I recently went to see my Tuina therapist.
She has set up a program to offer her services to businesses.
She had me look at her proposal and asked for my advice.
I told her that it was not clear to me who she was pitching to.
Human Resources, the CEO, employees directly?
The all speak a different language, have a different interest and different needs to fulfill. What may seem a benefit to one, is probably just a ‘nice to have’ for the other.
And what kind of businesses were her customers? Hotels, banks, shops,… What environment do people work in? That largely defines what their health problems might be that she has to address.
She told me that it is difficult for her to get an insider’s view of how companies work, who decides what and what their needs are that she could address.
So in the lines of A wish is a niche, it made me think about a few business ideas that would cover her need and even take it a step further.
A place where employees sign up to propose their insider knowledge. Not confidential knowledge that could interest a trader, but just simple things like:
- who in your company do I need to contact for X, Y, Z?
- what would be the best way to sell my product in your company?
- how does your company get rid of old computers and is there a way to recuperate them?
- who is the decision maker for this?
It would avoid an overloaded company webmaster.
It would avoid many unanswered emails.
It would create interesting connections that could be useful.
It would connect the company to a community of people that are interested in them (on many different levels).
Competency market (for startups or non-profits)
We all have very diversified skills. We might even use all of them at work.
Most often we only use a select few. Because our job requires a certain set of skills and not another.
William Bridges says that it is a 19th-century contingency to “package the work that needed doing in the growing factories and bureaucracies of the industrialised nations”.
Today’s job market tries to fit the best people into given jobs.
What if we explored the option of aligning what people can offer – their competencies – against the demands of companies, the community and other individuals?
Let’s say you are good at building simple websites and want to start your own business. You ‘advertise’ your service and each time you ‘sell’ it to someone, you earn a certain number of points (depending on the level of service rendered).
Some weeks later, you need someone to look at your business plan. You find the person offering this service and pay with the points you earned.
Such barter sites already exists (although not so much in Europe) but they offer too many things at once.
It would be nice to have a site that deals with selected partners to offer all services needed for startups or non profits. I found one site that goes into this direction.
Lately I have encountered many wishes from non profits and startups for certain services, so a barter service geared towards them would surely be a success.