her husband had a problem. Their boutique ran into a sales slump and she needed to figure out a way to move the inventory. Although she was just 22 years old at the time, her idea became the start of a fantastic business. The idea? If women would buy Tupperware and Avon products from home maybe they would buy lingerie in their homes too. She held her first party at her moms home to test the idea. The party was a sell out success. One of her strategies was to offer a variety of lingerie at the shows-from practical and conservative to downright wild and racy. Her thinking was that women who might not feel comfortable buying the racier (and often more expensive with higher profit margins) items at a store might take the plunge in the privacy of a friends home. She was right. Instead of trying to do it all themselves they started recruiting women to organize and run their own parties similar to the model that Tupperware used. It was a huge success. By the time she was 30 she was a millionaire and their family business continued to grow until it was doing an amazing $100 million a year in sales.

Note: These are brief excerpts of case studies and articles recently reported in The Business Fastlane.

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