Turning an idea into income is a process that requires planting and fertilizing, not waiting or dreaming

Under the category of inexperienced blind hope, a surprising number of people who come to my Consumer Product Development group with a new business idea want us to find someone to buy the concept in its undeveloped form. This is always surprising, even after so many years of listening to these bland elevator pitches. A person has an idea, has done little or no due diligence, and believes it has commercial value. Luke!

Behind every successful product, service or business in existence there was originally an idea. To achieve any level of viability and ultimately market success, the idea was planted and fertilized with work, research, investment (money and sweat), strategizing, and so many other necessary layers of work product that confirm the usefulness or lack of concepts. .

A person who tries to sell an idea without doing the necessary due diligence is immediately dismissed as a spendthrift. Ideas are a dime a dozen, they’re actually worth 10 cents less than a dime. The reasons so few people become successful entrepreneurs, despite the fact that most dream of entrepreneurial success, is that they are dreamers, not doers.

I recently received a call from a so-called entrepreneur who was looking for someone to buy his toy idea. In response to my rating polls, it was completely negative. He had no patent records. It had no 3D CAD art. He didn’t have, or worse, wanted to build rough prototypes, so of course he was never going to have production-quality prototypes. Without 3D CAD art and prototypes, you would never discover manufacturing protocols and cost of goods.

In short, he was the ultimate dreamer. Many of these fraudsters are serial stalkers of investments, partners and/or licensing relationships. They surf the Internet endlessly looking for a home for their enrichment schemes. Time and effort that could be spent on productive due diligence is wasted on hopes and blind dreams.

I have advised clients, students, and would-be entrepreneurs for many years to avoid taking shortcuts at all costs. Resources are more easily found and used today than ever before. Many, many years ago when I launched my first product there was no email, internet, mobile, software, Google or WikiPedia. Heck, there weren’t even any fax machines or FedEx. Each step of the process was slower and more arduous than today.

The ease and availability of contemporary resource tools makes launching a new consumer product or small business a much simpler process. An idea that is not accompanied by at least some design and supporting data is a failure. Worse puts the presenter as an amateur.

Suppose you are shopping for shoes. If you visited a shoe store and the store only had photos of shoes, but none to try on, how would you react? Of course, you can shop for shoes online, but you usually know the brand, style, and size you need and look for a match online at a price. When you’re in a store, you want to touch and feel the products you’re looking for. The same goes for venture capital and licensing.

The market is full of investment opportunities. Money always looks for the most market-ready products. You have no opportunity to compete for seed capital or licenses unless your project is fully vetted. A successful businessman always plants and fertilizes the product of his work to maximize the chances of achieving a great result.

By: Geoff Ficke