If you're trying to think of a business idea, here's a great business idea.

Also, if you already have a company, this can be a subsidiary of a company that you already own.

First, you need to find at least several people who are interested in being your clients.

If these several people agree to be your regular clients, then you work first with these people.

Working with a few clients first helps you iron out the mistakes that you might have in your company.

Don't just start a company advertising to the general public until you test your company, iron out all these mistakes.

These clients can help you to learn how to have this type of company, handle the potential problems with clients, and learn the protocol.

Even though this and many other companies seem like easy companies, all business people make mistakes, have customer service problems, and you should iron out all of the mistakes before offering any product, including errand-running to the general public and/or to more clients.

These first few clients can help you with any problems that you might have. Also, listen to your clients. What type of errand-running are they interested in?

You should study also other errand-running companies. How are they managed and organized? Study their literature, their brochures and advertising? How do they advertise?

What are the licensing requirments for this type of company? What type of business insurance do you and your employees need?

Also, you must decide if you want a local company, a national company, and/or an international company?

Do you want a storefront?

Do you want just a website online?

What types of equipment do you need?

How much can you afford to invest in startup costs?

Do you need employees and/or can you handle this type of work just yourself?

What type of errands do you want to run? Grocery shopping? General shopping, like clothing, taking packages to the post office?

What fees do you charge and what is the basis for charging these fees? Most errands companies charge a per hour fee. Do you charge a fee per type of errands--grocery shopping, returning library books, returning videos, clothes shopping, gift shopping, etc.

Include the types of errands in your advertising literature.

You should also ask your initial clients for testimonials that you can use in your advertising--business cards, posters, postcards, brochures, classified ads, display ads, etc.

For further information on setting up and running an errand-running business at the following website:

errandinfo.com
biz-ewomen.com

Per a recommendation from these websites, you can also ask a person who already has this type of company, if you can work with them as an apprentice and/or if they can be your mentor while you learn this type of business. Once you learn this type of business, you yourself can work with other apprentices and be a mentor to others who want to learn this type of company.

In addition, you can be a errands business mentor by writing books and articles and teaching workshops on setting up this type of a company.

Especially if you're witnessing young people in your community going unemployed, wondering what they're going to do, this is an excellent opportunity to employ them and also teach them something about the type of work that you do.

You can even start these apprenticeships in association with a local high school or a local community center.

Let's say you're the owner of a small grocery store.

Maybe there are several high school kids who are interested in learning about business, learning about how business works. These kids don't necessarily have to become small grocery store owners, but there's a lot that they can learn about entrepreneurship as apprentice grocery store owners.

They can learn about owning and managing any small business, even though this is a small grocery store.

Also, if you own an internet business, like an affiliate of The Bargain Store, for example, you can start apprenticeships with students teaching them how to set up online companies and working online.

You determine the budget for the apprenticeship. Perhaps you can only pay these students to work a few hours per week and not a regular salary, nevertheless they are paid for these few hours while they learn.

You can conduct the apprenticeships as a workshop.

Also, it's possible that you can apply for community funding for your apprenticeship program, making it clear that the monies are to pay young people for apprenticeships. You can also do fund raisers for your apprenticeship programs, designating that when people purchase certain products, that a percentage of the monies goes into funding your apprenticeship programs.