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The Power of One Great Idea

Guest post by: Mark Foo

Article Overview: I've met a lot of great people with great ideas who take actions to work toward their dreams. But somehow, these people never realize what they set out to achieve. What is it that prevents them from success? These people have great attitude. They have good ideas. And they don't just sit on their ideas doing nothing. They work hard on their ideas. But they just don't seem to be getting anywhere.

The Power of One Great Idea

I've met a lot of great people with great ideas who take actions to work toward their dreams. But somehow, these people never realize what they set out to achieve. What is it that prevents them from success? These people have great attitude. They have good ideas. And they don't just sit on their ideas doing nothing. They work hard on their ideas. But they just don't seem to be getting anywhere.

I have this friend who's a very smart guy. He's always had a great entrepreneurial spirit. He's been in businesses for years. He's got very good networks and he's really good in selling. But the truth is, he's still broke. I've always wondered why a smart and entrepreneurial guy like him would still amount to nothing great after years of striving.

Finally, I've had my conclusion. There are a few main reasons to the results he's getting. But today, I'm just going to talk about one of them. The number one problem with this friend of mine is that he's an opportunist. Now I'm not saying there's anything wrong with taking advantage of an opportunity when it comes along. In fact, that's what you should do.

But this friend of mine is an opportunist who jumps on every opportunity that he comes across! Now that becomes a problem! You see, making just one idea to work takes a tremendous amount of time, effort and energy. So how do you expect yourself to work on a few ideas at the same time? No way!

The only way you can make an idea a success is to STAY FOCUS on that idea! If you have absolute faith in your idea, then you have to keep working on it till it becomes a hit! The worst thing you can do is to distract yourself with another idea and pull yourself away while working on the current idea.

"Business opportunities are like buses, there's always another one coming." - Richard Branson

Opportunities are all around us. They are everywhere if you look hard enough. But you can't take up every one of them at the same time. You have to make a choice and stick to it like it's all you've got. And the choice has to come from your passion. I've talked about following your passion many times on my blog because that's what I truly believe in and it's also what a lot of great successful people believe in.

If you could just take one idea and make it a hit, you'll have all the wealth coming your way. All you need is one great idea. Now let's take a look at how some entrepreneurs amass a fortune from just one idea. Some of these ideas may even seem silly.

Also, some of these ideas were original whereas for some, the idea was to leverage someone else's idea.

Here are some original ideas:

• Million Dollar Home Page

This has got to be one of the most silly, yet brilliant million-dollar ideas!

Back in 2005 when Alex Tew, the founder of MillionDollarHomePage.com, came up with this million-dollar idea, he was only 21, just preparing to start his first semester in uni.

At that time, he was thinking of a way to pay for his school fees, and he began by asking himself a simple question, "How can I become a millionaire?" Just twenty minutes later, he had his answer: Sell one million pixels of advertising space on a website for $1 each.

After he launched his website, he managed to sell all one million pixels in just 5 months to make $1 Million!

Incredible!

• Pet Rocks

This is yet another seemingly ridiculous but brilliant idea that helped its creator became a multi-millionaire. In 1975, the idea of Pet Rocks was conceived by advertising executive, Gary Dahl. This single idea alone had turned Dahl into a multi-millionaire in just 6 months.

Dahl started a company called Rock Bottom Productions. The company imported gray pebbles from Rosarito Beach in Baja, California, Mexico, and sold the rocks for US$3.95 each after repackaging them as live pets. The whole package even came with a 'Pet Training Manual' containing instructions on how to care for the pet rocks! What a novel idea!

It was estimated that Dahl had made over US$15 Million from these rocks. And that is estimated to be about US$56 Million in today's money.

• Everything Men Know About Women

By now you should be convinced that even seemingly silly ideas could turn you into a millionaire. If you need more proof, here's another good example. At the age of 21, Cindy Cashman self-published her first book, titled 'Everything Men Know About Women' under the pseudonym 'Dr Alan Francis'.

This book has since sold over one million copies, turning Cashman into a millionaire in the process. But the amazing part of this book is that it's entirely blank! Yes, you heard me right. It's a blank book.

It's meant to be a humour - that men know absolutely nothing about women! Guys... If you get the joke, you'll know why women bought the book in truckloads to give to their gal friends.

Following this initial success, Cashman has since published another 10 highly successful books. One of which is 'The Book of Smiles'. It is simply a book compiling pictures of all the different smiles in the world!

Now that's really one heck of creativity!

• eBay

In 1995, 28 year old Pierre Omidyar started Auction Web as an auction website for collectible items after his wife told him about her hobby of collecting and trading Pez candy dispensers.

Almost immediately after the launch, Auction Web enjoyed a tremendous amount of traffic. People began auctioning a wide range of products on the website for free.

After Omidyar started charging a small fee for the service and renamed Auction Web to eBay, he was making so much more money than his job that he decided to quit and focused on developing his website.

Three years later in 1998, eBay went public and Omidyar became a multi-billionaire overnight.

Today, eBay has approximately 84 million active users worldwide and the total value of items sold on eBay in 2007 was nearly US$60 Billion!

And below are some ideas on how to leverage other people's ideas:

• McDonald's

Ray Kroc is widely known as the founding father of the world's number one fast food chain, McDonald's. But the real founders are Dick and Mac McDonald, also known as the McDonald brothers.

Kroc had always had a great entrepreneurial spirit and he immediately saw his golden opportunity when he discovered the McDonald's restaurant in 1954 in San Bernardino, California.

The day after he met the McDonald brothers, he told them how he thought they could expand their successful restaurant into a national chain. When the McDonald brothers asked Kroc who'd do that for them, Kroc replied, "Well, what about me?"

And the rest is history.

McDonald's today employs almost 500,000 employees worldwide and generates an annual global turnover of about US$20 Billion.

• Chicken Soup For The Soul

The book 'Chicken Soup For The Soul' has sold over 8 million copies and has turned its authors, Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen into multi-millionaires.

Yet the authors did not do anything more than writing the introduction of the book. The stories in the book were simply a compilation of stories they gathered from other people.

And they have since gone on to produce numerous volumes of the 'Chicken Soup' issue. Many of the books are targeted at specific audience like 'Chicken Soup For The Mother's Soul', 'Chicken Soup For The Teenage Soul', 'Chicken Soup For The Horse Lover's Soul', etc.

So can you see now that all it takes is just one idea to turn yourself into a millionaire, and maybe even multi-millionaire?

And it doesn't even have to be a revolutionary idea. All you need is a simple idea.

Stick to your idea. If you truly believe in your own idea and stick to it, you can do wonders.

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Article Tags: absolute faith, amount of time, buses, business opportunities, conclusion, dreams, entrepreneurial spirit, great attitude, opportunist, richard branson, smart guy, time effort, truth



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