EVOLVE YOUR IDEA

We get contacted by many people who think they have a next big thing. Some chunk of those ideas could actually be built into big businesses. Billion-dollar businesses like Netflix, SoFi, Zume, Meero, Instacart, 10X Genomics, WeWork, Ebay, DriveTime, Instagram, DoorDash, Lime, Casper, Amazon, Robinhood, Apple, Lyft, Facebook, Walmart, Away, Impossible Foods, Calm, Hims, Warby Parker, Glossier, Zip Recruiter and many others were once just someone's idea too.

Several of those brands didn't exist only a decade ago. Some took long-since-commoditized business models (taxi, food delivery, bicycle retailer, mattresses, meditation, etc) and packaged them in a new way. Countless other opportunities are ripe for the picking. Pick one!

Apple started out as a college dropout and another expelled student with an initial "manufacturing facility" in one of their garages. Amazon also started out in a garage with a singular product line of books and nothing else. If your own garage is overloaded now, don't worry, having free garage space is NOT a requirement to building billion-dollar businesses. But ONE thing IS a requirement common to ALL of them...

How do you go from a hot idea about a different approach to video rentals to a Netflix or from a new way to build a retailing business to a Walmart? You need to do something most don't do right at the point they think about trying to monetize their good concept: take at least one more step beyond only hatching an idea.

As the old saying goes, hot ideas really are a dime a dozen. There is no risk and no cost in idea creation. Like nearly everything in business: where there is zero risk and/or zero cost, there is zero or near-zero upside. It almost always takes a measured risk and some investments of money, time and energy to monetize a good concept.

If a great business idea has brought you to this page, this particular point may be THE MOST IMPORTANT POINT to grasp right now: to monetize the idea, you need to do something with it. There almost certainly is NOT big money in trying to sell the idea itself. Take a step or two beyond this stage and you can become the next Casper or Calm... Robinhood or Amazon.

Monetization requires some additional ACTION and some investment. You can't be a home flipper without buying some homes. You can't be retailer without buying some inventory. A stock investor who never actually puts any money INTO stocks can't possibly get any returns OUT of them. You can't be a fashion designer without buying some fabrics. You can't make omelettes without breaking some eggs.

Turn your good idea into something more tangible than a collection of interlinked neurons in your brain and it can become something genuinely sellable. More simply: if you really believe you have a next big thing, you should start a business and take it to market.

ALL of those new and not-that-old BILLION-dollar companies just referenced grew by doing something with a core idea... NOT trying to sell the idea to someone else.

THE MOST CRUCIAL, HIGH-IMPACT MOVE TO TURN YOUR BUSINESS IDEA INTO MILLIONS OR BILLIONS

When you invest time & money into monetizing your own concept, you take the crucial step that the vast majority of your fellow innovators will not. At that point, you transform from dreamer into genuine entrepreneur. That's a BIG & VITAL success step... perhaps the most important of all the steps you subsequently take.

It's that personal commitment that establishes a tangible foundation around the idea, setting up a genuine opportunity to start making money from it. Theodore Levitt- the American economist and Harvard Business School professor- said it well...

Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things.

Are you a thinker or a doer? While both are very important and one can't even happen without the other, the latter is where almost all of the profit can be realized.

"BUT I DON'T HAVE THE MONEY TO DO ANYTHING WITH MY IDEA"

Is that actually true? Many entrepreneurs DO have money but fear of loss makes them pretend they do not. This powerful emotion is what kills countless million-to-billion-dollar businesses at the idea stage. Entrepreneurship often requires overcoming- or at least managing- fear of failure. A need to summon up the courage arises... to boldly suppress natural fears.

If you have money invested in the stock market, think about what that money actually represents: you are doing for complete strangers exactly what you want yourself. You are using YOUR money to back OTHER entrepreneur's companies, risking YOUR cash to grow THEIR businesses.

What if you chose to invest your own money in YOUR new company instead of backing strangers? If nothing else, you would know for certain that "management" will not be doing foolish things with your investment AND "they" will be LASER FOCUSED on delivering maximum ROI. It could also be the funding you seek.

You being your own bank means that you retain ALL 100% of the profit...

...something that definitely doesn't happen if you take on investors. Investors want a BIG chunk of your profit and, if the business yields as good as you believe, will probably NEVER want to let go of their share of it. Many entrepreneurs who give away so much to investors come to regret it later... when they have to KEEP sending all of that profit to investors who are no longer needed at all by the entrepreneur.

For these and many other reasons, if it is possible, self-funding is a great way to go. Instead of:

• investing your money in the stock market to back strangers, you CHOOSE to invest in yourself.
• owning a tiny fractional interest in some distant company where you have zero say, you'll own 100% of the shares of your own company and have ALL say.
• your (relatively) tiny share of some company paying you a tiny dividend, 100% of ALL dividends of a company where you own ALL of the shares flows only to you.
• having to answer/placate/bend to the will of others, YOU ARE THE BOSS.

If you genuinely do not have the money to back your own idea, there ARE other options: customers, investors, bankers, franchisees, partners, debt, family & friends, etc. All of these sources will generally be much more interested in giving you money if you demonstrate that the idea is more than only a thought... that it can be a scalable, profitable enterprise. Try to get financiers to buy only an idea and you are competing with millions of other "I've got the next Google" dreamers, as well as:

• thousands of others who have already packaged their idea within a mature business plan,
• thousands more in startup mode and
• thousands of others that are already making money on their idea and looking for cash and/or more customers to fuel growth.

In simplest terms...

The further your concept is from absolutely proving a market of buyers exist for it, the harder it is to attract backers.

The next page explores HOW to motivate others to invest in your business. If you need some cash backing or only want some cushion in a self-funded enterprise, you don't want to miss that information. Just click NEXT below to continue...