Herman: John L. Herman Jr., Author

Ideas need Action

You want to lose weight. You want to get in better physical shape. You want to cook your favorite meal. You want to plan a trip. All of these ideas you have require action. And you know that. The minute the idea pops into your head you realize you have to do something before any of those ideas become reality. Yet when people have a business idea, or an idea to make money, they wonder why it doesn’t just happen.

A man pulls into a McDonald’s Drive-In lane to get lunch. He is sitting behind an old pick-up truck loaded with trash and heading for the local dump. As the man glares through the windshield it hits him that everybody has junk to get rid of. He needs extra income for his family. The next week he spends ten thousand dollars on a used truck and starts 1-800-GOT JUNK. There are no national players in this field. He becomes the one. Because he took action, and didn’t just keep sitting there waiting for money to fall out of the sky. Today 1-800-GOT JUNK has franchises all over America and hundreds more overseas, and the founder of the company never went to college and just turned 36 years old.

Back when I was 33 years old I saw a Snap-On tool truck pulling into a car dealership to sell tools to mechanics and I parlayed that into Auto-Guard Auto Products which had similar trucks selling 150 different compounds, cleaners, solvents, waxes, and products that all car dealers needed including rust-proofing and undercoating. And while my idea worked…we collapsed from undercapitalization…a common cause of business failure. But rather than just quit when I went broke…I thought of another idea and just kept going forward…in other words, I didn’t just think of what to do, I was willing to take action to make things happen.

• Posted: 21 January 2008
• Comments: 1
• Category: Running a business

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