Igniting Your Big Idea For Entrepreneurial Success

 
From the new book,
"The Working Class Entrepreneur".
Copyright 2009, Wayne Perry
 
So you think you have a million dollar idea, but you don’t know how to get it moving? Maybe you're just trying to find your big idea and you're not sure where to turn? Welcome to the entrepreneur’s club. 
 
    There are hundreds of money making opportunities out there, but finding the right one can be tough. Some ideas are potential winners while others are complete scams. Even more confusing, some ideas work for certain people while others don't. Yet with all these obstacles in your way, the next million-dollar idea is always just around the corner for an aspiring entrepreneur.
 
     First you have to understand not all ideas are for everyone. Each idea must match your entrepreneurial personality. You also have to posses enough vision to recognize the next big idea and be willing to take a leap of faith in order to launch it. Whether it’s an idea of your own or some outside opportunity, you’ll need to use imagination and creativity to make it your own. You can certainly become modestly successful with any good idea, but you’ll never reach the pinnacle of success if you always follow the most traveled path. If there isn’t at least a hint of something new in your concept, you’d better find another idea or add something new to an old one. 
 
     To achieve success, it’s important to strike a personal connection with your big idea. You have to break the mold when it comes to creating something new. It doesn’t necessarily matter if your idea has been done before or not. What matters is your personal vision and your passion. You can create a new version of any idea by injecting your own personality and imagination into the concept. If you don’t have a personal connection, you won’t have the passion and intestinal fortitude it takes to create real magic. In essence, you have to love what you’re doing or it just won’t work. Even if you make money, you won’t be happy or fulfilled, and you’ll eventually go bankrupt. After all, what’s money worth without happiness and fulfillment? Nothing at all  - in my opinion.
 
     So how do you come up with a million dollar idea? Obviously, you can’t just sit around and wait for one to happen. Entrepreneurial success doesn’t work that way. To capture a great idea, you have to open your mind to every opportunity that appears on the horizon. Whether it's an "Ah Ha" moment or the shaping of a struggling venture, you'll recognize your idea because it will spark some sort of passion inside you. Although an initial concept may hit you in one crazy shining moment, you can’t truly come up with the perfect idea overnight. You can conceive a big idea overnight, but you’ll have to perfect it with imagination and insight to get it rolling. Whether you're writing a song or creating a new software program, the initial concept will have to be massaged along the way to achieve greatness. 
 
     You have to approach a big idea as if you’re building a fire from scratch. If you don’t have a flame or the kindling is wet, then you have a real problem. The same holds true with an idea. If it’s a lame idea, it simply won’t ignite. You may be able to get it to smolder, but that’s about it and eventually it will die. That’s why you have to start out with the best idea you can come up with and the best ideas will spark inner passion. If the idea ignites something in your soul, you’ll know you have something potentially big. Then you’ll have to be willing to improve the idea along the way or abort it when necessary. You'll have to take a leap of faith, but only passion can give you the courage to truly throw caution to the wind.
 
     To be successful, you have to risk it all and consider every idea you can, no matter how absurd. Sooner or later you’ll throw the perfect pitch, but you’ll have to catch it yourself in the beginning. To catch a great idea, you must be plugged into a subject that really grabs your interest. It must be something that you have passion for on some primal level. You don’t necessarily need experience in your chosen industry, but you do need passion to see it through. So whether you’re interested in music or manufacturing, you won’t be successful unless you have the passion it takes to plug yourself in.
 
     Once you narrow down your big idea, you’ll have to do the work. You’ll have to test your idea to see if it has any legs. You’ll have to find out if consumers even give a shit about your idea. Obviously, a great idea is not great if nobody wants to buy it. So you’ll have to know what’s going on in the world as it relates to your chosen industry from the consumer’s point of view. You must walk in the consumer’s shoes to see if your concept has any merit. Knowing what the average target consumer likes or dislikes about your idea is the key to its success. This is something that can’t be done by simply compiling a bunch of data through focus groups and past performance of your competitors. 
 
     Once you’ve zeroed in on your big idea, you have the kindling to start your fire, but you also have to ignite that fire. You have to learn everything you can about your idea. You have to be up on the latest news and the latest trends concerning your industry. You have to study the world from the outside looking in, and you have to gear yourself toward the things you’re most interested in on a personal level. If you can’t get excited about your idea’s potential, you’ll never ignite the flames. 
 
     Never forget that passion is the spark that ignites innovation, but knowledge is fuel for the fire. Although passion is most important, it’s not enough to overcome a basic lack of knowledge or common sense. To grow a million dollar idea, you have to be realistic and choose something you’re capable of doing. If you suddenly want to drill for oil in the fields of Texas, you better know something about the oil business, or at least have contacts who do. You also need access to the right equipment and personnel to support your idea.  
 
      In most cases, what you don’t know can be learned if you have passion and patience. That's why you must choose an idea based on your personal interests so you have the passion it takes to see it through. You have to love the idea, not the money. That being said, loving what you do doesn’t necessarily guarantee success. Millions of people have chased their dreams with passion, only to end up bankrupt. All successful entrepreneurs fail at some point, which ultimately leads them to success because failure is knowledge.
 
     As an entrepreneur, you can pad the odds in your favor, but you cannot completely control the outcome. However, you can control up to eighty percent of the outcome, but sometimes you just get screwed on the other twenty percent. One way to pad the odds in your favor is through knowledge and hard work. You also have to be plugged into the street, and by that I mean the consumer. To place your finger on the pulse of the consumer, you have to look beyond the traditional charts conjured up by corporate robots who tend to be out of touch. 
 
     It's true that education is the key to successfully breaking into any market from diapers to nasal sprays, but traditional education lacks the entrepreneurial edge. It’s all about getting your foot in the door and worrying about the corporate bullshit later. You need to scour the internet to get a feel for what the modern consumer wants, and what they may want down the road. A successful entrepreneur finds ways to combine the best attributes of a corporate education with the best of a street education. A street education is much more than simply hobnobbing with brokers and conducting focus groups. A street education teaches you how to run a business from the ground up through common sense and hard work. It also means spending a large amount of time on the busiest Main Street of the world - the internet. You'll learn far more about consumer habits by scouring the web because people are much more honest when sitting behind the screens of their computers. Consumers tell you everything you need to know through emails, blogs, chat rooms, social websites and online articles....oh and don't forget Twitter.
 
     Although education and corporate experience have always been a winning combination for traditional big business success, the internet has changed everything in less than a decade. These days consumers are much savvier, and they won’t buy things that don’t provide real value. Consumers are now in the driver’s seat thanks to the web. 
 
      In order to sell your product, you have to understand consumers on every level. Traditional corporate education doesn’t teach you how to deal with consumers because it concentrates on controlling them instead of listening to them. On the web, a fledgling entrepreneur can learn everything he or she needs to know, but you can't do that until you let go of corporate mentality. The web offers an education beyond universities and corporations because it’s not filtered by professors and boards of directors. It’s up to the entrepreneur to use the web to build wealth through tedious research and imaginative exploration. The internet is a force of creation that has still barely been tapped. Best of all, the web is ultimately controlled by the people who use it at the grassroots level, and nothing is more grassroots than a working class entrepreneur. 
 
      If I ran a big corporation, the first thing I'd do is make the top level management work in online customer service for a couple months. I’d also make them write  research papers to track the progress of our products and company on the web. This would teach them how to make their corporate educations work in conjunction with the end consumer’s wants and needs. Nowadays, understanding the potential of your product means using the internet to research every potential idea from every possible angle. There’s no excuse for being ignorant these days, because the biggest library in the world is at everyone's fingertips. Ambition and determination are the only tools necessary for sparking a million dollar dream, and the web is the greatest frontier for using these tools. 
 
     Even when you’re backed by traditional corporate experience, you have to step outside the box to achieve big brand success these days. Most corporate bigwigs base their consumer knowledge on impersonal studies that are obsolete within months of compiling the data. That's why big business is suffering so much these days. By the time a study is finally published, the factors that created the data have already mutated because the web moves consumers second by second. Since 2001, the internet has changed the average consumer in ways not measurable by traditional corporate charts and graphs. Consumers are more segmented than ever and they're also more educated than ever, whether they have college degrees or not. Therefore, many great ideas that would have worked only a decade ago will not work today.
 
     These days, most people fail to come up with a successful invention or novel business idea because they don’t have their fingers on the pulse of society. They fail to learn what really works from a grassroots consumer level, due to arrogance and ignorance. To be a true innovator in this century, you have to see the future or at least try. This means being in touch with consumers as they evolve in this internet driven world. The web lives, breathes and grows every single minute of every day, and consumers follow suit. Trends that were in yesterday are out tomorrow and consumers dictate the pace. Consumers have taken control by going wireless, and now they manipulate the speed of society with their smart-phones, PDAs, laptops, digital cameras, and netbooks.
 
      So how do you spark a great idea in a society moving so fast it blows out most flames before they can grow? You need to move faster than society and ignite your idea without the hesitation created by corporate constipation. In the 21st century, sparking a big idea means you have to shit or get off the pot. You have to be sure it’s worth taking a leap of faith for your idea, knowing you could fail at any moment, but moving forward regardless. This is where your passion can give you the strength to persevere.
 
     Having a great idea is the first step toward growing a great idea, but not all great ideas are moneymakers. Anyone can come up with innovative ideas, but your concept must also have the potential for immediate traction in this super competitive wireless world. If there’s no market for your idea then it’s a disaster waiting to happen, no matter how much you believe in the concept. Yet as long as you have a potential consumer market, you can overcome all the obstacles through shear will and perseverance, as long as you’re passionate. More often than not your idea will be a dud, but you can avoid potential disaster by asking yourself some very honest questions from the start. 
 
 21 questions to ask yourself when evaluating any big idea:
 
1: Is your idea really that good? Come on...be honest with yourself. 
 
2: Is there now or has there ever been anything like your idea before? Even if there is...be honest with yourself and make your idea different.
 
3: Your mom liked the idea but is there really a market for it? Do I have to explain this one?
 
4: Can your idea be patented, trademarked, or copyrighted? Do the research.

5: Can you come up with the right name and packaging that will satisfy consumers and retailers? This one comes down to inner belief and passion.
 
6: Is the market for your product growing in dollars and shares? Search the web and pound the pavement to see if your product has potential. If  someone else is successfully selling in the same market, your chances for success are greater.
 
7: How much real competition do you face in your market? Competition is a good thing, but you need to assess your odds as compared to the dominant competitors in your industry.
 
8: Is your idea recession proof? Your product needs to be something people will buy even in the toughest times.
 
9: Can you afford to get your idea off the ground and is it worth the capital risk? If your idea tanks, can you still cover your living expenses and regroup?
 
10: How will you effectively market your idea? Can you market your idea with your present resources? Don’t count on proposed investors unless a contract has already been signed and you have money in your bank account.
 
11: Are there any special government, insurance or union regulations that oversee your industry? Research all potential regulatory issues concerning your industry to avoid unforeseen pitfalls. Make no mistake - you will be putting out regulatory fires no matter how much you know, but you need to be prepared. 
 
12: Is your idea newsworthy on a local or national level depending on your market? The best advertising is free publicity and you must take advantage of any positive exposure you can get.
 
13: Does your idea grab the targeted consumer’s undivided attention? The only way to really know is to use your gut and test it in the marketplace, preferably the web.
 
14: What is the final profit you make after the end consumer purchase excluding all the expenses it took you to get there? 
Warning:  This will change all the time. This figure will include a variety of expenses including brokers, dealers, distributors, etc. You also have to account for personnel, advertising, slotting fees, shipping, manufacturing, and all other potential overhead.
 
15: Can you afford to succeed? Speaking from experience -- success is the beginning of the toughest times for many entrepreneurs. Can you really afford to succeed? 
 
16: Are you prepared to sacrifice the majority of your personal time to fan the flames of your idea for 3 to 10 years? This sounds like an dumb question, but it’s a reality for successful entrepreneurs. 
 
17: Do you need to outsource manufacturing and distribution in any capacity in order to make it big? While you can make a product in your kitchen as I did, you will save yourself lots of suffering by finding a reliable manufacturer who’s willing to work with you. Of course many new headaches come along with outside manufacturers.
 
18: Is the best domain name available for your idea or product, and can you develop a powerful web presence? Your internet presence is key when competing against large and small competitors in any 21st century industry. 
 
19: Do you have a business bank account, tax ID, merchant account and shopping cart so you can accept credit card orders via the mail, internet and phone? If you don’t then you better get them. 
 
20: Do you have a toll free phone number to accept customer inquiries and phone orders? You need to appear professional in order to attract customers, and having a toll free line is an inexpensive way to appear big. 
 
21: Do you have a solid communication system in place for customers? You need a phone answering system that up-sells customers and guides them through any potential "On Hold" situations. You also need an effective mail system so customers get the answers they need. Communication is the key and excellent customer service is the ultimate tool for great communication with customers.
 
Your list of questions can go on forever depending on the idea you’re working with and the complexities of your industry. If you’re going to achieve success with any entrepreneurial venture, you’ll have to ask yourself every question you can. Most importantly you’ll have to answer the questions honestly, regardless of your personal aspirations. Once you’ve asked yourself every question you can possibly think of, it's time to ask anyone else the same questions. Pick every brain you can and listen, but take everyone's advice with a grain of salt.