I had coffee with an entrepreneur yesterday. He's got a very small niche business that he's been working on for a year. It generates about 2K per month in revenue. He has some ideas for a business that he thinks could be big.
I asked him if he had a girlfriend. He did. I asked him if thought other women were hot. He did. Well, you know where this metaphor is going. I never met an entrepreneur running a business who didn't have other ideas for other businesses. In fact, I think that some of entrepreneurs best ideas for businesses come while they're running a business. The reason is obvious -- they're in the flow of a market and a set of problems and they can see opportunities relatively clearly.
The real issue is not having the ideas -- it's what to do with them....and if they're really compelling what to with the existing business. I told the entrepreneur I was meeting with to have coffee with his idea and maybe even dinner. I told him he didn't know enough about his idea to know whether he should break up with his current business to get into a relationship with the new idea. You get it. Date your ideas before going to bed with them.
