In
53 BC the Battle of Carrhae was fought in Persia. In the battle, the
Parthian Empire took on the Roman Republic. And, legend has passed down
to us what has come to be known as the “Parting Shot.”
Today,
I will leave you with a couple, simple examples of the folly of the
bright idea. In this, my last post, I will use ridiculously basic
businesses. Let us first take a step back and revisit how we might
have gotten here.
I
think the thought coming up with an earth-shaking, great idea can be
pretty glamorous. It is a rather sexy proposition. And, that is a big
part of the reason people attempt to come up with bright ideas.
The
little known secret, or, at least the one that is seldom admitted, is
the fact that very few glamorous ideas succeed. It would be nice if
sexy ideas succeeded. But, the truth is, they don't.
So,
I think we are well-advised to remember the words of the late business tycoon, Felix Dennis,
“Forget glamorous.”
Personally,
I believe a wise task is to take the mundane and make it
transcendent. Meaning, take something that needs to be done and do it
better than anybody else. A good example is Eric McLean.
Who
is Mr. McLean? Well, very simply, he is a notary. Talk about unsexy!
Now, I am most certainly not suggesting that you become be a notary.
But, the example is instructive.
As
you likely understand, a Notary is a person, “with legal training
who is licensed by the government to perform acts in legal affairs,
in particular witnessing signatures on documents.”
What
McLean did was he built himself a nice, little empire for $36. What
did he do? He created "ASAP Notary" based on the simplest of ideas: a
mobile notary. Instead of the customer coming to the notary, the
notary would travel to the customer. And, $36 was all it cost Eric to
get his license.
(Another
good example is Wayne Huizenga. Dude got super rich as the trash man!)
As
I have quite clearly demonstrated, over the last few weeks, the notion that entrepreneurs need bright ideas is a complete fallacy. And, I
will wrap things up by giving the final words to Gary Vaynercuk.
Gary
Vee said, “Every idea has been thought about. There is nobody who
has come up with a big idea. I am telling you. All of them. Every one
of them. People executing, or having the pieces in place to be able
to execute, or the right time in their career, or the right
resources, financially, energy, skills, opportunities, those are the
variables, not the ideas.”
