Unleash your inner entrepreneur – Developing Your Big Idea – Part 2/10

Ideas are like little presents from the universe! You should always snatch ’em up as soon as they pop into your head. The more you jot ’em down and give ’em some love, the stronger the connection becomes and before you know it, the universe will be showering you with all sorts of brilliant ideas!

Let your mind wander and wonder

One of the things in finding your idea is to get quiet. It’s really important to find out for yourself when you get your best ideas. For Sara Blakely, it’s in the car. And it took her a little bit of time to figure it out but once she figured it out, she purposely created what her friends call a “fake commute”. While Sara lives 6 minutes away from her company, she would wake up an hour earlier, or leave the house an hour earlier, and drive around town aimlessly just to get in her best thinking time. That’s when she’s driving and the radio is on, then she’d be flooded with ideas, that’s where she solves problems, and that’s where ideas came to her. For instance, Albert Einstein often had his most brilliant ideas while he was shaving.

Sara Blakely’s name of her company, Spanx, was thought of while she was in the car. She was in traffic in Atlanta, and she’d been spending two years trying to figure out the right name for her product and her invention. One bad name after another.  She wrote it down on rental car agreements, scrap pieces of paper, and gum wrappers. And then one day, sitting in the car, the word SPANKS, came to her. She actually visualized it across the dashboard in her mind. And she pulled to the side of the road and wrote it down. And she thought that was it.

She thought it was perfect. Her product was all about the butt, and how it makes your butt look better. And so she went home that night and she typed in SPANKS on a website called upsto.gov which is where she spent a lot of time as an entrepreneur, and for $150 trademarked it using her credit card. And at the last second, she backspaced the K and the S and made it an X. Because she did her research that made-up words do better for products than real words do. And that all came to her in the car.

“So, figure out when your brain does its best brainstorming – is it while you’re lathering up in the shower? Maybe it’s while you’re pounding the pavement on a run? Or maybe it’s while you’re cruising in the car? Whatever it is, make sure you set aside some “me-time” on your calendar for it. And don’t worry, we’re not talking about checking off your to-do list, we’re talking about letting your mind roam free and wander to its heart’s content. It’s super important, trust me!”

If you’re reading this and thinking “my brain never wanders,” don’t worry, we’ve all been there. But don’t give up hope just yet! It’s time to shake things up a bit and make some changes in your life. One of the best things you can do is carve out some alone time. We know, we know, it’s tough to be alone these days. We’re always looking for company and distractions. But that’s where the real magic happens – when you’re all by yourself, that’s when the ideas start flowing. Trust us, it’ll be worth it.”

Ask Yourself “WHY”  

This is the question you should be asking yourself a lot. Sara Blakely frequently engages in this practice of questioning and exploring new ideas

“Why” should become your best friend.

Why does this exist?

Why is it done this way?

Why hasn’t anything in this space evolved in a while?

Could there be a better way?

If you’re on the hunt for a new idea, try dedicating a week to jotting down everything that irks you. Give it a moment of reflection and then write down potential solutions. You’ll likely find that an idea begins to take shape.

On one particular day, Sara Blakely was getting her hair done at a salon and found herself feeling uncomfortably warm under the cape. The thought occurred to her that there should be a more breathable option. She immediately jotted this idea down in her notebook. This was just one of the many ideas that she had recorded in her notebook. Although this particular idea may not have aligned with her business focus, her mind was constantly generating ideas across all sectors. She welcomes all of these ideas and finds that the more she engages in this practice, the more frequently new ideas come to her.

Filter Your Ideas   

Once you collect all these ideas, you have to figure out which one is the right one to pursue.  And put them through a filter system. Look at three things: 1. Time 2. Money, and 3. Resources. And these are three things that all entrepreneurs are always having to check in on. And ask yourself the questions per idea.

• Difficulty level: How hard is this going to get made?
• Cost: What is the approximate cost it’s going to take?
• Manufacturers: The level of complexity- is it going to take one manufacturer to make this idea or is going to take multiple manufacturers?
• Weight: How heavy is it?
• Shipping: How much is it going to cost to ship?
• Human Resources: Are you gonna be able to make it on your own or do you need an entire team and other areas of expertise to help you do this?

Part of filtering your idea is also how big is the need. You may be someone who comes up with an idea of let’s say, a vacuum cleaner that makes spaghetti. Congratulations! You just found a major white space that doesn’t exist. But is there a need for it? Like, how many people out there in the world are looking for a vacuum cleaner that’s gonna make them spaghetti? That’s a question you got to ask yourself.

There are various ways to determine if there’s a need for your idea. You can search online. You can ask around. You can go from one account to another where you knew your product would be sold. You can ask some sales associates, for example. Asking questions to those who would likely have the use for your products, would get you to feel if your idea is going to work out. You would get the reactions you need to determine if the solution you’re thinking of will also be the solution that other people needed.

Name it Early  

Sara named her ideas or inventions early on because she thinks it gives them energy and makes them more real. Just like when you write down your goals. People say that if you write down your goal, you have a much greater chance of achieving it than if you just think about it or just talk about it. For her Spanx, she named it very early in the prototyping process. She was very diligent about what she was going to name it. She wanted a name to create energy and excitement, and have people want to talk about it because she doesn’t have the money to advertise. So name your product or idea or concept, even if just for internal purposes. The minute you do, you’d see that your idea/concept will start to take on a different energy.

When to Share Your Idea

When she was starting Spanx, she did not share her idea with anybody, for an entire year because it’s human nature that the minute that we get an idea, we turned to our right or left and tell another person about that idea. And then out of love and concern,  they will give you the reasons why they want to protect you. Or they might say that “Well, that’s a good idea BUT what if…” and it squashes so many million-dollar ideas In that exact moment.

So what I can suggest, is not to tell people about your idea just for validation purposes. Protect your idea and pursue it. You might not want to invite ego into the process too soon. If you do, then you’d spend all your time defending it and explaining it and leaving you no time to pursue it.

Sara worked on her project for a year before she decided that it was time that she could open herself up to her family and friends and tell them the idea if they didn’t like it or if they told her reasons why maybe she shouldn’t do it, then she would still do it. It took her a year of sweat equity before she got to a point to trust that. She worked at night and on weekends. And although nobody knows what it is, she hears people saying that she’s working on some crazy idea.

After a year, when she decided to tell them of her project, about the footless pantyhose, they were all like, what?! She heard people say that her idea was good but if it was that good then how come no other thought of that idea first? Some told her to give it more thought because she might just lose her savings for it. Some discouraged her that bigger companies would just knock her down. She recounted that if she had heard those ideas at the moment when she was just forming her idea, she’d probably still be selling fax machines.

So even if you’re not sharing it with your family and friends right away, you’ve got to go out on a limb and share it with somebody. You got to share it with the people that can help move this forward. You have to share it with the lawyers. You have to share it with the manufacturers that might be a partner with you. You need to identify who is going to be necessary to create the prototype to get it out into the world. Those are the people that you need to tell. Do your best to protect yourself.

Through her journey, she realized that only a few people would knock you off or steal your idea until you’ve already put it out into the world and become successful. A piece of advice to those who are just starting, don’t stress about this too much at this stage. You have to tell your lawyer your idea. You have to tell the manufacturers your idea. Yes, the manufacturers may take your idea and run with it but if you don’t tell them, what? Are you going to sit in your apartment with this idea? I mean, you have to use your judgment in certain cases.

To Patent or Not to Patent

Some entrepreneurs regard themselves as an inventor far more than a designer.  It is important to be very intentional about how you call yourself from the very beginning. Sara wrote most of her patents, especially her first product. She had no idea what she was doing so she made sure that she educate herself about patents and trademarks. That’s how she started writing her own patent. Then she found a lawyer that would write the legal claims for her.

She shared that she has been asked a lot if they should patent their product or not and she would always answer that they would need to allocate where you’re going to put your resources very carefully. For example, if you have a $10, 000 budget for your idea, and your legal fee to patent it would cost you $10, 000, too, then the answer is clear. Don’t patent it. You have to carefully manage your resources, especially at the beginning.

Everybody patents things for different reasons. When you are first starting out and like for Sara, she only had $5,000, she knew that she was patenting it to mostly be able to show the value and use it as a marketing tool. She would want to be able to stand on TV or try to get the press because it said, patent pending. She was really trying to convey from a marketing standpoint that this is new. This is different. It hasn’t already existed. So for the next 18 months where it was labeled as patent-pending, which means nobody knows if you’re going to get this patent or not, but it still discourages people from copying you.

And then once the patent comes out, then you have a decision on if you want to defend it if people start knocking you off. She had been advised by her lawyers that even if she gets the patent for her product, it’s still going to cost her millions to potentially defend it. So it’s really up to you, as an entrepreneur, if you want to spend your journey fighting and defending a patent or if you want to be spending your time and your journey coming up with the next best thing and keeping them all scrambling.

Providing a Service

Business can also be a service. You could be providing a service and doesn’t always have to be a tangible product. It can literally be, a better service. Like better carpet cleaning service. Or a better landscaping service. And oftentimes, on the service aspect, it’s literally you. You’re bringing in- you’re offering you and how much you care and a lot of businesses have been built on that. In showing up, caring, and building a team of people that are gonna service a customer better than anybody else can.

Establish Your Difference

When you have an idea, it is very important that you know your competition. So in doing research, A. to find out does this idea already exists. But to find out what are the three closest products to this idea that exist? What do you like about them? What don’t you like about them? And how are you different? Differentiation is one of the biggest, more important aspects of being an entrepreneur. A great test to do for yourself is to look in the mirror and ask; Why am I different? Why is my product different? Why is my company different? Why is my idea different?

Be able to answer those questions in a minute or less. Be very convincing. Don’t use words like, maybe, like, or I think. Change them to I know, I believe. You get this one shot with whoever it is along the way, whether it is the manufacturer you’re trying to convince to create your prototype, whether it’s the first account you’re gonna call on that you hope sells your product, the first customer that you face within a store, in wherever. You are going to need to be able to do that. And you’ve got to make it easy for them. You’ve got to be able to confidently say Here’s what you are. Here’s why you’re different. And here’s why you are the best option.

Today’s Takeaways:

• Make time to think
• Find out where you do your best thinking
• Log every idea you have
• Name your ideas early
• Patent your invention
• Differentiate yourself