How to find opportunities as a young entrepreneur

At almost 70, chairman of online business data company IBISWorld Phil Ruthven knows a thing or too about starting a new business.

“First of all, you have to sort of work do you want to do and secondly, where you want to live. If you’re young enough, I’d head north for a start because the fastest growing areas of Australia are Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia. So in a sense, instead of saying “go west young man”, I’d say go north because you could start any number of businesses up there with a population growing so much faster than the south.”

“You’ve got opportunities galore, particularly in the service industries, which I’ve always said don’t require as much capital anyway as getting into things like goods industries like agriculture and mining and manufacturing.”

“If you want to stay in the really smart, high skilled industries, well you’re going to have to stay in Sydney or Melbourne. In terms of industries though, number one, look to a service industry every time. There’s no doubt that there are some great opportunities in the old and bold industries but not as many and not as long lasting as they are in the service industries. The services industries are still exploding. One of the fastest growing industries 15 years ago would be household services, and of course that’s a huge industry now worth over $220 billion. It’s a massive, massive industry and just continues to grow because we’ve still only outsourced about a third of household work that could be outsourced. Whether it be cleaning and painting and lawn mowing and car washing and meal preparation.”

Read the full interview with Phil Ruthven.