Man With a Plan

Aug 31, 2016
Self Growth

I play a little game with my brothers call Million Dollar Idea. The whole idea behind the game is that if you can come up with one million ideas that are worth a million dollars each, then even if you have a one in a million chance of becoming a millionaire, then chances are you will become a millionaire. That may be a bit of a tongue twister and perhaps a brain twister, but the idea boils down to a fun exercise of coming up with potential business plans and strategies. For example, what if we made top ramen more refined and luxurious, for those college students that are on a budget but still want to eat well. The ramen could have more than just noodles, or is organic, or whole wheat, or some other unique feature that would appeal to a slightly different clientele than those that eat top ramen. It can have unique flavors, vegetables, sauces, oils, and a medley of proteins. Surely we would make millions.

Well after a few months of this game, my wife challenged me to actually write out a business plan and proposal. I took her up on the proposal, because who honestly does not like a good challenge.I had toyed around with so many ideas already it made sense to take my favorite idea to the next level and create something more formal, to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the idea. I found a template online and sat down to begin writing. To my surprise, the template was Twenty-Nine Pages long! Wow, I had no idea that the plan would take this long to actually develop. Having a 29 page template would likely mean that the business plan would be 50 or more pages and may take days or weeks to create. As I begin reading through each of the prompts on the template, I realized how undeveloped our Million Dollar Ideas actually were. It took much more time to figure out financing, competitive advantages, growth in the industry, etc. Even my favorite idea would require much more time and energy before it can become worth of a million dollars. What I also noticed was that although some of the prompts had features that I had not considered before, they were questions that can be answered with additional research. I can find industry growth charts and stock values of companies a proxy on growth. I can research wholesale acquisition cost and price per square foot on real estate rentals. There is so much that I still need to learn but this does appear to be a worth challenge worth taking up.

On a side note, I had previously attempted to write an app for Android. Since the bug incident, I have uninstalled and re-installed Android Studios and the Java Development Kit but the program still will not boot. I am starting to lose heart that I will become a programmer, but for now I have more pressing issues and a business plan to write.