Driven to Business with Eddie Mayfield

Where do business ideas come from? My observation is they often come from what you already know. At least in my experience, the genesis of the opportunity rarely comes from a disciplined search process, rather it emerges from experience, background, and attitude.

The most successful ideas come from recognizing an opportunity while it’s in the process of forming.  Entrepreneurship University notes that this often springs from an observation of:

• A process that can be more efficiently performed
• An attractive new service or improvement in an existing service
• A business or geographic niche that is presently underserved

Opportunities can even spring from failure.  Perhaps the most famous example of this is from 1968 when 3M chemist Spencer Silver was attempting to develop a better, stronger  adhesive.

During his experimentation, he came up with microspheres, which allowed attached surfaces to be separated easily without tearing either surface.  Hardly the new strong adhesive he was searching for.

Several years later, one of his colleagues. Art Fry approached him about a possible use.  Fry sang in his church choir, and found it frustrating that the pieces of paper upon which he made notations about the songs fell out of his music folder.  He’d heard Silver talk about his microsphere adhesive and wanted to see if it would make his notes stick a little better.

From that came the now ubiquitous Post It Notes.  One of the most profitable and well known products ever developed by 3M. And it came from a failure.

Seeing opportunity in a field: Some years ago my good friend and colleague Larry was driving through North Georgia when he noticed a number of mobile homes parked in a field.  Most people would have just driven by, but Larry pulled over and determined who owned them and why.  Turned out they were left over from a government relief project.  Larry bought them at a great price, put them in a mobile home park, and began renting them.  Larry, who had a background in property management, saw opportunity where others just saw abandoned mobile homes.

John D. Rockefeller grew up in poverty, and never forgot his roots, even after acquiring great wealth.  He had a lifelong aversion to waste, and one of the things he hated wasting was a noxious by product of his kerosene refinery, known as gasoline.

Most refiners simply dumped the volatile and highly flammable liquid, some into rivers.  It is said that at one time, the Cuyahoga River in Ohio was so polluted with gasoline, that coals dumped from a passing steamship could set the river on fire.

Rockefeller began using gasoline to provide heat for his refining process, and developed methods of storage and processing.  When the automobile era began, Rockefeller’s Standard Oil was there to provide the fuel.  As the worldwide market for Kerosene declined, Standard Oil developed even more products such as paraffin and plastics from oil, as additions to his now burgeoning gasoline business.  A great example of spotting an opportunity all of his competitors missed.

We’ve seen this time and time again at our company, EMA Inc.  Where noticing opportunities to provide better service, led to new business opportunities, and in some cases, a completely new revenue stream.

What about you?  As Zig Ziglar used to say, “no one stumbles over anything sitting down.”  So, first of all, be engaged, and pay attention to the world around you.

When you see an inefficiency in your market, ask yourself “is there any way I can resolve that?”  Is there some niche that’s under served in your business category?

Be alert, stay positive, and seize opportunities.   If you don’t, your competitors will.

Eddie