To be a success you have to be the very best.
That is the common belief. That success comes from being incredibly clever, highly talented, and immensely creative. Or you must be truly innovative, an ahead of the curve inventor, or plain genius.
In other words success comes from special people doing or forming something special. Special, ground breaking, or through some life long dedication that finally bore fruit decades later.
This may sound familiar (unless you are a young TikToker or YouTuber who believes it can all come overnight viral style).
But, it’s a myth.
True success is equally likely, if not more expected, from those who stick to the extra simple others have never ever considered.
Because simple often turns out to be superb!
Small but successful.
The very best ideas often stem from basic need.
Someone has a problem so sets up something simple to help that ends us being very lucrative.
It’s 2005 and British student Alex Tew was trying to find a way to help fund his studies. He was beginning a 3 year business management course at the University of Nottingham. Concerned that after graduating his student loan repayments would cripple his finances for a good many years to come, he needed to create some ongoing income. One evening while looking at a computer screen and seeing the many pixels in its resolution, he had a brainwave.
He decided to set up a simple basic homepage with a million pixels and sell each pixel to businesses for $1 each (he chose US Dollars as there were far more business organisations in the States). For their $1 the business could add their logo and a hyperlink so when a viewer to the site hovered over it they could click into that organisations website.
With set up costs of only $50 the site went live in August 2005. Word of mouth soon spread and Tew decided to send out a press release when he made his first $1000 which the BBC picked up followed by technology site The Register. Within a month sales were over $250,000, and by New Year’s Eve 1,000,000 pixels had been sold.
In total The Million Dollar Homepage grossed $1,037,100 in just 5 months.
From one simple idea looking at a tiny dot on a computer screen.
Scramble for Success.
Scrambling eggs was one on the first cooking skills we learnt in the past.
A simple task our parents taught us to help us start to make our own food. But, that simplicity seems to have disappeared.
On YouTube today over 17 million people have viewed a simple video on how to scramble eggs. Add to that nearly 6 million have watched a video on how to change a flat tyre on a car. And 3 million needed a video to be able to change a lightbulb.
Surrounded by every type of technology available, the modern mind is incapable of everything simple.
And that is where all the amazing opportunities exist in the world. We can’t do simple, so we seek out those who can or those that see the simple and turn it into something we need, want, or crave. And the simplest of all…is play.
When Joan Anderson went back to her native Australia in the late 1950’s she saw young children playing with wooden hoops made from left over barrels they spun round their waist. It reminded her of Hula girls from Hawaii and decided to make a version and called it the Hula Hoop. She thought it could be a perfect toy for kids everyone could afford. She took the idea back to the USA and used plastic instead of wood to keep costs low and for safety and to make them lightweight and easy to use.
The product flew off the shelves and in America alone it sold in excess of 25 million hoops in the first two months with sales of over $45 million. To this day they are still on sale and as of 2023 more than 21 million hoops were still being sold each year.
One massively lucrative product developed by one simple case of watching children play.
It’s all simple, and it’s all out there!
Simply Look.
The best ideas respond to our lives.
They match what we need, what makes our life less difficult, or support how we live. Try and find someone who would walk your dogs, look after your garden, clean your house, or do your ironing twenty years ago and you’d be hard pushed.
As life changes all manner of ideas for services and products spring up to match that change. It has always been this way. With life now fast changing at a pace even MORE ideas will be required as society evolves in this technological age.
With a growing reliance on technology we have taken our eye off simplicity even though we will never replace its presence in our lives. Which is why millions want to know how to scramble eggs or pump up a tyre or even how to find the trip switch after a power cut**.
If you keep your eyes open everywhere you go, in the end simple will leap out at you.
The glaring gaps that haven’t been filled by an idea or concept because we’re moving so fast no-one else has spotted it. It won’t happen overnight but slowly and surely, what’s missing will appear. What most people don’t have that you have worked out you can create or offer.
Spotted it in the size of a dot on a computer screen or children playing with makeshift plaything.
Make the shift yourself, look for simple and simple may bring you major success!
**1.4 million watched a video on YouTube to able to do this!
Photo attributes – Free to use under Pixabay Content License by Frameworld and TungArt7 and elvina.
References – Wikipedia – The Million Dollar Homepage.
bbc.co.uk/worklife – The man behind the million dollar homepage.
bbc.co.uk- Unsung hero behind hula hoop.
Museumofplay.org – Hula Hoop.
