I hate to say it but you’re probably not smart enough to come up with a completely new idea. You don’t have the intelligence or creativity to come up with the Next Big Idea.
Newton thought up the Law of gravity; the founders of Google came up with a breakthrough by inventing the concept of PageRank to rank websites. Do you think you can replicate these feats, much less come up with one from scratch?
The reality is that 99.99% of aspiring entrepreneurs don’t have the mental chops to come up with some totally original idea. These are all smart people but chances are that even if you do happen to come up with a great idea, it will either have been done already or it hasn’t been done for a reason.
The Good News
Before you abandon all hope and embrace your life as an employee, there is some good news. There are millions of entrepreneurs in this world who had just as much originality and creativity as you do. They didn’t come up with the Next Big Thing and they’re wildly successful. What they all have in common is that they are good marketers.
Yes, that evil word – marketer. But the fact is that most successful entrepreneurs are successful because they are good at selling their business. They didn’t come up with some earth-shattering idea that their competitors couldn’t match. They just did a better job at marketing their own business.
Car Dealers Haven’t Invented Anything Lately
Car Dealers are interesting because they are basically selling a commodity product. If you don’t want to buy a car from a particular dealer, you can go to the dealer down the street that sells a car in the same class for a similar price. And if you want the exact same car, go to another dealer 20 miles a way who sells the exact same model. There is almost no room to differentiate their “product” from their competitors’.
But I’m sure that we’ve all seen or know the local car dealer that has 5 dealerships, 3 houses, and is absolutely loaded. Somehow they found a way to turn their commodity product into a goldmine for themselves. Why?
They are good marketers.
Maybe everyone knows their name from annoying billboard ads or painful TV ads. However they know them, the fact is that they do. Now I’m sure that these car dealers also run a well operated business. You can’t afford to bring potential customers in and give them bad service. They still need to be good business operators. But the fact is that their marketing skills got the name of the dealership out there and people in the door.
Do You Know How to Market?
So don’t spend all your time trying to think of the Next Big Thing. It’s a waste of your time. And honestly, you might come up with a great idea but if you don’t know how to sell it, it’s not going to be successful.
You’re may not be smart enough to come up with new ideas. Spend your time learning how to sell and market and you can sell anything. It could be the most boring product – it doesn’t matter. If car dealers can do it, you can too.