Tightrope: Look to life's daily details for great business ideas

— -- Almost daily I get e-mails, phone calls or meet someone who wants to be in business and can't figure out what business to get started in. I always give the same answer — look around and pay attention. There's a business calling your name if you just examine what's happening in your day-to-day life.

I recently spoke with a young woman who allowed a life experience to lead her into a successful business.

In the spring 2006 Jess Smith, a 21 year-old art student, was riding her bike to class when she hit a bump that sent her flying over the handle bars and left her with several injuries including a broken wrist.

Rather than allowing her spirits to drop due to discomfort from her injuries plus the added burden of having to spend eight weeks wearing a cast, she decided to put her artistic skills to work. She painted an attention-grabbing abstract design on the cast.

People would stop her on the street to admire it and ask where she got her cast. She said that when she returned to the doctor to have the cast removed he raved about the artwork and told her that many people would love to have similar designs.

The doctor's comment set Jess's entrepreneurial spirit churning. It took about six months but she learned how to produce, market and distribute artistic decals. The art is printed on an adhesive film that can be transferred from the film to the cast by using a hair dryer for a few seconds to melt the art into the pores of the plaster cast. Jess calls her Boulder, Colo.-based business Casttoo.

I was anxious to know how she managed to sell and market Casttoo. Jess had a simple solution. Because a medical doctor had told her there was a market for her product she returned to the medical community by setting up a display at medical conferences and conventions.

She found that clinics and small hospitals were eager to purchase Casttoo. Some used the decals as a revenue generator and others used it as a marketing tool to encourage patients to select their clinics to get free Casttoos when a cast is needed. Jess says she also sells to skating shops and ski resorts.