Chapter 3: The Lost Ideas

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Have you ever done this before or know people who have done this – get a second or third part-time job? Imagine, this person works a regular 40 hour work week and then turns around and works about another 20-30 hours on a part-time job.

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I have known many people over the years do just that. I know why they do it, but at the same time would always question inside myself – why are they doing this to themselves? Why are they subjecting their bodies to this type of workload?

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Right about now you are probably saying, “The reason they are doing it is because they need the extra money for bills and to live on…duh.” Yes, I know that, but why do they take that course of action?

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When I was growing up, fortunately for me, my family believed in having your own businesses. My father had a tailoring business as well as several martial arts schools, while my mother had a daycare business. I was encouraged to have my own business, and businesses I did have.

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When I was in the sixth grade I started what I called my first business. This is how my business started. Every morning my mom would give me $1.50 for lunch money. Off to school I would go. When it was lunch time at school, I would not always be hungry so I would not eat. So instead of eating I would just talk to friends while they were eating, if they were eating themselves.

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I don’t know if you ever experienced this during lunch time at school but I did pretty often. One of your schoolmates comes up to you during lunch and asks to borrow 5, 10, 15 cents or whatever. Well this would happen to me almost on a daily basis. I would usually let the classmate borrow the money.

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Then one day out of nowhere I got an idea.

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It’s Monday morning, mom has just given me $1.50 for lunch money and I am out of there off to school.

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Ding, Ding, Ding

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It’s the bell sounding off letting us know it is lunch time. I am ready for lunch today, ready to try out my new idea.

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Tony comes up to me and says, “Mike can I borrow 10 cents, I need 10 more cents to buy a bag of potato chips.”

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“Yeah Tony, I will let you borrow the 10 cents. When can you pay me back?” Tony replies, “I can pay you back tomorrow.” I say, “Well Tom, if I loan you this money do you agree to pay me back 20 cents tomorrow?” “Yes, I will pay you back 20 cents tomorrow” Tony says.

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So I would loan Tony the money. The next day at school during lunch time, I went up to Tony to collect my 20 cents and Tony handed it over. I am thinking to myself, wow the idea worked. I was able to double my money in one day.

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So the same day I collected 20 cents from Tony, Melissa comes up to me and asks to borrow 5 cents for something. I ask her when she will be able to pay me back. Melissa can not pay me back the next day, which is Wednesday. Melissa can’t pay me back until Thursday. I then asked her if she would agree to pay me back 15 cents on Thursday and she said yes. So I loaned her the money.

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Now you may be wondering why Melissa had to pay more. Well in my mind at the time, if you needed more days, you had to pay more back.

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On Thursday I went up to Melissa and collected the 15 cents. Well to make a long story short, I did this for several months. I started the day out with $1.50 and over these months built up my borrower’s base to where I was coming home with $5 or $6 a day. I was absolutely ecstatic about my venture.

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During this time I had not said anything to my parents about my business. Then one day my mom was in my room and happened to notice my money. She called me into the room and asked me where I got the money from. I went on to tell her of my venture with great excitement. She kind of smiled as to not hurt my feelings.

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After I finished explaining my business to her she went and told my dad to talk to me. So my dad comes in the room and says, “Hey Mike, tell me about your business.”

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So with the same enthusiasm I told my mom, I told my dad.

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Once I finished my dad said to me, “Son, you might not want to do business like that. You are charging people too much interest. You should not do that – you should stop this business all together.”

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Sidebar: My dad did not want me to do the business like that because he was concerned that I may later turn the business into a loan sharking type of thing as I grew older.

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Back to the story…

Well my heart was crushed. I thought I had found my money maker and my parents had shut me down. I might have been down, but I was not going to give up; I was going to be a businessman.

Well, I had no business to name of but I couldn’t let that stop me so I had some business cards made. The name of my business was “Great Ideas.” James, a man at the same church I went to was a graphic designer and he created my business cards.

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The card was a florescent yellow (you could notice it from way…way…I mean way across the room), it had my name and the title President & CEO on the card along with my address. James had also created me a cool logo. The logo was a light bulb with a dollar sign in the center. I thought it was PERFECT.

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Have you ever seen cartoons and when the cartoon character gets an idea, the animator always draws a light bulb over the character’s head. My card was perfect. Great Ideas was in business.

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I started passing out my business cards and people would ask me what my business was. Well remember, my loan business was shut down and I really didn’t have a business; but I couldn’t say that, so I would say my business is, great ideas – we produce great ideas. What were these great ideas at that time? I didn’t have a clue, but it sounded good at the time so I went with that every time someone would ask.

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The next year I was in the seventh grade. I met a friend named Andre. Andre was an artist. I was an artist also but Andre was better than me.

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Andre would draw portraits of people all the time. One day I asked him if he charged the people. He replied that he did not. I saw a joint venture in the works. I proposed to Andre that we start an art business.

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Now remember we are seventh graders as you read this.

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I was in charge of managing the business, and Andre primarily handled the art pieces. He was VERY good at this and better equipped than I was. We hired eight other students to be our sales force. Their job was simple, go sell people on having their portrait done.

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Every Friday was payday. We would get together and basically pay ourselves first, then split the remaining profits among the sales force. Everyone got paid even if they did not produce any sales that week – yeah that wasn’t smart, but remember we are seventh graders; we didn’t know.

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We did this business the remainder of that school year and the next. We did wise up to the sales people that were not producing and got rid of them.

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As you can see from what you have just read, I was adventurous and not afraid to at least try something. If I had a business idea I would give it a shot. I always looked for opportunities and anything that would spark an idea.

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Think back to when you were young; did you ever do things similar to what I did? Maybe you had a lemonade stand or cut grass. Perhaps you washed the neighbors’ cars, etc. When you had ideas, more than likely you just did them and really did not even think about the possibility that the project would fail?

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Have you ever wondered what happened to the ideas and creativity you had as a child? Actually nothing has happened to the ideas or creativity.

Let me explain, you get ideas all the time for different things. You are a creative person and more creative than you may think. How many times have you looked at an infomercial and said to yourself “I had an idea for something like that?” Maybe you have seen something in the store that is similar to an idea you had.

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Have you ever said, I wish there was a product or service that could.

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Well that is your idea. Do you see how it slipped right by you? You have unknowingly had an idea and discarded the idea in less than 2 seconds.

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How many ideas have you thrown out and did not realize it? Everyone, yes everyone gets ideas on a regular basis. Most people do not realize the idea and opportunity in the idea and blow it off hoping that maybe one day someone will eventually develop the idea for the product or service you wanted.

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Do you realize every idea you do not act on you are throwing out. Now keep this in mind, the ideas you do nothing with will eventually come up in someone else’s mind, and they may or may not do it. However someone will one day.

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One day I was at my father-in-law’s house and we were talking. He was telling me and his children that many years back he had an idea for a product, and it was really good. We all were excited and asked him what the product was…

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He forgot…

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He lost the idea…

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He never acted on it or even wrote it down…

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It is now gone.

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His idea may have been a million dollar or even billion dollar idea but we will never know. Want to know why most ideas are not acted on?

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I remember his children saying, we could have been rich. Then they started asking questions to see if a question would trigger the idea, but it didn’t. The excitement in the room then died down when everyone realized the idea was really gone.

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People normally don’t act on the idea, the creative genius in them. They instead wish someone else would bring their dream (ideas) to existence.

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Why is this…?

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The answer goes back to some of the things you have already read about. The persons that possess the idea do not think they can bring the idea into existence. Their THINKING has crippled them. In addition, the generational thinking which has been planted in them from their childhood has taken root not allowing them to conceive anything other than working for someone else.

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As a result they are stuck in: “The Cycle”

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Have you given up on your dreams to staying in “The Cycle?”

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I am not saying not to work for anyone ever again. I am saying recognize the cycle and make adjustments to break you and your family out of the cycle. If you have children, instill in them a new generational way of thinking.

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You can have a business and a job. Your goal should be that your business grows to a point where it can overtake your job. Start where you are right now.

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Mr. Blackwell use to say to my social studies class, “For things to change, you have to change.” Don’t be afraid of change, change can be good.

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The New You

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Ideas have been lost, but they don’t have to be anymore. You should be more enlightened to how ideas are coming to you.

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Exercise

1. Write down any ideas you may have had that you can remember. Even if the idea seems a little stupid, write it down anyway. This is not the time to judge the soundness of the idea.

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2. Of the ideas you listed, are there any ideas that you could actually do within a reasonable amount of time?

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3. If you have ideas that you would need help on, separate those ideas from the ideas that you can do on your own.

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4. The ideas that you could do on your own, write them on this page and the next page if you need more room.