Submitted by: SALIM OMAR

You ve got a great small business idea. It s groundbreaking. Unique. Sure to succeed. The smart thing to do is to keep it a secret, so no one can steal it before you offer it to a grateful world. Right?

Maybe not.

Once you re on the road to success, you may need to protect some of your trade secrets. But when you re launching a brand new start-up, you need all the help and advice you can get.

Here s why you should loosen the padlocks on that box of business secrets:

– Your idea isn t really unique. No matter how brilliant you are, chances are, someone else has had the same idea as you. And if you haven t heard about it, maybe it s because the idea didn t work. Your job is to find out why it failed. This is not an exercise in self-discouragement and negativity. You need to look for every weak spot so you can avoid missteps. Keep in mind, every good idea has weak spots, so looking for them and finding them doesn t mean your idea will never work it just means you have to be clever enough to think ahead of the potential crises and shore things up in advance. Solve the problems before the problems jump out in the dark and surprise you, and ultimately take you down. All of this means opening up about what you re trying to do, so others can help you identify the problems and solutions.

– Execution is the real key. Ideas don t succeed because they re creative or different. What s important is how well they work the experience your end user has. The more input and feedback you gather, the better you can meet the needs and expectations of your customers (whomever they are). This means being willing to test your idea, if at all possible, on your target consumers. Find out what works for them and what doesn t. Do they need, or desire, what you re bringing to them? Is it being delivered in a way that best serves them and their lifestyles?

– You can t do everything yourself. Businesses rarely fail because of competition stealing an idea. They re far more likely to crash and burn because their founders didn t know how to manage growth. Once you ve got the basic concept down, you ll need talented people to help you get off the ground, and you won t find them unless you re willing to share the details of your plan.

So if you ve been asking yourself, How do I keep people from stealing my idea? , maybe a better question to ask is, who should I share my idea with? Who can help me make it work?

I m not telling you to take out an ad in the New York Times, detailing your idea to the world. But a savvy entrepreneur will unveil his idea to a few key people who can help him or her launch with a real bang.

Without a little sharing, your good idea could die with you or suffer a weak launch and fall flat, leaving someone else to come along and identify what didn t work for you, and ultimately make a success of your brainchild. Don t let someone else build an empire with your scraps the success of your big idea should go to you!

About the Author: Salim Omar, author of “Straight Talk About Small Business Success In New Jersey”, specializes in providing accounting, bookkeeping and tax services to small business owners and professional practices in NJ. Learn how Salim can help you drastically reduce your taxes at

OmarGroupCPA.com

Source:

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