Marketing

 by: Patrick Huey

Have you ever read the newspaper or watched the news on television and come across a story of some person who came up with an outrageous idea such a hula hoop, pet rock or glow-in-the-dark toy that made millions of dollars for its creator? Or have you ever heard about how someone put an ad in the newspaper and asked people to send him all of the spare change they had lying around the house so he could start a college fund, only to find out that he collected over a million dollars in spare change? Or recently, have you heard about a college student in the United Kingdom who was so desperate for money to pay his college expenses that he set up a webpage and sold advertising space by the pixel in order to raise cash? He called it "The Million Dollar Homepage," and while he hoped to make a million dollars from it, he thought it would probably just make him some spare change and lunch money. Well, within four months of launching his homepage, he reached his goal of a million dollars.

You probably look at these ideas and wonder to yourself, "Why didn't I think of that?"

The truth is this: we all have a million dollar idea floating around in our brain somewhere. Most of us just haven't spent the time to conceive it and put it into action. In fact, most of us haven't spent much time really thinking about anything. That's not to say that we don't think about things; sure, I've thought about how hot some of those "Desperate Housewives" are, or whether the Yankees and Red Sox really have a chance to dethrone the White Sox from the world championship. But how much real quality time have we spent thinking about what we truly want for our lives, or how we can make millions, or how to help others?

In a marketing class at some college somewhere, a professor asked his students to grab a notepad and spend 30 minutes writing down all of the words they could think of that started with the letter M. He told them that this appeared to be a silly exercise, but he asked them to do this anyway, and he told them to just put down every word that came into their head that started with M and not edit themselves. Sure, most people thought of words like man, meat, motor, mud, mail, moon, etc., but by the end of 30 minutes they had come up with words like Mesopotamia, millieu, metamorphasis, and menage. In fact, for several hours after the class was over, and in some cases days afterward, the students randomly thought about more words that started with the letter M. In other words, when the students were really forced to concentrate on their thoughts, new words would flow to them from out of nowhere.

If these students showed that by taking 30 minutes to think about words that started with the letter M, they could come up with new words that they hadn't even thought of before, then why can't this exercise be applied to other ideas? If you find yourself struggling with some way to make more money, improving your relationship, or finding solutions to problems, find a quite place, take a notepad, and spend 30 minutes jotting down whatever thoughts come into your head regarding making money, solving problems, etc. Just put down whatever comes to your head, don't edit yourself, and don't worry about whether the idea is silly or won't work. For instance, if you are looking for ways to make a million dollars, jot down all of the ways to make money. If you are looking for ways to make money by offering your services, spend that time thinking about all of the people who have problems that your services will provide a solution for. If you are looking to create and market an information product, think of all of the ideas that that would improve people's lives that people would be willing to pay for. If you find yourself having writer's block or come up short of ideas, don't worry, just push yourself through it. The whole focus of this exercise is to stimulate your mind into thinking of ideas that you have not thought about before, and once you have really exercised your mind, you will come up with ideas seemingly out of nowhere. And one of those ideas could make you over a million dollars.