Identifying Opportunities in Economic and Regulatory Trends (Assignment 6A)

1st Story (Regulatory):

• I found this information on the Washington Post website, and the article has to do with President Trump's continuous push for the building of the wall to divide Mexico with the United States. 
• This information leads me to believe that an opportunity exists because it is something that is brand new between the U.S and Mexico, and with this, many new problems and opportunities will arise in the form of immigration, transportation, selling and buying products, and business in general with Mexico. 
• I think the customer with the opportunity is the many people in the U.S that use illegal and un-documented immigrants to work on their farms, construction, and projects alike. With a much greater influx of these illegal immigrants, the business owners will be looking for more work by U.S citizens, and/or will look somewhere else to get their jobs done. This is only one of the many needs that will occur after the wall is built (if it ever is) and with these problems will come many more opportunities for people to capitalize on. 
• This opportunity will be relatively easy to exploit as once the wall is built and illegal immigrants cease entrance into the U.S, there will be massive need for cheap workers and with this, capitalizing on that will be quite easy. Also, with the opportunities I cannot foresee yet, I believe all of them will be quite easy to exploit as once the wall is built, it is built, and there is most definitely needs that will not be met because of it.
• I believe that others have already seen this opportunity and that some are already capitalizing on the void in the market that is going to be apparent in the near future. I saw it as my dad and I talk extensively about it and all the new problems/ opportunities that will arise from the wall being built. Also, I have worked for my dad who sometimes sub-contracted work with un-documented immigrants, and have talked to them about their feelings with this wall being built.  Many of them say that landscaping businesses will soon go out of business and many companies alike will have the same fate because of the lack of workers. This again made me realize that with this work shortage, many opportunities will arise to fill that hole in the market. 

2nd Story (Regulatory): 

• The information I found for this topic is from the CNBC website, and it has to do with the new Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that has raised the bar on what people have to donate to charities in order to get a tax deduction. There are new steps one has to take to get this deduction, and the amount of money that someone has to donate (both married and single) has almost doubled in both categories in order to be eligible for the deduction in the first place. 
• This creates an opportunity because with this new law, non-profit organizations and charities will almost definitely receive lower amounts of funding, and therefore the problems they are trying to fix will be even more neglected. This chain reaction will be felt in the poor and needy community, the environmental sector, and every area where donations are needed. 
• The customer with the opportunity is someone who can find a way to create a business or some venture that will take over some of these non-profit organizations and maybe turn them into a for-profit organization in order to continue to fix the problems that were once being attacked before this new law. If nothing is done in this way, the next opportunity will arise when the problems that these non-profits and charities were trying to fix get even larger, and then when that happens, there will need to be major change which someone can find a way to capitalize on. 
• I believe that this opportunity is going to be relatively hard to exploit as the law is so new and no one really knows what the effects of it are going to be. Also, because this area involves non-profits and charities, it is very hard to try and find a way to spin those organizations into something more efficient and profitable because of their very regulated and government-backed way of operating. Also, I am not a professional in this area so there may be easy or hard ways to attack the problem, but I just can't seem to think of any at this point in my life.
• I saw this opportunity as I personally own a non-profit organization and due to this new law, I am nervous about what will happen to the flow of funds that we are currently receiving. I am also aware that many people donate to my (and many other) non-profit because of the tax- deduction they receive from that donation, and some others may not even know that this process occurs in the first place leading me to be more prone to seeing this problem. 

3rd Story (Economic):

• I found this information on the JP Morgan Chase website, which discusses the 6 largest economic trends of 2018 and into 2019. What I found interesting was the fact that the US has implemented a tax reform that cuts government revenues by $205 billion, therefore, leaving all that money in the hands of the consumers and citizens of the U.S.
• This information leads me to believe that an opportunity may exist because with people having more money, this means that more people will be willing to spend their money and/or invest it. From personal experience, if I have more money, I am more willing to spend it or use it to make more money, and in this case with the U.S tax reform, the same is most likely to be true, giving entrepreneurs a greater opportunity to launch their businesses. Because I think more people are willing to spend their money, this means that if someone is launching a business, it will be easier for them to gain funds and investors because of the more money that these investors will have in the first place.
• Of course, entrepreneurs and start-up companies are the customers that have the opportunity here as with the more money in the hands of consumers, the more money they are capable of getting. Also, any business that has a new product or service to launch has a new opportunity with this tax reform as it gives them a greater chance of consumers buying these ideas and making the launch more profitable for the company owners. 
• I think that this opportunity is relatively difficult to exploit because yes the idea sounds right, but the entrepreneur still needs to be able to pinpoint those people that got to keep a larger chunk of money due to the reform, and know how to persuade them to give it up. Fundraising in general is hard to master, but with this large sum of money in the hands of consumers, it may make it easier for fundraisers to persuade investors to give some of it up. 
• I thin that I saw this opportunity because of my slight background with fundraising with my non-profit. I saw this tax reform and saw that it put more money in the hands of consumers and it immediately clicked that with more money in circulation, that means more people are willing to spend it. I believe others saw this opportunity as well and maybe had a little more specific approach to exploiting it, but I saw this opportunity through my lens of having a greater chance of getting investors because it made sense and correlated with the way I think when I have more money in my pocket. 

4th Story (Economic): 

• The information I found for this opportunity is from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and INC.com, which both show the hiring crisis in the U.S and the struggle that some businesses are having with expanding because they can't hire the skilled workers they need. 
• This information leads me to believe that an opportunity exists because if businesses can't find workers, this means that the labor force is not getting a proper education or training, and therefore a business that trains people to specific jobs and tasks would be something that can be easily created to fix this problem. If an entrepreneur wanted to help try and fix this problem, they can advertise a company that will train individuals in specific fields with the skills they need to be hired by the companies that need employees. 
• I think an entrepreneur that wants to start this business has the opportunity as they can use this need to create a business for themselves, but that the companies that need hiring are also potential customers. These needy companies can sub-contract this training business to train their existing/ new employees so that they can be more efficient and effective when on the clock, so therefore these companies are very much a prototypical customer. 
• I believe that this opportunity is relatively easy to exploit because an individual just has to find some companies in need, present their solution and train the employees. I know it isn't that simple, but that is basically all that has to happen here because to fix a problem there has to be a need, and in this situation the need and solution are pretty clear and easy to accomplish in my eyes. 
• I believe that I saw this opportunity because a couple years ago my dad and I were at a high end restaurant and after being very surprised with how un-satisfied we were with the majority of the service there, we began to talk about a business that trains waiters and waitresses to the standard that the company needs. He believed that was an amazing opportunity for someone to capitalize on, and with this idea still in my head, I saw this information and immediately thought back to the conversation with my dad at lunch.