Unscripted: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Entrepreneurship pdfdrive com

6. THE USE MYTH
Did you hear about the atheist who sold thousands of dollars in Bibles? Toast
the champagne glass—true story. How about John Sylvan, the founder of Keurig
K-Cups? He recently reported that he doesn’t use them.
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Me? I spent ten years in the limo business. Know how many times I’ve rented
a limousine? Once. My friend owns a hunting business. Know how many times
he went hunting? Never. Another friend? He owns a pet business, and yet he
owns no pets. You see, it states nowhere in the entrepreneurial rule book that
you have to be an avid user of your product in its industry. Yes, you must believe
in your product and its superiority. You must be a fan of its value to the world,
but you yourself? 
The use myth
holds that only other people need to find it
valuable; you do not.
Opportunities hold no prejudices. Solved problems and filled needs don’t care if you
love an industry or use the product. Women can sell products for men and vice-versa.
FINDING “FASTLANE” IDEAS (13 WAYS)
Finding 
Fastlane
ideas and creating value comes from one of two sources:
1.
Innovation: You blaze your own path and do something never done before.
2.
Improvement: You tread an existing path and do something being done
already but do it better by skewing value attributes.
For the beginning entrepreneur not named Elon Musk, innovation is the
least likely to succeed but the likeliest pursuit. Innovation entails anything new:
an invention, a board game, a fashion accessory—any product or service never
offered before. On the other hand, improvement is taking something that already
exists and doing it better or differently. 
Improvement is where most new business
opportunities reside.
When I started my company in the aggregation and lead-generation
business, I deployed a combination of both. At first, I thought my idea was a
blockbuster idea until I learned other companies did something similar.
However, instead of foisting the crowded-room myth, I moved ahead and simply
opted to IMPROVE what the other companies were doing, and not doing.

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Then I added INNOVATION. I was the first company in the space (and
quite possibly in any space) to abolish the pay-per-listing model and adopt a pay-
per-lead model. Keep in mind, this was the nineties, when animated gifs and
database functionality were considered technologically advanced. As a result, my
company attracted paying advertisers by the truckload and grew practically every
month—for the next ten years.
If you’re in “I need an idea” mode, the focus shouldn’t be either innovation
or improvement but whatever the market tells you. Don’t fight the tape. The
market is a fluid, dynamic body of information. It speaks often. When it does,
listen. Determine if YOU can fill its needs. Most of the market’s demands can be
met with little to no capital.
#1: LANGUAGE
So how do you hear the market, its demands, and its problems?
It’s as simple as learning its language.
The market speaks a language of negativity and selfishness. And there’s
plenty of that, eh? Remember, the market is a spoiled brat, and it wants what it
wants. Any complaining, whining, and dissent is a potential opportunity.
Here are opportunity's code words: