Little Red Hen Problem

I'm having a "little red hen" problem.

Over breakfast with an old CPA friend recently I outlined a business idea I wanted him to work with me to develop. A comment he made once had caused the idea to happen to me in the first place.

Yes I believe that ideas happen to people. If an idea happens to a person that person needs to decide whether he's the right person for the idea or not. If he isn't he should hand it off to someone else or drop it altogether.

Several months before our breakfast I'd emailed my friend what I was thinking about and he consented to have breakfast with me to discuss it. His response to my email led me to believe he was interested.

He offered me his thoughts and concerns. They were all important issues. Potential areas of exposure. Business focus. Recruiting protocols. The like.

I asked him to work with me to develop the idea. He said I should develop the idea myself. He'd be happy to work with any clients I steered his way but he didn't really have the energy to build the business. I was disappointed in his response because I expected he would be interested. I'm glad he was frank up front. This saved each of us a lot of time.

Too many people go ahead with something they're not really very excited about because they think they "should" or they don't want to disappoint the other person but back out later because they just can't sustain the effort for the long haul.

I thought of the little red hen going all around asking people if they would help her bake a loaf of bread. "Not me," each said. So she baked it and everybody wanted a piece of it. She finally ate the whole thing herself.

Teams are better than individuals because we all have just 24 hours in the day which means we can only do so much. This number doesn't vary by race, gender, or wealth. Bill Gates has as many hours in the day as Tim Bosworth. We can do so much by ourselves. But two of us have 48 hours in a day. Four have 96 and so on. Plus we benefit from synergy and the increased creativity.

Most innovations are produced by teams rather than by one person paddling his own canoe. That's why I want a team. I don't want to go off and bake the bread myself.

Entrepreneurship is the life's blood of all my professional activities. It makes them go. And go read my mystery for free at wwww.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com or buy it from Amazon.com more cheaply than you can print it out.