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From Jim Collins, author of Built to Last and Good to Great, interviewed in the August 25, 2008 issue of Business Week:
"The idea of a personal board of directors came to me when I was in my 20s. I drew a little conference table on a sheet of paper with seven chairs around it and wrote names on them of people I admired. I pasted it above my computer and would look up an in my mind poll the personal board when I was wrestling with tough questions. If I as really stuck, I might talk to some of them. It’s sort of like a group of tribal elders that you create for yourself."
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| That's the title of an article in the March 2007 Business 2.0 that describes the origination of Betty Beauty. Betty Beauty was founded by Nancy Jarecki, wife of the founder of Moviefone (which he sold to AOL for a fortune), after she noticed women in a beauty shop leaving their hair coloring appointments with a little bag of extra dye to "make the carpets match the drapes." She'll sell over $1 million this year, with the favorite color by a margin of 7-to-1 being a pink called "Fun Betty." Another example of the fact that ideas are all over the place. Our mission is simply to ground ourselves so that we can see them. |
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Over the years, I've met thousands of people seeking the big idea that will make them a lot of money. Something I've learned, though, is that while big ideas are fun, their role in making money is way overrated. Sure, if you came up with the idea for eBay or MySpace, you made a lot of money off the idea. But what you really did was win the lottery. Your passion, hard work and good leadership skills combined with a very unique set of circumstances - product, supply, demand, and timing - to produce a home run.
What the majority of entrepreneurs don't realize is that the big idea is not essential to building a successful business. Just find a product or service you feel good about and can become impassioned about delivering, define premier quality in the eyes of the consumer, and go out and deliver it. It can be as mundane as a plumbing repair business. What is premier quality in the eyes of the consumer in that business? I'll bet it involves reliability and dependability, honesty, clear communication, cleanliness, professionalism, and competence. Deliver these things, charge the premium prices you deserve, and you will capture all the market share you want and make a lot of money. This is true even if the market is crowded with competitors, because at least 80% of your competitors will not deliver premier quality.
I should point out some exceptions I’ve come to appreciate. Some businesses have the deck stacked against them, it seems, for reasons of fashion, cyclicality, or commoditization. All the hard work, passion, good leadership, and premier quality in the world are still highly challenged. You can succeed, many have, but it is very difficult over the long term. A lot of retail concepts, for instance, depend upon what is currently in style. The style shifts and you’re out of it. Construction is cyclical. Interest rates skyrocket, consumer demand for space plummets, and you’re out of business. Distribution, at least where there is no value added by the distributor, is often a commodity and there is inadequate room to differentiate yourself in the eyes of the consumer. There are other particularly challenging areas, but they are dwarfed by the number of mainstream product and service business opportunities that are begging for quality operators. There is a good argument for forgetting the big idea for a new business and putting your big ideas into a business that soneone else dreamed up a long time ago.
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