Hi Dave,

That was an excellent post! And I also loved the story of your 14 year old (further down the forum) too!

Like you, I didn't really learn anything about entrepreneurship from my parents, because this is not their area of expertise. (They both have mainly worked in education.)

However, they did teach me about what they knew, and for that I'm quite grateful. :)

One thing your post shows is that there are MANY opportunities out there not currently being exploited by others....

Most successful businesses seem to fall into one of two categories....

There are the high volume, low margin type businesses. These are the discounters, they want to sell lots of stuff to you at a low cost, and make their money on volume. Supermarkets follow this model, and any kind of mass-production company tends to follow this business model too. Online, this is the kind of strategy Amazon.com seems to follow....

The other approach is the low volume, high margin type of business. These are the "niche" markets, such as you mention on your web site. The idea here is that the market for the product is smaller, but the business can still thrive because it works on higher margins. That is, there are fewer customers, but the profit-per-customer is higher....

This second approach is ALL OVER THE PLACE in successful businesses on the internet. The internet seems to be a natural place for niche businesses, like mail-order is too....

The reason why is because you could open up a specialty store to provide gourmet hot sauces (for example) in your area, but there may not be enough people enthusiastic about gourmet hot sauces there to make the business viable....

However, if you start a mail-order business or internet business selling gourmet hot sauces, you'll probably be able to find enough people for your business to thrive! (An example of a successful and profitable business which does this is www.hothothot.com ....)

Thanks Dave, I really enjoyed your posts, and your site looks like a great place too.... :)

- Dien Rice