Saturday, May 15, 2010

Money or Idea?

 Money or Idea?

No doubt whatever we want to do or become in life money is a major factor that readily comes to mind.  Even the Bible rightly recognises money as answer to all issues.  
In this write-up we are looking at the role of money in attaining any goal.  To set up a business for instance, there has been this argument as to which comes first - money or idea?   And whenever money is given priority, many ideas have rested in the bellies of those who have them because once the do a mental budget of how it much it will cost them to actualise their ideas and they discover that they cannot afford such monies.  

On the other hand, some people have argued that an idea - a 'bankable one for that matter' is more to be preferred because it is argued that whenever an idea is bright enough there will always be somebody somewhere who will be willing to sponsor or support it to execution.  

Either way, there are uncertainties.  Many bankable ideas die because nobody would come up financially  to make them come to light.  It is equally true that many ideas die before they were born simply because the owner cannot fathom where the money will come from to execute them so they don't waste time exploring it to the point of being 'bankable'.

What is the way forward?  If you have an idea, follow it through to a 'bankable' point.  Document it and continue to explore for whoever will be willing to fund it.  Make thorough research as to who can support it. But most often all such efforts will still not yield desired result.  When this happens, what to do is to turn yourself to the sponsor of your own idea by coming up with a lesser idea that will generate the required income for you to sponsor the bigger idea.  

This is the story of Tomimia who developed Topsy Tail as a business venture.  She needed N5,000 to patent her product but could not raise it.  An idea occurred to her to write a book but she had difficulty choosing a topic that would be best-selling.  Finally she remembered she once kissed a young guy who once dated her and that the guy complimented her so well such that she wondered what was so special about kissing.   She finally decided to write a book on the 'funny' subject of 'kissing' and submitted it to a publishing house which not only accepted her manuscript but paid her $7,500 advance ever before it was published. And when published the book became an instant best-seller!  With the $7,500 she paid $5000 to patent her pet project. The project later became so successful that she retired early from her paid employment with IBM to attend to it full time.(Story on pp 95-102 of "Start Small and Finish Big" by Fred DeLuca)"
The bottom line is that if you have an idea and you don't have the money to execute it, while you are looking for people who will support it, develop a lesser idea that will generate the funds.  Either way, one will click.  Good morning.



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