We hate to disappoint you, but it takes a lot more than a good idea to make you rich. You will need persistence, hard work, a lot of trial and error, a great team, and a bit of luck. Luckily, there are things you can do to prevent,”Will my ideas make me rich?” question from being a dumb one. Read on to learn all about it.
Does My Idea Have Potential?
Maybe a better question here is: “Do I have the potential to make my idea work?”
First of all, you need to be a little crazy. Being an entrepreneur will get you way out of your comfort zone and test your ability to endure all the negative comments you will encounter on your path. Once you are out there, you will need undying willpower and understanding of what you are getting into. You will need to understand the market you’re going into. Especially if it’s a competitive landscape and if your idea is something that people want. None of these things will make you rich. But the failure to do the following 3 basic steps will certainly guarantee that you’re not going to make a penny.
“If you are going to be an entrepreneur and you think you’ve got something great. Give yourself the time to validate what you’re thinking. Make sure that what you’re thinking is unusual, different, and has market potential.” – Fred Cary
1. Research and Understand Your Market
At IdeaPros, we’ve had around 40,000 partner applications in the last two and a half years, but we only have around 250 partners that we work with. The main reason for turning someone down is the lack of preliminary research.
You would be surprised at how many people think just having an idea is enough. They don’t explore whether their idea is already out there. If there is something they can do to make it better? In the end, they don’t ask themselves if there is even a market for their idea. You can spend 10 minutes on Google and realize that an idea you’ve never seen before is already being sold on Amazon by 40 different people. You type in the problem to see what are the existing solutions to that problem.
Create Google alerts to get a notice when something related to your topic comes up. The key questions you should be asking yourself: is if there is a problem that people are trying to fix and is there something they need?
“If you’re coming up with something that people don’t even think that they have an issue with then your chances of being rich and making a profit are probably zero.” – Fred Cary
You could hire someone with a business background on UpWork to do the data collecting part for you at a reasonable price. The hard part is taking this data and coming up with a strategy to get your product to the market, which takes us to step number two.
2. Differentiate Yourself from the Competition
The next thing you need to do is take the research data to use it to position yourself on the market and create a Unique Positioning Statement (UPS). The best way to do that is to ask yourself, is there a part of the market that’s not being addressed or a hole in the market that you can benefit from? We always talk about looking at competitors’ one-star reviews as the most efficient way to position yourself on the market.
If you come to IdeaPros, show us where your competitors are doing a bad job and how your idea will fix it with research that shows there are customers for your product. It shows that you have taken the time and energy to figure out where your place is in the world you want to enter and how you can make a difference in that world. This is how we know you have what it takes to embark on the entrepreneurial journey. Without knowing your position, you just don’t have a chance.
3. Commitment
Do you have the time and money to commit to getting the product to market? We have a Free Startup Checklist that covers all the steps you need to take to get your product to market.
In the end, there is no guarantee of success or profit. If it happens it happens because of your dedication, hard work, undying commitment, and your ability to see failures as opportunities. If you are doing something that doesn’t work that’s an opportunity to learn and keep going.
You’re not going to be successful just because you’re doing all this work. The chances of you succeeding are going to be wholly dependent upon your perseverance, your work ethic, and your ability to understand where there are holes in the marketplace that you can exploit.
The “Idea Pros” at IdeaPros have the resources, experience, and tools to help you at this step or any step in the entrepreneurial journey.
We partner with entrepreneurs at any stage and who are ready to invest their ideas. Apply for an interview and let’s explore partnering together.
Want to see the products we have launched? Check out the IdeaPros Launchpad!