Executive Insurance for Financial Statements

With the recent happening relating to Enron and Worldcom, there has been a calling that top executives should personally guarantee the accuracy of financial statements.  While this idea could not hurt the accuracy of financials; there are very few auditors running companies.  If an executive is going to personally guarantee financials, I think that they would have to have some protection in cases of fraud, misrepresentations, or mistakes by other parties.  Perhaps an insurance company could cover executives for this type of exposure.  

This is a franchise that provides health and safety compliance consulting services.  In light of the recent increased demand for these types of services, this may be a good company to look at.  The cost is only  $47,000 - $57,000 and it can be ran from home.

Public bathrooms now a days have changing tables for your little guy or girl.  Wouldn't it also make sense to have some type of diaper dispenser as well.  Forget the diapers, no problem.

Have you ever noticed that a lot of websites have bad design, grammatical errors, outdated content, and even elements that don't work such as links or unloaded images.  Mistakes like this can immediately turn away a prospective customer.  They may interpret these small mistakes as a reflection of how you do business.

What if you could forward a bad site's URL to an organization that contacted the owners of the site.  The organization could communicate the mistakes and provide the owner with some recommended solutions as well as a reputable local web designer.  The organization could take sponsorship from the web designers and possibly compensate person that find the sites.

Telemarketer Maze

You get a call from, say Pacific Bell offering you a great deal on long distance. Just say, "one moment please" and press the button. The telemarketer hears:

"All of our customers are currently busy listening to other telemarketers. Your call is important to us. If you are selling long distance, press 1, lawn care, press 2, charities press 3 . . ."

Just imagine the number of sub menus and options that could be created, all leading back to,

"All of our customers are currently busy . . ."

Door-to-Door Pet Grooming Business

Imagine, not having to bother with taking Fido to the Groomer.  Instead, the Groomer comes to you.  The convenience of having a pet grooming service which, comes directly to your house, would be well received. 

Fido would also be happy, no more scary baths in strange places.  Now, its a scary bath in a familiar place, good boy!

The Groomer could set up in a nice, oversized van.  The van could have an area for working on the animals as well as running water. 

A company that provides customer service outsourcing to small businesses.  The service is all internet based and representatives are educated and live.

An example would be, a small accounting firm with a clientele that demands a high level of service.  Maintaining a 24/7 staff to support these clients would probably be very expensive.  A solution would be to contract with an internet based customer service company that works exclusively with accounting firms.  There would be a link on the accounting firm's web site.  It would read something like: "need help, click here for live help".  This would immediately route to a customer service rep ay the company.  The rep would be trained to answer some of the more common questions and anything else would be forwarded to the accounting firm.  

Name Change Service for Newly Wed’s

 It was a real nightmare for Kerri when she had to change her name from Whittaker to Nagy.  This is a problem that the vast majority of women in the US have to face at least once in their lives.  For you guys out there, think about it… licenses, social security card, business cards, credit cards, bills…that’s a lot of hassle. 

 What do you think about a service that would handle the entire mess for you?  They would literally call every single government agency, department store, bank and so on until every institution had the new name.  I would pay for that!

Curves for Women, Inc.

 Curves for Women is one of the hottest franchises out there.  In case you haven’t heard of them, they are a women’s fitness and weight loss center.  There are over 1,500 locations in the US and the start up capital is only $10,000.

 I think that this is a great idea.  A lot of women want to work out, but, they hate going to coed gyms.  Lets face it, guys stare at the ladies.  Plus, a lot of women want an environment where they can share their feelings about working out, health and their personal lives.

 Currently, there isn’t a franchise in New Castle County.  The nearest one is in Seaford.  Check out their site www.curvesforwomen.com.  This could be a great opportunity!

We rent music to DJ's - We load laptop computers with music that we own, we encript it so that the DJ's can't use it on their other systems and allow them to play it at their events.  You figure - we buy 10,000 CD's at $5-$10 a piece wholesale rip them using compression software.  Create a modified mp3 player.  Charge a monthly fee and be able to profile each DJ.  

For the DJ's if it costs $300 - $500 per month and they are making money without ever spending a penny on CD's and are doing it legally after the first event, we would sell the initial setup for $3,000 - $4,000.  

In tax planning, and I presume a lot of other fields (law...), Fact-Finding is very important.  When I interview a client, I ask a ton of questions in order to hopefully discover every fact that is relevant to a particular tax plan or issue.

The professors at my school give take-home tests, which are on an essay format.  Each question is basically a tax-planning scenario for a client.  What's rediculus about the exams is that each question practically tells what it is that the professor is looking for.  Most students can easily look up the answers in the IRS code.

My idea is to use a "chatterbot" (software program that mimics human behavior http://www.artificial -life.com/) to stimulate the client for each test.  The professor would program the chatterbot (through some easy to use interface) with the relevant data and facts for each test.  The student would than interview the chatterbot as though it was real live person.  The student could then attempt to extract the relevant info, just like real life.

For those of us to lazy to actually make coffee every morning.  A coffee maker that ties off the water line going to the sink, and the drain line.  You dump in a can of coffee, program it, and whammo fresh coffee every morning at he designated time.  But, unlike regular coffee makers, this one is programmed to shut off too.  So, each morning it will slide the required amount of coffee into the reusable filter, measure water, and keep hot.  Then, it will flush the filer, and turn off.  Once a week you soak the filer in vinegar.

Here's an idea, what about a cup holder that fits onto your beach umbrella.  It would have a universal joint so that it can fit on to any type of umbrella.  This joint would allow the cup holder to remain balanced even if the umbrella is not quite 90 degrees.  No more sand in my bear!

Ok, here's a crazy idea, You know the big, wooden spoons that are used for cooking?  Well, why not put a thermometer inside it.  It could take the temperature of the food without you having to burn your mouth.  Also, some recipes actually call fro certain mixtures to be at a certain temperature, this could help.

There is a company called Advanced Internet Technologies, Inc.  They offer bulk packages for Web Hosting.  Since, they sell this all in bulk, they show you how you can pay for a bunch of stuff, then resell it.  They show how much profit you can get, based on the different packages you get too.  If you can resell it even at a reduced price, you can make a profit.

I worked for an accounting firm once that participated in a fundraiser for a client.  The client was planning on holding a drawing to raise money for a local charity.  They asked if there was a prize that we would be willing to contribute for the drawing.  I think we gave them one free hour of consulting - some how, I doubt if that inspired anyone to make contributions.

It seems that lotteries and giveaways are big promotion tools for companies.  The problem is that small companies can't afford to give away anything that's too expensive.  Large companies have big budgets and thus, nicer prizes.

My idea is to have a marketing company that is able to pull the assets of several small businesses together in order to fund one coordinated marketing effort.  For example: A lottery promotion.  100 small restaurants participate.  Each restaurant is in a different town.  They pay $2,000 each to get in.  The prize is $100,000.  The winner is any customer who purchases a soda with a "peel back sticker" which shows them as a winner.  We distribute 5,000 cups to each of the restaurants for them to use in their promotion.

We take in $100,000 ($2,000 x 100 - $100,000) minus our costs (cups...) as a profit.

Trained & Licensed stylists in toddler/youth age barbery come to the comfort (and familiar setting) of your own home to cut your baby's hair.  This as opposed to bringing your child to any run-of-the-mill barber or to one of those loud, busy, high-stimuli kid-haircut specialty shops where children can too often be prone to meltdowns and other types of fits.

Stylists will be appointment AND radio dispatched so as to be able to respond quickly (whenever possible) to prime cutting time, i.e., if the child just went down for a nap, etc. (Dial-s-Style, Kiddi-Kuts, Salon-on-Wheels, Cuts on the Run)

There should be some sort of babysitter pool (same idea as the carpool thing sort of...).  A site that offers both "looking for a bbsitter?" and "looknig for a bbsitter job?" kind of thing.  it could be organized by state, town, qualifications, etc.  i'd go in and pick: teenage girl, <$5/hour. 1+years experience, wilmington area.  and it would do a search, the site would make $ with advertising?? maybe a member fee? don't know if this kind of think already exists.

"If it fluctuates in value, you can trade it." This is quote from "Wall Street", I think.

The value of an insurance policy fluctuates with the onset of a severe storm, fire flood, etc.  For example: Lets say you're holding an insurance policy to protect against rain & flood damage.  And, lets say that a huge hurricane is scheduled to land on your house.  Your policy has suddenly become much more valuable because of the increased likelihood of it paying out.

My idea is to create an exchange whereby an investor could speculate on this new security.  The investors would be made up of actual policyholders.  The policyholders would agree to allow 10% of their monthly premium payments to be used for speculation (90%, would have to be in reserves in case the individual policy holder has a claim).  Then, the policyholder/investor could trade the 10% of his premium with the other investors.

A security would be set up for each geographical region of the US.  And the value of the policies in each region would be accumulated together to help set the price for that security.  The price of each security would be adjusted to supply and demand.

For example: southern California may be one region out of 25.  Thus there are 25 different securities to choose from:  An individual living in S. California makes a $100 insurance payment for August.  He is credited $10 toward the "S. California Ins. Security".  He then trades it for $10 worth of the "New England Ins. Security", because he's following weather patterns and he is predicting a sever winter storm.  As the storm approaches, the price of "NE Ins. Security" has skyrocketed to $20, he cashes out.

I have worked on a lot of corporate financial statement audits and it seems like the job usually runs past the original deadline.  Usually management will schedule a board meeting immediately upon completion of the audit so that they can review the financials.  As a result of the accountant running over deadline, there's little time for the graphic designer to prepare and print the annual report.  It is usually very bad or, labeled as a draft, which looks horrible.  This make management look bad in front of the board as well as the accounting firm.

My idea is to set up a company that specializes in quick turn around time when preparing annual reports.  It will have to have printing capabilities as well as templates to speed along the job.  It could possibly contract with regional printers in order to cut down on delivery time.  Since the market is rather narrow, it would have to offer services to firms throughout the nation.  This would mean a strong web presence.  The audit job running over? No-problem, audit on-time design, inc. 90% - 24 hour turnaround on your printing and design needs". 

It seems that you can start this business for under $3,000 and it could yield between $50,000 to $100,000 per year.  You have to build a small green house to grow butterflies.  There are kits available that come with all the necessary things including caterpillar larvae.  There's apparently a market for this at weddings, $95 per dozen.  They're released like doves during the ceremony.

A website that allows people to connect and find other people that are interested in car pooling in their communities.  The website would collect pertinent data such as smoking or non-smoking, fast or slow driver, etc.  The site would earn revenue through advertising.

using economies of scale, we procure low pricing - add - door-todoor pick up and tracking of garments + The ability for a customer to track progress.

This idea came to me a few years ago while I was sitting at a barbershop, staring at myself for a half hour.  Wouldn't it be cool if there was a wide screen TV in place of the mirror, and if I had the remote in my hand.  I could watch Sports Center, CNBC or, Gilligan's Island.  Maybe it could have a sports bar them, games to play while you wait.

For $30.,, you get 1 lbs of chocolate delivered to your door.

Can a convenience store be more convenient?  It can be a real problem to pick up the midweek groceries (milk, bread...) when you have a baby in the car and you're running late for an appointment.  Would a drive through in a convenient store allow a patron to pick up her groceries fast while also yielding a nice profit for the business?

In Fenwick, DE there is a really cool shipwreck museum that Kerri and I toured yesterday.  The museum is full of sunken treasure and old pirate artifacts.  Patrons seem to get really excited going through it.  I have always wanted to learn how to scuba dive and I never felt more inspired.  The museum should have an agreement with a local scuba diver, which would allow patron's to sign up for lessons and tours right there on the spot, when they're really feeling it.

Can a real estate agent spend less time with clients and make more money?  I remember from our experience buying a house, that often times, an agent will have a lockbox at a house, which contains the house keys.  The agent uses his master key to get access to the house keys.  Why not have a system whereby you allow the client to use the lockbox alone, without the agent.  They could be given a pass code, which would be different for each client.  The client would call the agent to say that they are interested in looking at a specific house.  The agent would then give the client a pass code over the phone, and also download it to the lockbox via a cellular link.  There could be a background check on each before hand to make sure they're honest.