In several recent blogs I’ve shared with you the trends I’ve been seeing in different parts of the country as I work with clients or deliver workshops to CEOs. Now I want to tell you about growth opportunities that seem to be popping up that might offer you some ideas for your own company.
Time for Change. For some business owners who have been doing well for many years, they are now seeing the markets for their existing services diminishing and are trying to figure out how to tap into other opportunities. Often they are bringing in new management talent or working with their existing team to re-imagine their business. Ideas are flying all over the place, some of which are turning into big ideas and innovations.
Where are these new opportunities? A couple of places to look are popping up but require companies to rethink what and how they do things. Take a look at how these might help you:
- How do we turn the stay-at-home Dad into a success story? Train him? Partner with him? Rent him tools on demand?
- If new construction is slow to come back, what are the opportunities in remediation, such as the industry emerging around stucco remediation, mold and water damage from floods, and the shift in weather patterns creating major damage centers?
- If selling/marketing direct-to-end-user is here to stay, how will you build your online experience so you both brand yourself and ensure you come up on top of any search? What are people searching for? When they hit your website, do they stay and see what you have for them or bounce off?
- What are people calling your customer service folks to discuss? What are their unmet needs you could turn into new opportunities?
- Look into new industries. Can landscapers add healing gardens to senior homes and healthcare centers to create new markets for themselves?
- In healthcare there is a new world emerging. Art and healing centers may be an interesting thing for landscapers to explore: reinventing themselves into something they have always been but in another form. There are other places to look for opportunities — here are just a few that immediately come to mind:
- The company that sells electronic medical records to chiropractors might also show them how to use the data to help grow their customer base.
- How can you help small businesses and their newly insured to reduce costs by keeping people healthy?
- What new services can you sell to hospitals and doctors to help keep patients from coming back too soon and too often?
- Sustainability and energy efficiency are the future. Is your role to provide and install solar panels or to help home owners and businesses, even colleges and universities, use less energy? Or less water? Or to eliminate waste and landfill by reducing the use of plastic bottles?
- Education is changing. As the way boys and girls learn, and the way teachers are taught to teach them, continue to change and evolve, there are tremendous opportunities for creative businesses to develop services, products and knowledge to fast track how we can remain a vibrant, balanced country where both men and women are thriving in the work place and in our communities.
