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“Everyone who's ever taken a shower has an idea.It's the person who gets out of the shower, dries offand does something about it who makes a difference.”—Nolan Bushnell, Founder of Atari & Chuck E. Cheese
It’s National Entrepreneurship Week, a week that means a lot to us. Helping athletes, brands, and creatives become the best versions of themselves is at the heart of what we do because we count ourselves among them. We champion small businesses because we are a small business. We value creatives because we are comprised of creatives. We celebrate athletes because many of us are former athletes. In many ways, we’re helping people who look like us, talk like us, dream like us, and are in essence…us.
As a result, we want to go all out to applaud entrepreneurs and give helpful advice on how to turn your passion into purpose and, hopefully, your profession. One of the ways we’re doing that is through our blog. Every day this week, we will post about a topic surrounding entrepreneurship.
The first step in entrepreneurship is to have an idea, a hobby, or a passion. The best companies are born of ideas, necessity, innovation, and love. A company is a legal entity that engages in business; by definition, it’s not an idea, a process, or even a product. Your idea about flying cars is just that—an idea. Your method for manufacturing flying cars is just a process, and your flying car is just a product. However, the moment you take the idea, the process, and the product, form a legal entity, and get to work, you’ve got a business! The hard part is how to get from idea to “The Jetsons.” No worries, we’ve got you covered.
Once you’ve identified the catalyst, the next step is to do the research to determine whether you have a hobby or a hustle. A hobby is what you do simply because you want to. A hustle is what you do because you must, either due to socioeconomic pressures or because you can’t fathom a life without it. If at the end of the inquiry you believe you have a hustle, do the research and test the theory.
Ask your friends, family, and neighbors and combine their answers with your research to determine whether what you’re doing is novel, fresh, and profitable.
CAUTION: DO NOT TELL EVERYONE EVERYTHING, OR RISK HAVING YOUR IDEA STOLEN.
History is full of inventors who stole ideas and inventions they were credited with (e.g., Galileo, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison). Give as few details as possible to elicit an answer without giving away the entire operation. If it’s cookies, give them a taste, not a box or the recipe. We will discuss how to protect your ideas in depth in the series.
Once you’ve passed the “Friends and Family” stage, the next thing to do is to become legit (that’s a legal term), which we’ll cover in Part 2 of our National Entrepreneurship Week Series: Starting a Company. Thanks for reading, and come back tomorrow!
