Original Business Ideas

That’s a thing of past, especially because the internet is a gangsters’ paradise. One person comes with an original idea and the rest of the non-thinking pack crawls in, to re-christen and re-engineer it.

But we must put the car in gear 5 and come up with original business ideas, because tomorrow’s employment is not promised, to quote Kizz Daniel, a Nigerian singer. Going to school and graduating is no passport to employment. Part time jobs here and there yes, but your grandfather’s kind of employment with benefits and pension? Not guaranteed.

By original ideas I mean making things people need, not a holder to hold a cup holder, or holder to hold a soap holder. Let the soap run wild. I mean things like I saw on a parked truck today. It’s called a mat master. The snow is supposed to be magical and we wax it in different ways when we talk to friends that live in the Equator. What we don’t tell them is that it’s very messy once it melts.

The company on this photo has contracts with office blocks and apartment buildings. They remove messy mats at the entrance and replace them with fresh ones. I marveled at the perfect business name when I first saw them changing mats in a building. I  also wondered who came up with the idea. We won’t sell them mats, but we will offer a service of doing laundry for them. Mat laundry that is.

I didn’t go to business school, but I think the mat master service is a great idea because there is a need for it, not like selfie sticks.

By: Nonqaba waka Msimang.