Years ago when I first started in business I use to get frustrated when I let other people know about some of the new ideas that I was interested in. I would be so enthusiastic about a new business concept or idea only to have others tell me why these new ideas wouldn’t work.

To many people like to play it safe which in the long run is probably the most unsafe way to play. You see the longer you resist hearing the new ideas and concepts the bigger the chance you have of missing some of the best opportunities.

Albert Einstien explained this phenomenon best with his quote:

“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.”

Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
German physicist, Nobel Prize winner

It is the early adopters or the business owners that can truly listen and open themselves to see the potential of a new idea that ultimately win in business. Too many people take a wait and see attitude and by the time they see how successful the new idea is it is very hard for them to play catch up. Had they been open, listened and investigated the new idea and techniques available to them they would be much further ahead.

It is usually the people that are in the business that often cannot see the forest for the trees. It is your unpaid consultants (customers) that will always give you the best information you could ever get if we would just drop our defensiveness and baggage.

In one of the businesses I am in I see this phenomenon all the time. There will be a better machine for cleaning carpets that is cheaper, faster and more profitable and yet the resistance from our technicians is very high. Some sort of respond like Tim the Tool Man of TV sitcom fame and if it isn’t powerful enough or macho enough it isn’t good enough.

Now the customer really only has one concern and that is that their carpets are clean and they don’t care or even know what a carpet cleaning machine would really even look like. The technician on the other hand has this old outdated tape playing in his head that says this is the way we have always done it and this is the way we will always do it.

To give you an idea of how deep routed these issues can be I will give you an example. We have a new carpet cleaning machine that can make us up to $300.00 per hour profit compared to sometimes only $50.00 with the old one. The new machine is cheaper to buy and is also way less to run and maintain.

You would think with numbers like this it would be an easy sell to get cleaners to change over. Well it’s not and the early adopters are very low in numbers. Of courses in a few years from now these slower to think cleaners will change or they will be out of business.

Here’s the kicker about this phenomenon. By the time these other guys change, there won’t be as much profit in the new process because they were slow to change and missed the gravy boat. Of course the early adopters will be on to an even newer processes by this time and be lining their pockets with more profits and even newer opportunities. Do you know how expensive it is to be broke and stupid? I call this the stupid tax and I don’t think any intelligent business owner can afford to pay it.

Every business niche has these opportunities available to them. Are you an early adopter? Do you listen, investigate, analyze and take action because if you do you are in the top 5% of all business people, guaranteed.

So if you are getting resistance to your new ideas this just might be an example of you are on to the next big opportunity. Proceed to clean up the profits, listen to your customers and set your target on massive success. If you are a smart business owner train yourself to hear things first and then take action. Remember ‘What You Focus On Grows” Focus on the right thing and you will be paid a kings ransom for a lifetime.