Lesson #2
The Best Ideas Can Come from What's Right in Front of Your Nose
In my view, some of the biggest—and occasionally easiest—money you can make in this world is often derived from the most obvious ideas. Think about two fairly significant music-playing devices: record players and the iPod. Each one is nothing more than a machine that plays the same kind of music that the likes of Frank Sinatra sang. The brilliance is in the distribution method, the ability to change it, and the capacity to capitalize on those changes by leveraging economies of scale and developing different packaging that makes owning the product “cool” to a new generation. When you really think about it, it's the same music; it's just a different way of sharing and listening to it. But both inventions required someone to look at the obvious and come up with the idea of creating a product—or better mousetrap—that people would both want and perceive they needed.
One fairly reliable reality in life is that most people will find reasons not to do something. They'll look for a way to keep the status quo and not challenge what can easily be tested or improved. It is the people who spend their time looking at what could be—based on the obvious—that rise above the rest.
However, even that kind of outlook doesn't always ensure success. Most people fail in the planning stage of a start-up venture because they make it much more difficult than it needs to be. Whatever you end up doing—whether it's selling something, ...
