The Big Idea behind every “Young Gun”
“The Big Idea is what makes you get up and reinitiate the process of building your dream whenever you hit an obstacle.”—Robert Tuchman
Technology, these days it is something we cannot live, breathe, or function without. Right now is the best time to be an entrepreneur and tackle your next big idea and dive in head first, to take advantage of starting your own business. Fifty-years ago your contacts remained in your regional and even local area. Today the vast number of people you can reach, communicate with, and do business with is global.
So what is “The Big Idea?” When we hear this we think, well it is something that doesn’t exist anymore, all the big ideas have already been created, and we are programmed to think that we have to work for the “Big Man,” instead of harnessing that idea ourselves. The problem is there actually is an absence of big ideas in an entrepreneur’s world. Even if you have all the access to all of the tools you could possibly need to launch, build, and grow your business, that business will not succeed if you see impossible-to-solve problems everywhere you look. Let’s take for example, Kevin Greaney, the CEO of Children’s Progress, a company that helps teachers and school administrators evaluate how kids are doing in the classroom. He harnessed his idea and believed in the opportunities of his company:
“We were already very interested in student assessment and student achievement. I had managed several small businesses in the educational field. My partner Eugene Galanter and I each had some strong opinions about the players who were already out there, these big for-profit publishers who controlled most of the market. They were doing their version of assessment: these big standardized, bring-a-number-two-pencil, fill-in-the-bubble tests. We knew that those kinds of tests had been developed in 1906, and they really hadn’t changed since then. We felt very strongly that those tests were just boring, that they didn’t really tap into the mind of a child being tested, and that they didn’t really tell the instructor much. We felt we could build a better tool because we were using principles that weren’t, you know, a century old. So we were pretty excited about student achievement, even before we formally started the business.”
Kevin Greaney’s Big Idea had to do with harnessing technology and using it to improve student achievement. My Big Idea mixed top businesses with top-tier sports and helping those companies enjoy the sporting events that I enjoy so much as well. The most important thing to remember about your Big Idea is to love it, in a way you want to be married to it. If you wake up every morning and the first thing you think about is music, check out the latest on new business ideas that connect with music. Research it, harness it, and make it your own. Always remember to add your niche to any idea that you have, stand out and be different. Love something and it will not fail, do not look at a closed door but rather finding a way to always keep it open, and the world is your oyster.
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When Robert Tuchman started his first business, Tuchman Sports Enterprises (TSE), he did so with no money and no investors and ended up on the Inc. 500 list of America’s fastest growing privately held companies.
Now President of Premiere Global Sports, Robert continues to guide his company as well as writing the series “The Show Must Go On” for ESPN.com, a monthly column for Entrepreneur.com called “Young, Fearless, and Fed Up” as well as a column called “On-Site” for Incentive Magazine, an industry trade publication for incentive and meeting planners. He is the author of The 100 Sporting Events You Must See Live, a sports travel book as well as Young Guns, The Fearless Entrepreneurs Guide To Chasing Your Dreams and Breaking Out on Your Own.
