How to Spot Business Opportunities that Arise During a Crisis

April 1, 2020 ​- 6 Comments

​In previous episodes in this series, we've discussed what you can do on a personal level to thrive in the current crisis, as how strategic thinking has to change in times of great uncertainty. In this episode, we take a clear-eyed look at opportunities that will arise from the crisis.

​Every crisis and every recession causes all kinds of damage, but they also give rise to new opportunities. And since keeping economic activity going is in the interest of everyone, as entrepreneurs, we should be on the lookout for such opportunities. Ideally, we can add value to the world while maintaining or growing income for ourselves.

More...

​In this episode, we discuss:

  • ​How and where to look for en-masse behavior changes that will give rise to new business opportunities.
  • The two filters to apply to any potential opportunity you find.
  • Why ​friction​ is one of the most important things to pay attention to, right now.​​​
  • Short runway and long runway solutions for capitalizing on new opportunities. (more on the runway stuff here)
  • Why I believe that "piggyback businesses" are one of the best business models out there.

Plus, we run through many practical examples of existing and potential businesses you can model.

I hope you find this content useful. As always, if you have questions or ideas to share, please leave a comment!

About ​Shane Melaugh

I'm the founder of ActiveGrowth and Thrive Themes and over the last years, I've created and marketed a dozen different software, information and SaaS products. Apart from running my business, I spend most of my time reading, learning, developing skills and helping other people develop theirs. On ActiveGrowth, I want to help you become a better entrepreneur and product creator. Read more about my story here.


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  • Amazing ideas! Thanks for sharing.
    It inspired me to offer courses to lawyers on how to work remotely and run a legal practice virtually using the new Thrive Builder and all the amazing functions of the other plugins :)
    Though I’m an InfusionSoft certified partner I still prefer Thrive because I help clients build on a platform they actually own and have total control over.
    Being a Thrive Affiliate is great because it gives me the possibility to make money either way. If new prospects buy my service or if they don’t but just need the tools.
    So I can still help them anyway since I can still make money from the sales commission as an affiliate.
    With the new builder and all the plugins, and tools like Google Drive, SendOwel, ActiveCampaign, and Calendly the possibility are literally endless.
    This same model anybody can employ in his respective niche!
    The sky is the limit. We can also work from anywhere serving not just clients all over the world but also colleagues of ours who want to go online or work remotely. Not just in our country or jurisdiction where we reside.
    Thank you, Shane, for showing us in these videos and your courses, both on ActiveGrowth and Thrive Themes, all these options are possible. It empowered me to serve my clients at a whole new level from anywhere I want and make money even without being attached to clients having to buy my service!
    Stay safe. Cheers :)

  • To be very honest, I dislike this whole series. Besides it has a slight taste of “taking opportunities on others” I find this way too fluffy. It’s seems to be a little bit to esoteric for my personal liking. But again, this is my opinion, I’m sure there are others out there who see it differently. Just my 0.02

    • Fair enough. As I laid out in the first episode, entrepreneurship is the place where I can deliver value. More people retaining or replacing their income source during a crisis means more active players in the economy, means less economic fallout overall. It’s not about profiting off of a crisis. It’s about softening the blow. And look at the examples we talk about. Do you really think the world is a worse place if some entrepreneurs go out and help people run better remote teams or create some software to facilitate working from home? Should we all just sit here, suffer silently and wait for someone else to come rescue us instead?

      • Bruce Brodeen says:

        I found this discussion deep, profound and insightful so, in counter-point and contrast to the above comment, “File Under: to each his/her own”. You have done this continually in all your work in the 6 years I’ve used Thrive Theme and all its related products.

        It is exactly *this* is kind of thought-leadership I look forward to most from you the last 18 months as there’s always distinctions of nuance and challenging existing thought that surface. The best compliment is I can offer to you, and have been meaning to, is that I always speed up video in my browser to varying speeds. I tried to do that with your videos but I always keep it at normal because I found would lose an important, nuanced thought or idea. Keep it up – and more of this kind of insight as I found this incredibly helpful. Did not strike me the least bit opportunistic, as a 30-year deep experienced entrepreneur, I need this. I had a full page of notes not even five minutes in. (your comments with new peeps using Zoom and finding features for them lacking and the friction that comes from that has SO many philosophical teaching points for helping small biz and entrepreneurs to understand ‘the how of finding new opportunities in their own business’. Deep.)

  • Wise and inspiring words Now I am really motivated to keep going, with my home training program course.

  • carovillah says:

    Very inspiring advice, and I really appreciate your effort to be constructive, positive and encouraging us to thrive!

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