GIVING AWAY MY BUSINESS IDEAS

STRENGTHS IN ACTION

A couple of my Strengths assist in my ability to come up with Entrepreneurial ideas which I engage in freely and regularly. I'm forever looking to the future, seeing ahead, and often call on my Strengths of Futuristic and Ideation. However, in order to execute on these I have to call on my executing Strengths of Achiever and Focus, though i've found these wanting. These have moved down in hierarchy, since becoming a Mother and honouring my top value of Family. Yet as my children leave the nest, and begin to make a life for themselves, this is beginning to change.

My problem presently is coming up with all these small business ideas, and not knowing what to do with them, and simply not having the drive to execute on something that is not congruent with who I am right now.

So I thought instead of letting them lay, I would begin to share what comes to mind in the hope a budding entrepreneur out there may use and execute on one of them (that, of course, provided it's not already being done). It is said for every idea, ten other people have come up with it, few will act.

An article I read recently stated that Millennials will not want ownership - think Uber and Airbnb. This got me thinking about smaller properties as the population explodes, affordability of large apartments, etc. This presents the problem of no place to store anything, though there has been massive growth in storage rental and I’m sure this will continue to grow.

There has been a continuous climb of the number of people pursuing outdoor activities, maybe as apartments become smaller? Or could it be simply to get away from Jobs we dislike? Definitely for greater challenges. Yet in the future I wonder where will Millennials store their outdoor equipment?

Lets bring in the big guys like ‘Outdoor Warehouse’, Outdoor Megastore, Halfords etc. who currently supply retail outdoor equipment for sale to the likes of us.

What if there were companies such as these, who were to create a website with everything your heart desires for your camping trip, where all these items are for hire? At your leisure, you sit in the comfort of your own home and select your items, hit send, then drive your car to their nearest outlet to hitch up 'their' company trailer with your order conveniently packed, and all for a swipe of your credit card?

On your return, no more having to wash and air things before you pack them away. No more storage issues. No more big, white elephant costs. No, you simply return their trailer and their contents back to it’s rightful place. Not your problem.

On top of this, outdoor companies would have fantastic free advertising as we drag their ‘named’ trailers behind our cars.

Outdoors Geek offers a service where they will ship items to you before a planned outdoor excursion. However, at this stage, what they offer is very limited.

We have never been ‘happy campers’ ourselves, so wouldn’t dream of buying all the relevant gear. However, at the beginning of this year we had a camping weekend in the South African Drakensberg mountain range, making use of our son's tiny two-man tent (we had to sleep diagonally as we hardly fit - happy memories). It was an absolutely wonderful, memorable break. Yet the idea of non-ownership totally appeals to us. We’d never justify the cost of ownership for an annual camping holiday.

Would this appeal to you? Are you keen to start such a business? Your comments please.