Daily Archives: April 15, 2014

Extracting Gold.

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A friend has a great business idea. It is intended to help businesses sell more, to more, more often at higher prices (thanks Sergio Zyman for the “more” nugget). The fact-finding rigor is wide and deep but also thorough and quite brilliant.  A small component of the business idea — “how” fact-finding occurs — is also really smart. It is agile, contemporary and befitting of today’s social business. More importantly, it may be a potential business unto itself. A huge potential business. All it needs is to be productized, branded and packaged.  We’ll see how it all plays out.

A mentor of mine named Dick Kerr, the world’s first million dollar a year copywriter, once said “The idea to have an idea is sometimes more important than the idea itself.” Yes, he was a tippler. Anyway, his entrepreneurial point was to “do something” and good things will happen. In today’s craft economy one might say “make something” and good things will happen.

Brand planners are sometimes accused of overthink, head-in-the-clouds pattern recognition, and inoperable observations.  But without all of that up front work, the big extraction can’t take place. Call it what you will – I often refer to it as the boil down – the big chucks of gold are there. They are gleaming and waiting to be found. You just have to start doing and making.  Peace.