Advice on taking advice

This is all about general advice when starting out...professional advise is a whole new ball game.

You have an idea and you don't want to tell anyone for fear of it getting copied...this is healthy paranoia and it is good to keep your ideas close to your chest...the problem is that you can only trust the people you know and unfortunately this leaves you wide open to all types of advice like these...

• People that mean well but really have no idea what to do 
• People that have some idea but want to protect you from "failure"
• People that have paranoid conspiracy theories that justify commenting on life but not living it
• People that know what they are saying but have ulterior motives
• Super conservative advice
• Super risky advice
• Extremely good advice at the right time (I hope this happens for you)
• and people that rave on and on when they've had a little drink or two (including me and most people I know)

So that covers pretty much everyone, what now?   You simply choose two people you trust, make sure you choose them because you respect their opinion...keep in mind, as your business and experience grows you should be looking for somebody you respect that knows more than you on certain subjects so your advisors will change.  

Try and get two opposites ie a conservative person and a risk taker...they don't have to know each other.

The idea is, when you need an opinion (advice) you can ask the same question of both and find a middle ground...then here's the important bit...YOU make the decision.  

Some easy rules - Never ask for advice always ask for an opinion.  Make sure you take an opinion (advice) as just that...it is not an order because as said above you make the decision and finally, always remember that the decision was made with all the information available to you at the time...so stick by it, move on and don't regret it by using 20;20 hindsight.

So it may not be an origional idea...it doesn't matter

Don't let the fear of not being first deter you...and if you are first don't let the fear of it being copied deter you either.

The original Hydropal Patent was filed on Friday the 31st of May 1995...on the following Monday the 3rd of April 1995 a guy called Jack Nohren filed a Patent for the same concept but a different way of making a filtered sports bottle, in the USA...that's three days difference across the other side of the world by a guy 50 years older than me and a completely different upbringing...I still find it incredible  (just for the record my patent covers the single best way but there is always another way).

So think about it...there are 6.7 billion people in the world so you can bet a whole pile of money that at some point somebody else has come up with the same idea as you...what makes the difference is your 100% belief you are going to make it work and the perseverance to pursue it.

What to expect from this blog...

So why would you bookmark this blog?  If you have an idea, had an idea, want an idea and need to try and learn from somebody else's mistakes then you might want to read this and even if you take away one thing that helps you then that's worth it for me and for you.

The blog posts are short and sweet.

So if your from another Country and you think NZ is a bunch of sheep and nice scenery but not much else then you are both quite right and quite mistaken.  We are leaders in technology across many different fields.  Large corporations use us as test markets for new technology products as we are very quick adopters of technology.

No matter where you come from the challenges will be similar...