50+ Fun Business Ideas You Can Start With Your Family

It hasn't always been easy. I've had many different businesses over my life. I first started purchasing, renovating, and reselling apartment buildings. I started with a 5-unit building in Los Angeles and after selling it successfully, I purchased a completely dilapidated 66-unit building that scared me to death! But I made it through and over those first years made over one million dollars.

I rolled the dice and continued to buy, renovate, and sell until the bottom dropped out of the market. On January 17, 1994, the Northridge Earthquake devastated Southern California. During this period there was a negative migration in Los Angeles and our vacancy rates hit 40%. Being unable to support the mortgages, I lost all of my properties - over 250 units.

From 1994 to 1999, I started a company from scratch that built homes in Mexico. I sold insurance, ran an automatic door company, was the general manager for a bicycle specialty company, and sold copper pipe.

In 2014, I quit my job in Silicon Valley to start a pet supplies store with my longtime friend John and business partner Barry. About a year after opening Wolf & Lion Pet Supplies, the idea for Cat Sushi came about.

Barry, who's been in the pet industry for many years, knew about this human food that cats loved called bonito flakes, which are small, flaky pieces of tuna that you can buy at the supermarket.

I took over Modern Innkeeper from the original owner. She created the first line of kits in 2015 after operating a small inn and vacation rental in Central California. She found that there was a lack of toiletries available to small property owners, especially vacation rental owners. She created the kits to fill that niche. She also ran a high-end food business with her husband. They did not have enough time for this business, so she put it up for sale. I took over in late 2018, but did not get to work on Modern Innkeeper until mid-2020.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rg3sTsD4OQk

I am based in Los Angeles and I have been working in the hotel industry since 2009. I was involved in many areas of the hotel business – design, procurement, financial analysis, real estate, investment, and development.

I started Southern Elegance right after my son was born as a hobby. Initially, I made a bunch of random bath and body products in addition to the candles. When I decided to get serious, I looked at everything and decided to just focus on one product and chose candles because they had the potential to be the most profitable. I chose a niche that I could speak authentically about. My ideal customer was easy to identify because it was basically me. (But, don't use that a marketing strategy. It just happened to work in this case) I was born and raised in the South. I LOVE living here and couldn't imagine living anywhere else. I created a company around all the things that I love to do.

Choose your partners carefully and trust your gut. I made very bad decisions by going against what I thought I should do and listening to “experts” and lost a ton of money.

I was working in education at the time and I absolutely hated it. One day walked into work and quit my job to make candle making a full-time career. I had absolutely no background in sales, manufacturing, marketing or anything business-related. I basically had no clue as to how it was going to work or if this was even a viable plan. Everything was a learning curve, and I spent hours learning a new skill then implementing it.

With very limited resources, (basically no money) I went to the school of Google and Youtube. I took some online classes on Branding and Wholesaling. I hired a business coach and I literally hit the streets selling. For the first year, I would sell my candles at any Church function, fair, festival, school bazaar… I did not care. I sold candles outside in the middle of the summer and the dead of winter. I also sold on any and every online platform that would accept me. Etsy, Amazon, Faire, Modalyst, Houzz, etc. All the money I made went back into building the brand, I was lucky to have a husband to pay the bills but it was tight financially. When I finally felt comfortable I approached stores to carry my products. And we slowly built a base of stores to sustain the company.

I’ve had a smooth upbringing. Parents are still together (married for over 45 years), gave lots of love to me and my older brother, and paid for my education. But…

I had different ideas than my family about life, education, and the path I wanted to take. I never really felt understood or taken seriously as the youngest member of the family.

This caused a lot of struggle when I was younger which resulted in arguments, disappointments, and more. This, in turn, not only caused a lot of stress for me but also my parents and brother.

Courtney Joy always wanted to be a teacher as a little girl. She used to pretend to teach in her childhood home basement on Long Island, New York. Growing up in an artistic family, she became a figurative and landscape artist and eventually attended art school. After college, she decided to merge her two childhood passions together and became an art teacher.

Lindsay Ann expressed herself through art in a different way. She was in the theater and went to school for drama in New York City. While pursuing her dream of acting, she also made beaded jewelry on the side. It quickly became a passion of hers and would help lead her down a new path in life.

Within our first 3 months, we sold over 100 orders, resulting in more than $3,000 in revenue. By the end of our first year, we had sold over 2,300 orders, resulting in more than $65,000.

My personal story begins with my parents immigrating to Los Angeles to start a better life. Although ethnically Chinese, they were both born and raised in Japan as a result of my grandparents from both sides fleeing communist China. I was born in an extremely diverse neighborhood (we had around 7 different ethnicities on our block) near Pasadena, CA, before moving to Japan for 5 years between the age of 10-15.

I grew up playing sports and competing at a national level in Kendo, cross country, and track. I started Kendo at the age of 5 and competed at the national level in the United States and Japan. In high school, I was co-captain of our cross country and track team where we competed in the Division I state and national championships. It was through running that I truly learned perseverance and grit.

Unfortunately, at 19 years old, I became a paraplegic when I fell from 35 feet in the air in a snowboarding accident and shattered my back. Doctors told me that I would never walk again, but it furthered my drive and passion for adventure and trying new things. I finished college with degrees in Chemistry and Economics and continued to compete in marathons even got to train with the US Paralympic team.

Once upon a time, I was an elementary school teacher with a growing family. During this time, my husband and I were considering ways that one of us could be at home to meet the increasing demands that a family of four growing children needs. I loved my job as a teacher but the inflexible work schedule was becoming unmanageable. As fate would have it while on maternity leave, I started looking at a couple of services that were referred to me by a friend that also owns an online business: FE International and BizBuySell. I signed up to receive emails from both. After personally corresponding with one of the brokers at FE International explaining that I was looking for something education-related, I was given early notification of BingoCardCreator.com. I relate this process very much to knowing you want to move to a new area, calling a real estate agent in that area, and then the agent gives you the heads up as soon as something pops up that they believe will be of interest to you.

When I first got wind of BingoCardCreator.com, I was actually quite surprised because up to this point of about six months of actively searching, I had seen nothing in my education niche. So when I received word from the agent at FE International that the education-focused site, BingoCardCreator.com was for sale- I actually had a subscription to BingoCardCreator.com as a teacher- I was really excited. My first offer was originally rejected leaving time for another offer to come in. Not wanting the opportunity to slip away and considering the fact that the asking price was still in the threshold of what we were willing to spend, we decided to come in at a full price. Once the seller accepted my offer, FE International took over the process making the sale and transfer easy.

It has been quite a journey ever since. Never having any business experience, I had to learn everything: The world of digital marketing, business finances, not to mention understanding the technical aspects of the service we offer. To do this, I read as much as I could from experts like the folks at Digital Marketer or from Perry Marshall. As I quickly learned, however, most things business-related require a lot of money and take up a lot of time which are two things I did not have much of. So I took the approach of just taking it one day at a time, and letting my small successes like adding a new blog post, bingo cards, or making contact with a developer on Upwork, to keep me moving forward. Given my lack of money for proper training, I would use any free resources I could find on YouTube or blogs, to help me figure out what my next step would be. Often, I find that by just starting with a simple question like, “What was my organic traffic the past three months?” leads me to figure out what I need to do or learn, next. I have made a lot of mistakes and at times I was completely overwhelmed by what I did NOT know, but by plugging away at the day to day, ultimately I find that the answers come and I believe the journey has been worth the risk. Although the income is modest, it has allowed me to contribute to my family’s finances with complete flexibility. I work when and where I choose. Not only that, I have a whole new skill set from which to draw from that gives me the potential for future endeavors.

I met Carlo De Luca (my partner and current president of Station 16) in 2010. I was very active in the Montreal street art scene and had many artist connections because of it. Coincidentally, he was also looking to diversify his textile silkscreen shop into paper printing, which I had been doing a lot of.

In 2011, we started working with local Montreal artists to create quality silkscreen prints - a type of printing made famous with Andy Warhol's work. We began showcasing these prints online and in art fairs. That’s when Emily Robertson (3rd founder, and Art Historian) came on board. She had taken an interest in our project and suggested we open an art gallery showcasing the prints and street art talent we were really interested in.

Shortly after that, a few other friends that we were in contact with were building on the idea of a Mural festival for Montreal. They asked if we would be interested in supporting it. So in June of 2013, we debuted at both the Gallery and the Montreal MURAL festival on St. Laurent. It initially opened as a pop-up, and we haven’t closed our doors since.

Dessert Boxes.com.au was born out of our frustration of having to send and receive boring gifts which would end up being thrown away, dying, never used, and at best, re-gifted.

So, a week before Valentine's Day last year, we launched a Nutella themed Dessert Box! We collaborated with the biggest dessert makers in the industry, and within five days, we sold over 400 boxes! We searched for the best products on Instagram and did Google searches to find Nutella themed products.

This was our first ever Dessert Box:

Hi, I’m Andrei Calinescu and I am the Founder and CEO of One Life Meals.

As a part of our nomadic lifestyle, we built out a campervan simply to facilitate our own travels, whether it be a summer spent on the coast of Baja or chasing snow from mountain to mountain in the Canadian Rockies.

We really never had the intention of starting a business… In fact, we said no for a couple of years to those asking us to either buy our campervan or for us to build one for them. We loved the process and loved the idea of helping others to get out and enjoy more nature/adventure the way we had, but the idea of giving up some of our own freedom to go back to working in the shop simply wasn’t attractive.

Eventually, friends came to us and convinced us to start the business. To simply show them how to do what we had learned and for us to simply continue “marketing” the business as we already had been (by camping and attending events and simply talking to others who saw the van when we opened the doors). Those friends were also looking to make a transition in life as they wanted out of their 9-5s, and we saw it as an opportunity we couldn’t refuse- both to help them and to help others we had talked to about van builds over the years.

I come from an entrepreneurial family. My father works for himself and my maternal grandfather started a clothing factory. Working for myself has always been encouraged by my family, but before I could get started, I needed to learn a skill. At Georgetown, I study international politics and business. Most students with these backgrounds go on to work at prestigious firms like J.P. Morgan. I really didn’t know what kind of business I could start, and frankly, planned to work as a (boring) data analyst after graduation.

If you have an idea but don’t have the knowledge to execute, use that idea as motivation and go learn how to turn your vision into reality.

Tutoring first came to mind because I had spent significant time working for other tutoring companies and cutting my teeth/learning how the industry works during my teen years. I first started tutoring when I was 15. I was hired by College Experts, a local test prep center in Davie, Florida. My first student was three years older than me, and I spent our first session teaching him how to use his calculator rather than trying to explain any complicated formulas. Being a student myself, I was able to bring a student’s perspective to tutoring. I worked for College Experts until my senior year of high school when I began tutoring on my own and finding clients on Craigslist.

It was a bad habit. Buying books and not finishing them...

One tap on Amazon, and bang, there it was on my kindle or my doormat the next day. I’d fleetingly read a review or even just a crunching blurb and my key words, curiosities or aspirations had slapped me round the face and before I’d considered a sensible swipe-by it was too late.

I’d become a heavy user. Buying non-fiction books at quite a click. But the problem was not so much the cost — at the most I was spending £20 a month — which I saw as a solid investment in potentially 2–3 life-changing reads. The problem was I couldn’t get past page 100 (or 25%) of almost all of the books I’d bought.

I was in the process of writing a book about the rise and fall of democracy in the United States. At that time, my son entered the gubernatorial race in Tennessee and I spent 18 months on the campaign trail in small towns and cities all over the state. In talking to all types of people, I found so much intolerance and hatred and lack of understanding for other people. I knew that I needed to change the direction of the book.

I decided to write a book about a person who took a journey and discovered all different types of people and saw that they could all live together in a place of peace, joy, and happiness where only good existed. That place is Ancient Lore Village. To test the theory of my book, I felt that building a Village in its image would be the best way to test this theory.

Having built 17 successful businesses, I had learned from experience that first, you must build a team. First, I found a very creative architect that shared the same vision. Then I set out to find a team of experts in the hospitality industry, with experience in service, lodging, and culinary. I found Melissa Blettner, former Senior Vice President for Great Wolf Resorts, Inc.

I’m Colleen Lanin, the founder and editor of TravelMamas.com, one of the world’s most popular personal travel and global lifestyle blogs. We don’t manufacture a product or sell services, per se. Rather, we share stories and tips that make travel easier and more enjoyable.

Over the years, I’ve also earned income from paid public speaking appearances, hosting Twitter parties, teaching blogging classes, media campaigns in which I represent travel brands on TV and radio, and starring in destination TV ads with my family.

My career has been a long road before I found success. Firstly I was a bar manager, then a soldier, then a bus driver, then a restaurant owner and chef. Finally, I decided to follow my grandfather's steps and become a barber. My grandfather was a barber on navy ships during WWI and WWII. I also worked in the UK for 5 years as a barber before opening in Malta.

The idea came about identifying a business opportunity and taking full advantage before the eventual competition, our success was the fact that we re-introduced old school barbering modernized and hip to cater for today’s gentlemen. In barbering, competition, when we started in Malta was non-existent. There were the typical hairdressers and 2 old school barbers which were unchanged since the ‘60s.

The idea was validated by my clients, one day a multi-millionaire came to get a haircut and I was discussing my concerns of growing and investing all my life savings into the business, his reply was “I just bought a company for 5 million euros over breakfast,” he just told me, “now is the time to invest and try creating something revolutionary.”

The founders are childhood best friends from small-town America (South Carolina). We took different paths after college and approximately 9 years later, reunited in North Carolina. I (Clifton) was recruited from Florida to work for a Mortgage Company in Raleigh, NC and Wesley was already established here (Raleigh) working for a major building materials manufacturer (James Hardie). After the housing crisis, the Mortgage Company went bankrupt and I (Clifton) found myself without a job. I then founded a Residential/Commercial/Cleaning Company (still in operations today, Managed by my wife, Mary Ann) and grew that business from $0 - $500K rapidly.

Surround yourself with POSITIVE people.

Then, Wes and I were talking about the possibility of starting a siding/exterior remodeling company since most of the contractors were retreating after the recession and the ones that remained, didn’t focus on the customer, but rather, only on the transaction.

In true Hipcooks fashion: I’m not a culinary school graduate — I’m a hack! Here’s my story:

I’m first-generation American (Mom is from Germany and Dad from Argentina). My parents were young foreign students in the US and their friends were the other international students: I was a kid surrounded by people from different nationalities, like Spain, Russia, France, and the UK. I was a child foodie and loved to experience culture through food.

I caught the travel bug early, living in Argentina (studying economics in college), traveling through Europe, and moved to England for graduate school (I have a Master’s in Economics from LSE.) While in school, I cooked my way through a series of London restaurants in the gastro-boom of the ’90s, just for fun. My first job was on the West Coast, as an econometrician at the RAND Corporation.

Well, this started as a hobby. I never would have thought it would become what it is today. I am blown away.

My original career was completely different. I have a Master’s in Engineering, and I had an international career in Quality Management for medical devices. I’ve lived in France, Germany, and Australia and traveled all over the world for work. This is the reason why I caught the travel bug.

I did not scatter and try doing all the social media platforms. I made choices. This is really important. You can’t do everything well. And depending on your strategy, not all the options are pertinent.

Back in 2013, I had already discovered my passion - personal development - and had realized writing is the best way to express myself. So I combined these and started a self-improvement blog.

Starting the blog was the best decision and not giving up on it over the years (even when no traffic or money was coming in) was what helped me move forward.

It was first just a hobby and I knew nothing about blogging. Over the years, after publishing a ton of content, gaining traffic, learning about SEO, email marketing, social media, and all the ways to monetize a blog, it became a real business.

We started the food truck business in 2012.

We kept finding it very difficult to find locations to operate. We had a booker that we used to find our locations but fell short and we let her go. I took over our booking and found that most people did not want to book just one truck, not only that they were upset that most of the time the trucks didn’t show up or were late.

We learned the real need was not only helping the trucks but providing a turnkey service for the corporations. This was a game-changer for us, we were really struggling financially.

I’ve been starting businesses since I was 15. During school, I worked part-time in a mobile phone store and learned how to fix phones. During the weekends, I started my own market stall and advertised online to fix phones, replace screens, and started to earn cash that way. During college, I scaled up this business to a physical location at the University I was attending here in Ireland. I approached the college and rented an office space from them and opened my first store!

I was terrified of running out of money and for the first 18 months, I ran the company entirely on my own. I remember one particular day where I met 18 different guests at 18 different locations across the city.

Between classes, I would work in the store and when I was in class, I hired classmates and friends to work for me. Looking back now, it was an incredibly fun time but I wish I hadn’t reinvested so much money in the college bar!

I have always had a passion for animals. I was going to school full time at the University of Rhode Island as a Pre-Vet student while working full time at a local veterinary hospital AND picking up pet sitting and dog walking clients on the side.

Since my late teenage years, I have known that I wanted to work with animals. While working at the animal hospital, I saw a great need for this type of service, and soon after decided to start this business!

I would often come across clients who had not traveled in years because their pets required specialized care or medications or because they did not know who to ask or whom they could trust with their pets and their home.

For as long as I can remember I have always been attracted to the idea of being a business owner. I’ve tried many businesses starting with my own DJ company. I got some business cards, printed them at Staples, passed them out, and waited for the calls.

It took a bit of time, but eventually, the calls started to come in and bookings started to happen. I did that for a couple of years until one of the DJ gigs some gangsters got into it and I was almost in the middle of a gang fight. Thank GOD things calmed down, but after that, I started looking for another business!

During this same time, the whole tech bubble was growing and I wanted a part of it. I took some coding classes in college and started using HTML to code my website from scratch. I kind of borrowed a lot of ideas from Yahoo but it was going to be mainly focused on my local city. I visited some businesses and got some of them to advertise. Things seemed to be going well when the bubble burst and I was once more left to venture out and look for something else.

After graduating from Cornell, I was in management consulting at Deloitte doing global process transformations.

It is not about how smart you are, it’s about the grit to stick it through the darkest and loneliest times.

Then I wanted to experience the other side of the coin, and went to Interbrand and helped companies define their global brand strategy. During my time there, I won a Rebrand100 award for the strategy work for turning around what used to be The Yellow Pages.

• Nate Dodson, is an urban farmer and the man behind MicroGreens Farmer. His objectives are to combat Crohn's disease and exert more control over the diet.
• Since the business was founded in 2016, they have assisted individuals in starting their own microgreens-related businesses.
• He initially only intended to grow for his own consumption, but soon realized that he could produce more than he could consume. As a result, he began to sell his produce, particularly microgreens, and thus his business got started.

Read the full story on sidehustlenation.com ➜

I’m Janeen Brown! Founder and CEO of Balloon Haus LLC. In February 2018, I started Balloon Haus - the first opulent online and in-store Balloon boutique - where lifestyle and decor enter a "luxury" level of design. Our team consists of dedicated and loyal employees in Toronto, Atlanta, Detroit and South Florida destined to create iconic balloon memories to last a lifetime.

I'm Bryan Clayton CEO of GreenPal which is best described as Uber for Lawn Care.

Good thing early investors told us no because with their capital they would have owned and controlled 30% of our business.e are self-funded and my cofounders and I own it all.

Hey! My name is Neel Parekh and I am the Founder and CEO of MaidThis® & MaidThis® Franchise, a cleaning franchise that helps residential homeowners and short-term rental hosts (Airbnb, VRBO, etc) with their cleanings.

• We made our niche focus on cleaning Airbnbs and vacation rentals, in addition to regular home cleaning, which is a rapidly growing industry. We became the first cleaning franchise specializing in vacation rental cleaning.
  
• Local businesses are often pretty old school and typically aren’t the best with marketing, especially digital marketing. We’re bringing new-age marketing tactics to this old-school industry.
  
• Remote work: we’ve been able to stay extra nimble and lean with having a global workforce. This was initially done out of necessity so I could travel, but quickly became a huge competitive advantage. Our office team works across 8 different countries.

I’m Zack Johnson, and I run ggCircuit,which provides premium software, services, and support for esports arenas around the world.

UC Irvine Esports Arena - One of our first university customers in 2016

I am Janet Wischnia and I am the founder of American Blossom Linens a direct-to-consumer brand of bedding made completely in the USA from USA grown cotton. Our flagship product is our classic made in USA organic cotton natural sheet set and we sell online in the USA to people interested in quality sustainable products.

We started right before the COVID 19 pandemic started which we thought was going to make the growth trajectory very hard but much to our surprise we grew our sales by 400% in 2020 and have continued to grow in 2021. We introduced a line of cotton blankets and plan on introducing many more new products.

My name is Amanda Bradford and I own Bradford Bakery. I started in the culinary industry 15 years ago and have done everything from restaurants to the Dalai Lama’s 80th birthday cake and celebrity catering events.

Our customers reach out to us because they know they are getting quality products that will meet the needs of their event and their dietary restrictions if they have any! We are a favorite of our local community and love that people are spreading the word about our business to their friends which we are seeing in our growing client list! Even in the past few months we have seen a 550% increase in our SEO on google and filled more orders for the community just by them recommending us and searching us on the web!

Bonjour! My name is Anthony Rosemond. I'm a Parisian chef & founder of Pastreez, an online French bakery.

We’ve sold over 1 million macarons to this date, with only a team of two.

My name is Beth Baxter and I co-founded Camper Cafe, a mobile coffee van business. The idea for our business started with my partner’s love for vintage VW campervans. He had a rusty old shell of a T25 Campervan given to him, that he wanted to convert into a trailer for his motorbikes.

Although we never really thought about this ever becoming more than just a lifestyle business, we found we were turning so much work away from that in 2019 when the company was turning over around £150k from working only 70 days of the year, we decided that I should go full-time to see the potential.

My name is Sasha Weekes and I’m the 25 years old owner of Timber Grove Studios. Our home-based woodshop is nestled in the hills of PEI’s countryside, and we specialize in decorative shelving and home decor with a focus on minimalist design and simplicity. Each piece is made to order with 20+ color options, meaning it will be the perfect fit for each customer's space. We ship Canada and U.S. wide.

Moving twice in two years has definitely caused organizational, financial and opportunity hiccups, but the business has grown steadily regardless so we’re very excited about where 2020 will take us. We’ve learned what to focus on during which months, as revenue can range anywhere from $2000 during slow months to $10,000 during high months. Net profit has run anywhere between 20-50% throughout the life of the business and varies month to month. It’s closer to 20% right now as we’ve been spending all we can on new tools and materials for our new larger products and our Christmas stock.