Deseret News Archives,
Sunday, January 13, 2002

Edition: All
Section: Money
Page: M01
Length: 67 lines

Solid ideas always in style

Amid obvious tragedies have been record layoffs that amount to nearly 2 million (1.3 million more than the previous record in 1998). Gone are the days when Corporate America offered steady, 30-year jobs that led to a nice pension. Loyalty to -- or from -- a firm is becoming extinct.

Some of you may be reading this column now because you were forced out and are now thinking of being "on your own." If so, I welcome you. While entrepreneurship has always had a reputation for being risky, it is becoming relatively less risky as the corporate job market dramatically changes. Indeed, entrepreneurship offers the potential for many great rewards.

So I write today to those who are now trying to think of an idea for a venture. As times change, it seems as if certain industries go in and out of entrepreneurial style. While those industries offer opportunities, it leaves other, less "sexy" industries wide open for creative people to enter and develop.

Not long ago, I was sitting in one of my classes at business school. We had spent the semester writing business plans, and, on this particular day, student teams were to present their plans to the rest of the class. This was serious stuff -- many teams took on the project with intentions of implementing the plans they had created. Our team was no different.

As I listened to the other plans, I realized that all of them were plans for new dot-coms. I understand why this was the case. At that time, we happened to be in one of the most phenomenal technology growth cycles ever seen. These were the days of dot-com dreams of stocks tripling the first day of trading. Sadly, many found out the hard way that these days don't last forever.

Of all the teams, ours was the only one that had done a plan without a dot-com component. When it was time for us to present, we were nervous about how the class would react. We had spent our semester working on a plan for a new type of barbershop. I know there is absolutely nothing sexy about that idea, but, in a time when some of the fundamentals of business didn't seem to matter, we chose to stick with the basics.

Someone on the team had noticed a void in the hair care market and had an innovative way to fill it. After some research, it looked like the financial fundamentals were there: good cash flow, real profits and likely sales.

So we went for it and wrote a pretty good plan. While the class snickered a bit, and we joked that it wasn't barbershop.com, we knew that we had a plan that was not only completely off the radar screen for most individuals and other companies but also had a shelf life of more than just a few months.

Our team has not yet implemented our plan; however, some of us still work on it in our spare time and hope to implement it in the future. I wonder how many of our fellow class teams can actually say that about their plans in this market.

The important thing to realize is that some of the greatest businesses have come from ideas that are not all that vogue in industries that, on the outside, don't seem to be all that exciting. So, as you search for a business idea, make sure to remember to look in places that others will not.

Eric Farr is a graduate of The Wharton School and of Brigham Young University, where he participated in the student club sponsored by the Center for Entrepreneurship. He can be reached via e-mail at cfe@byu.edu.

© 2001 Deseret News Publishing Co.