Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

At what point do I take an idea and make it into a business? I am one of those people who has a lot of ideas but just cannot find the right one. So I guess my question is, how did you pick your "one" idea and run with it? Did you have to mold your business to current day trends or did your business go a totally different way than what you thought? 

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http://www.slowcookermate.com
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We tried several ideas, keeping them inexpensive and giving them a shot on eBay. That helped us get a sense of the interest. Granted, eBay is more like a flea market, but that has the up-side of being a very basic market.

When something didn`t at all work on eBay, we decided to try something else. The thought being that if it DID work on eBay, it likely would work even better in the rest of the markets. That logic may not be completely accurate, but it at least gave us a sense of the overall interest level for something.

Our first signal flags not only had an interest in the sense of "looking" at them, we sold some. Previous products had a lot of viewers but no sales.We went with the idea that sells.

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I dunno, the older I get the less I agree that these kinds of situations are based on fear of failure. More often than people would like to believe, two other factors come into play:

• Wanting things to stay the same -- people get used to how things are, their habits and routines. They know that if they start a business, it`ll involve risks, work, time problems, scheduling problems, running around, decisions, worry, and everything else. It`s very different from what they have, and they prefer their routines.
• Excitement & Adventure -- many people believe that life is supposed to be a never-ending roller-coaster ride of awe, amazement, surprise, and wonder. They come up with an idea, and for a few days it`s just that excitement. Then, living with it, they "feel" it gets "boring."

Having spent a career on stage as a musician and entertainer, one of the hardest lessons I had to learn right up front was that what the audience perceives as new, interesting, exciting, and amazing is usually planned right down to the second by the entertainers.

Watch a comedian and you`ll see them deliver exactly the same line, exactly the same way, with exactly the same pauses and timing night after night. They may experiment with some new lines, but for their regular routines, it`s all planned perfectly.

But as audience members, we see entertainers once or perhaps several times over a spread-out period of time. We forget that those entertainers spend a lot of effort to make it look as if everything is spontaneous, easy as pie, and just happened to occur to them at the moment.

So we come up with an idea and it`s fascinating! What a great idea! What a great adventure! It`s new, different, and a way out of the rut of routine life. We work like crazy on it for a day or two, gradually getting deeper into the inner workings.

Suddenly, it`s not "new" anymore. It hasn`t even happened yet, but we "feel" it`s so familiar, it`s now boring. We`ve lept ahead months and years, foreseeing all the details, worked out all the glitches, and solved all the problems. Going even farther into the future, we feel ourselves into being bored, tired of it all, and wanting something different.

And yet, we haven`t even take the first step in the real world. It`s that need for never-ending excitement that keeps many people from ever staying focused on the inner-workings, the boring details, and the grunt-work of trial-and-error.

Not much different, really, from people who fall in and out of love every six months or so. It`s not an adrenaline rush of "new" anymore, so therefore (they feel), it must be the wrong relationship.

The ebay is a great idea i too started items on ebay and amazon first with the idea that if it sells in these 2 market places it will also work else where. The amazon adding to the website has been a huge shot of revenue for our company so you might want to try them and see if it works for you also. That is a great idea about something you are passionate and determined about and if you have any setback just get abck up dust yourself off and keep moving forward.

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Have you tested to market to make sure that someone would buy your idea and that there is a need for such idea?  If not, then it truly is just an idea and not a business.  Check out our FREE entrepreneur guide that addresses this very issue, among other things.

I realize this was a lil old, but Jynell revived it so I saw it lol.

Craig, you hit the nail on the head my friend! That is exactly how I am. I think about something for a while, then get hot about it, start working on it a few days/weeks, and then I lose that fire about it. Just like my RE advertising idea. I`ve thought about it for a few years now, and then I`ll forget about it. Then it may evolve into something else thanks to someone else`s input, like yours in my "What do you think?" thread. And then I get hot about my current job, and how I can do things in it, and the benefits of it, what my future may hold there, etc.

So now that begs the question. What do we do? How do we overcome this epidemic?