There are a lot of businesses out there that are competing for the customers. You are looking for a way to attract a loyal few customers for your small retirement business. You are also trying to attract them with some unique feature of your business instead of doing a large amount of advertising and the billing that comes from advertising. This approach of specializing will keep your business small, which is one of our goals, but will differentiate you from the pack.

An example is auto repairs. There are hundreds of shops in your area that will work on almost any type of car. They stock some frequently used parts and work with auto parts dealers to get immediate delivery of common parts for commonly owned vehicles. But it is not so easy if you have a 1960’s Porsche or Corvette. People taking these cars in for repairs may have to wait a long while to get some parts shipped in and some of the young mechanics may have never seen the insides of these vehicles.

Specialize in repairs of one of these vehicles and you can gain a loyal clientele if you perform good work, have many of the common parts that they use on hand or at lease on overnight delivery from a specialty auto parts dealer, and you have experience in problems with these older cars. You may also have an inexpensive advertising media in a fan club for one of these vehicles since you will only be paying for exposure to people who own the vehicles. Each of these specialty cars has web sites devoted to them where you can do advertising.

Think of your hobby. Look on-line or in catalogues for tools of that hobby. Everyone is carrying the low cost, mass produced tools. But there is always some specialty hand made tools that are available if you know where to look for them. You can specialize in selling these or produce your own like of tools that are more specific to your hobby.

The secret is specializing your business to keep it small and to grow your business through word-of-mouth advertising.

This new weekly column, 101 New Business Ideas for Retirees, is compiled specially for CoolBusinessIdeas.com readers by Stan Spector. See all articles in this column by Stan Spector.

Stan Spector is the author of “Baby Boomers’ Official Guide to Retirement Income - Over 100 Part-time or Seasonal Businesses for the New Retiree”. The book website is at StanSpector.com.