Starting a Business in Sustainable Products and Services

I spent the day yesterday with one of my “Craig Shields … At Your Service” clients, in this case, brainstorming dozens of ideas with a husband and wife team looking to invest in a start-up business somewhere in the sustainable products/services sector. You have to like their overall approach; it’s very responsible. Instead of picking something that sounds good and jumping into it, they’re attacking the challenge in a methodical, thoughtful, research-based way.

As a consulting action, this was somewhat rare for the importance of understanding and integrating the individual strengths and weaknesses – as well as likes and dislikes – to the conversation. But as important an ingredient as this is in the overall recipe of arriving at a good place, I don’t see any cookie-cutter way of performing this assessment; it was a kind of hunt-and-punch discussion. In addition to trying to understand their skill sets, I asked them a great deal about their attitudes, preferences, fears, personal philosophies, appetite for risk, etc.

Based on this, I presented about a dozen ideas, they presented an approximately equal number, we checked out websites, made phone calls, and really worked hard the whole day long to arrive at a conclusion.

By the time cocktail hour rolled around, we had narrowed the list down to just a couple that require further research and due diligence. Fortunately, they’re both really talented, likeable people, and I have every confidence they’ll choose wisely and ultimately do well.

At the very least, I feel I made two new friends.  Not bad for a day’s work.