Idea Mirage

An entrepreneur with an idea.

Idea Mirage

I sat at the end of a long conference table as I watched the CEO make his presentation.  This was an entrepreneur I had never met in person.  It was our first meeting and we had others Cooperative Venturers there, working as a team.

“You spent the whole time telling us about your product, not about your business model.”  I said as he concluded his presentation.

“Right!”  He replied.  “It’s the product that’s important.”

“Tell me why you think that.”  I continued on.

“Because it’s the best drug delivery system available!  That means people will want to buy it.”  He responded.

I can see why he believed that.  It’s a common misconception.  I haven’t met many entrepreneurs, especially first timers, who don’t believe the same thing.  In one way, they’re right.  And, in my experience they’re seeing only one part of the picture.

I call seeing this one part of the whole picture “Idea Mirage.”  That’s because it’s like the belief that one can see water on a far horizon in the desert.  A traveler believes the water is there because she can see it in the distance.  But, that belief doesn’t make it true.  Don’t get me wrong, I live in the desert and I know there’s water there!  It’s just not on the make-believe horizon!

The water is deep underground; you have to drill down to get access to it.  I know this first hand.  I live in a place where my ancestors came and tried to live.  They climbed over a mountain to get here.  They assumed it would be like the side of the mountain they came from.  Their side had a stream running out of the canyon.  It provided them with what they needed to live.  But, when they got on my side of the mountain there wasn’t a stream.  It was dry.  So, they climbed back over the mountain and built a community there.

I like to joke with people about this today when they come to my place.  “I can’t believe they couldn’t dig a well 320 feet!”  I laugh, know that if all I had was a shovel and a pickaxe I couldn’t have done it either!

Luckily, technology has changed over the past one hundred and fifty years. So, at the beginning of my project I hired a drilling company to come and work on my land.  They drove a huge truck with an extraordinary drill, to the location of my choice, and began to move earth.

They drilled and installed a casing, eight inch steel pipe, to keep the hole from caving in as they descended into the dry, hard ground.  After three or four days of drilling they hit pockets of water, but continued on until they hit a destination with adequate flow for my purposes.  Only then did they install a pump and connect it to the electricity I paid other people to deliver.

This same location, my place, looks completely different now than it did twenty years ago before the well and other things were constructed.  Now I have lush green fields where my beef cattle and horses grow fat and happy!  It’s a far cry from the parched, concrete like, ground that greeted me when I purchased it.  It’s no mirage! 

Here’s what I learned from the process of building an oasis in the desert.

The idea of having an oasis will remain a mirage without creating an infrastructure capable of bringing it into existence.  I talk with lots of people who tell me they’d love to have a place like mine and they have ideas as to what they could do there.  I get it.  And, they don’t take the time to build a plan with a team to make it happen.

The team is really important!  I hired the best well driller I could find.  He was hard to get!  In fact, after months of messages, he still wouldn’t return my telephone calls.  I finally resorted to driving until I found him and then I pulled my car in front of his truck so he couldn’t drive away without talking with me.  That one bold move allowed me to strike a deal with him.  If I had waited for him to return my call I’d still be waiting!  He was a key ingredient to bringing my creation into reality and I knew it.  I did what ever it took to get him on my team.

The other components to my team were easier to put together.  Still, I needed to hire all kinds of specialists.  I went through a vetting process to make sure I was getting the best possible help.  There was a time in my life when I believed I could learn to do anything, but working with selected, skilled artisans showed me that in order to create something lasting, beautiful and dynamic I needed to have extraordinary people working with me.

To overcome Idea Mirage a person needs to:

Have a vision of what they want to accomplish,

Create a sound comprehensive plan to get there,

Do what it takes to find the right partners,

Work with people of skill and commitment to cooperatively carry out their plan,

And, work with this specialized team for as long as it takes to create something special.

People who what to create something special don’t just have an idea.  They do more than just dream about it.  They create it with other extraordinary people, even if they’re in a desert.