Many people out there may be thinking about starting there own businesses. There are a lot of pitfalls to avoid if you are considering doing this. Here are some questions you should ask yourself to get started: What is your product or service going to be? Who is (are) your target audience(s)? Is there any overlap in your audience demographics? Well you have related services? Lets just do a dry run to give you an example and then we can decide if this is a good business model or not.
What is your product or service?: Windowless vans

Who are your target audiences?: Refrigerator repair, heating unit installation, exterminator, and cable installation and repair companies, lost baggage return dept. of airlines, Surveylance companies, PIs, and Serial killers.

Is there Demographic overlap?: Having watched 11 seasons of "Law and Order: SVU" 3 seasons of "Dexter" and just thinking windowless vans are creepy, I would say that yes there is a very large overlap in demographics between "serial killer" and all the rest. This is useful because we now know that we don't need to advertise the van specifically to the profession (hobby?) of serial killers since we have that demographic covered by marketing to the other mentioned professions.

Well we have related goods and services?: honestly I think that once the cops find out that all of the serial killers seem to be buying their windowless unmarked vans from us, they will start paying us for detailed information on any of our clients, as well as the right to interview them after any purchase. They may also start paying us to put tracking devices in our product.

Is this a good business model?: um probably not since there is a tendency for shop owners to begin to relate with their costomers, and well, need I go on?

Ok so lets try a new plan how about a taxicab service? that has a very large demographic that it appeals to. and it requires a relatively small amount of of resources. Better yet lets do a luxury taxi service complete with a butler/escort.
This seemed like a really good idea to me at first. but for some reason every time I pull up to a fare and the buttler would open the door and get out to help them into the ride: The fare would either run in terror screaming for help, or the butler would get sprayed in the face with bear mace. this went on for months before we went under. The moral of the story here is. If you are going to try and pioneer the luxury taxicab service: dont do it in the dead of winter when a ski mask and bulky hoodie are needed to keep your butler warm. And deffinately don't use the unsold products from your previously failed venture (for those of you with short memory see the previous business model). Anyway while my crews were serving 10-life because the judge didnt buy the whole taxi service story, I had time to think of a new plan.

Ice cream!!!!! everybody loves ice cream. Especially when the ice cream vans have themes. Just make sure that your theme appeals to you audience (small children) as well as their parents. My first theme didnt work out so well. Try selling Ice cream out of a windowless van with "Micheal Jackson's Party Parlor for Kids" written on the side. I mean, I thought the taxi scene was bad..... other slogans that I tried seemed to draw similar reactions from worried parents. After a while I realized that maybe i was just bad at coming up with company names and slogans, so i decided to try and do it without either name or slogan. But by this time the license plates on my vans had expired and they were starting to look a bit run down. And have you ever tried to sell ice cream to a child out of the back of an unmarked van? It's i sign of how screwed up society is when parents won't even trust the ice cream man with their kids.

After a few years of this I have decided to move on. I will some day return to the ice cream business, but first i need to build the trust of the local parents. Who do people trust these days? I have designed my new business entirely on the concept of regaining the trust of the populace, and lucky for me I didnt have to buy anything new to do it. I didn't even have to hire new employees, since some of my more loyal employees from my 2nd venture are now out on good behavior. So what can you do to gain the trust of the populace if all you have is an old abandoned warehouse, some unmarked vans, and a bunch of cons out on parole? thats right we have no started our very own full service, pick up in the morning, and drop off in the evening daycare service. I'll let you all know how this turns out.