October 10th, 2008

Share the Gold but Keep the Diamonds

As an entrepreneur I am a firm believer of sharing knowledge, visions, thoughts, and even ideas with fellow entrepreneurs. Now I dont go running around sharing my ideas with every entrepreneur I meet, but I do make it habit to strategically share ideas with entrepreneurs who I believe share similar goals, desires, and ambitions as I do.

We all know other young savvy entrepreneurs, thats just a part of living the life of an entrepreneur: you meet a lot of like-minded people who are trying to make things happen with their lives, just like you. Ever since I started FTT I have met numerous entrepreneurs from all over the country. Its great and Im lovin every bit of it.

I wakeup in the mornings excited to see who Ill meet next and who Ill talk to that day. Every day is different. Its in the entrepreneurs blood to seek connections and build meaningful relationships with other peopleyou know, that little thing called networking.

The key is to never stop meeting as many people as you can. Make it a part of your daily schedule to try to connect to a new person. In doing so, youll be spinning a web of powerful connections that can really help your business one day when the time comes.

Now back to the original focus of this post (dont you just love tangents, I do): sharing ideas with other entrepreneurs. Ok, so youre really digging this entrepreneurial life and you have a-million-and-one ideas in your head just waiting to share with people to get feedback, support, advice, whatever.

Well before you go spilling your guts to just any entrepreneur you meet in a blog, chatroom, or forum, I would strongly suggest you consider thinking about how and who you plan on sharing your plans with.

This is the thing, if you have great ideas that youd like to tell a few of your entrepreneur buddies about to see if theyd possibly want to do a partnership, or simply just to get some feedback, then go ahead but please just make sure that these are people that you can trust; people who arent going to run off and implement your ideas in a week and come back saying: too bad, sucker! Ahahahaha

You must take circumspect actions in order to prevent people even people you consider your friends from stealing your intellectual property that you put in long hours to develop. Its not cool when someone uses your creative thoughts to pawn off as their own. If someone does it unknowingly, then thats a different story.

When I have ideas that I want to share with fellow entrepreneurs that I think may possibly want to partner with me, or when Im just seeking some helpful feedback, I always make sure to water-down the entire concept to a point where the idea really cant be stolen, or if the person attempts to steal the idea, he/she still wont know all of the details or the underlying concepts of the specific idea. Its definitely possible to share an idea without giving up all of your secrets. If someone does try to implement the watered-down idea, then good luck for them.

On the other hand, I do have a small group of entrepreneur friends that I am fully open with when it comes to sharing my ideas. These arent just any entrepreneurs that I met online or at a bar, they are people that I have developed strong relationships with; people that I have grown to trust and feel 100% confident that they wont stab me in the back.

Since I am a risk taker like most entrepreneurs should be I take the chance to be fully open with these selective entrepreneurs and I rely only on the trust that weve built. Sure, its possible that one day one of these trusted entrepreneurs may go off and implement something that I have shared with them, but I think that the positives will always outweigh the negatives.

Id rather risk my ideas and try to build a partnership with someone that can potentially lead to the creation of something so great and amazing than to play-it-safe and keep the idea to myself and not do anything with it at alltheres no fun in that. Of course, not all ideas will need to be shared, and there will be many instances when you can go at them alone without the help, feedback, or support from others, but Ive always been a fan of working with others and building small teams to work on projects synergy, babe!

Oh, I almost forgot about the dreaded non-disclosure agreement. You know, the contract that entrepreneurs carry around to have interested investors and partners sign to prevent them from stealing their idea and getting rich off of your brilliance.

Ha, I used to carry those agreements with me all over the place. I usually dont use them anymore unless Im really pitching an investor or venture capitalists whos interested in making an investment in my company or working for a piece of the pie. When I first started my company I thought that the only way to succeed was if I got a round of funding.

Oh man! I was so, so wrong about that. Lets not get it twisted guys, we do NOT need money from VCs to create our businesses. In fact, I think that youre better off not accepting capital and just trying to grow organically at first. Down the line it may make sense, but in the infancy stages of your business its not always wise to give up a huge stake in your company.

At the end of the day (love that clich!) youll just have to go with your gut and trust who you want to trust. Only you know best. But try and remember my watered-down method of presenting an idea to someone without going into any deep details or specifications of how things would work, and definitely dont go into your future plans for the idea if you think that its something that will blowup one day. Share the gold, but keep the diamonds.

What can I say? Just keep on waking up in the morning feeling excited to meet new entrepreneurs. If you arent already feeling excited about networking, then do yourself a favor and GET excited right now. There will always be other entrepreneurs out there who would be willing to partner with you and start a new venture. You just have to find them, so keep at it and take a chance by sharing some of your ideas with the right people and see what happens.

Share the Gold but Keep the Diamonds

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