But What If Someone Steals My Idea?
I went over to my friends to get my haircut, and he proceeded to ask me what I have been working on recently. I went on to tell him about Fixt App without thinking twice about it.
A few months later he was at my house to get some treatment from my wife, and I started to dig into his long term goals. He then told me of an excellent idea he wanted to start working on. I gave him some advice regarding how to market it and get the word out, and he hit me with the infamous line.
He said, “But Ian, what if someone steals my idea.” I just had to laugh, and I told myself I would just write an article about this to explain the issue with this thinking. He also went on to explain that months earlier he was shocked I just told him my idea so openly.
3 Reasons No One Will Steal Your Idea
People Have Their Own Dreams
In the Audio “The Secret” one of the many authors talks about how the magic of everyone going after what they want in life is that we all don’t want the same things.
We all don’t want the same spouse
We all don’t want the same car
We all don’t want the same dream
Always remind yourself of this when you feel like someone is going to steal your idea. If tell me what you are working on, I am not going to take your idea no matter how good it is because I have my own aspirations.
I am not going to stop everything that I am doing and have been working on just to steal what you just told me.
People Want to See You Succeed
We live in a world that pushes hate more than love, so this point may be hard for you to wrap your head around. If you don’t feel like you are around people who want to see you succeed, YOU ARE WITH THE WRONG PEOPLE!
Tell people about your thoughts and most of the time you will realize that people will be excited, and they will want to see how they can help. When I started Fixt, I had a young lady offer to be my accountant, I had a few different people offer their legal services, and it was all for free just to help us.
When you get people to this point, it is a great thing for you and your business. It means that people believe in you. People don’t help things they don’t believe in.
You Place too Much Value on an Idea
I only understand this from failure. Every business I have ever start has been a “good idea” in theory, so what went wrong? There have been plenty of ideas that seemed promising yet the company never made it to the top. Then there are companies like Google, who are not even the first to think of an idea, and yet they still end up on top. HOW?
The reason this happens is that of the execution of the idea. The idea is not valuable so if you tell someone about it have a small portion of your success. I can tell people all day about FIXT, but it does not mean you know our business plan. I can tell people about how I run social media accounts for sports and health start-ups, but that is a small part of it.
The execution of the idea is the gold, and you can never really tell someone about your execution because it is always changing. A new business is like water that changes shape based off of its external environment.
If someone can steal your idea and execute it quicker and better than you, then your idea was not that great.
Tell Everyone What You’re Working On
It is Never too Early to Start Marketing
There is no such thing as marketing that begins too early. Once you have an idea, you need to start telling people about it. This is the main reason that people have successful or horrible product launches. A product launch is all about getting people excited before hand.
Think of movies and how they market their product. Does a film that is coming out put their first trailer out a week before it comes out? No way.
The Movie Marketing Process
- Starts from the second they announce they are even filming it (2 or 3 years out).
- Announcing of cast (2 years out)
- Release of a picture (2 years out)
- First, 30-second trailer that does not reveal much ( 1 or 2 years out)
- First long form trailer ( 6 months out)
- Last trailer in months leading up (2 months out)
- Deals with restaurants like McDonalds ( 1 Month out)
- Cross branding ( 1 month out)
- Interviews and increase in commercials (2 weeks out)
Do you still think marketing can be rushed? I am not saying that the marketing process should be two years. Moveis take a long time to make, so it is understandable for the product. This is execution and has nothing to do with an idea.
When my brother and I released our clothing line about six years ago, we only started marketing a month before the product, and our release date was not great!
People who are scared to tell people their idea do a horrible job of selling their product. They tell no one about it until it is too late. What happens is instead of people buying on day one, your first year in business is like the pre-release marketing that should have been done a year earlier. If you can survive that year that most businesses don’t, you will see sales start to come in.
After getting this wrong so many times, I did it much different with both FIXT and 9inepoint.
With FIXT, as soon as we started pursuing the idea, we put a splash page on a website to collect emails, and we started our social media accounts on both Twitter and Instagram. We did this to test the idea. The reality is that if no one wanted to follow an Instagram account geared towards keeping athletes healthy, then no one would want to use an app that it takes months to build.
We waited to see how the Instagram account went before we started creating more. I talked with the customer to determine if they would pay money for this. Once that feedback was good, we went all in.
With 9inepoint, it started a bit different. I personally just began on Upwork. I had a company from Italy reach out to me about running their social media accounts. That was a $500/month job that I did not have the time for.
From there I found a few more clients and realized that this could be viable. I did this all with no website or advertising. I just had my social media stats to talk about and the will to go out and get it.
I told people what I was before I became that and I think success requires that type of belief.
Feedback is Vital
Telling other people means that you get to hear what people say about what you’re doing. If people understand your idea and immediately think that you are on drugs, find out why. It gives you the opportunity to listen to some truth and gives you perspective. The worst thing you can do is have an idea and put time and effort into building it when you are the only one that knows about it.
Once you get in this habit, you set yourself up for long-term success. As long as you are willing to talk with the customer, you will have a grip on what is happening with your client.
When you’re an entrepreneur, you don’t work for yourself. You work for your clients and the second you stop listening to them you die. Build a good habit from day one and get in their face.
Sales Pitch Practice
The act of getting in the face of a customer means that you begin to understand how to tell people about it. It took me months and talking to hundreds of people before I got my elevator pitch down for FIXT. “FIXT is a mobile app that provides athletic injury solutions by connecting injured athletes with the best therapists in the community.”
Is this answer perfect, no, but is it pretty darn good, I think so! I know this because of telling people about my idea. The goal is to get them to smile.
If you tell them, and they have to think, go back to work!
If you tell them, and they don’t get excited, go back to work!
If you tell them, and they have to ask, 50 questions go back to work!
The sales pitch or elevator pitch for your business should be quick, but anyone who hears it should have a fantastic picture in their head of what you do.
If you hide your idea for six months and then come out and just start telling people, you will be rushed in your approach, and you will fail.
Ian Warner is a former Olympian, CEO of FIXT APP and Is Finished Writing His Second Book. If you are interested in being updated on this book, sign up below!
