I have met many great people with great ideas who take action to work towards their dreams. But somehow, these people never realize what they set out to achieve. What is stopping them from being successful? These people have a great attitude. They have good ideas. And they don’t just sit on their ideas and do nothing. They work hard on their ideas. But they just don’t seem to be getting anywhere.

I have a friend who is a very smart guy. He has always had a great entrepreneurial spirit. He has been in business for years. He has very good networks and is very good at selling. But the truth is, he’s still broke. I’ve always wondered why a smart and enterprising guy like him still doesn’t come up with anything great after years of effort.

Finally, I have had my conclusion. There are a few main reasons for the results you are getting. But today, I’m only going to talk about one of them. The number one problem with this friend of mine is that he is a opportunist. Now, I’m not saying there’s nothing wrong with seizing an opportunity when it presents itself. In fact, that’s what you should do.

But this friend of mine is an opportunist who seizes every opportunity that comes his way! Now that becomes a problem! You see, making a single idea work takes an enormous amount of time, effort, and energy. So how do you expect to work on a few ideas at the same time? No way!

The only way you can make an idea a success is to STAY FOCUSED on that idea! If you have absolute faith in your idea, then you should keep working on it until it becomes a success! The worst thing you can do is get distracted by another idea and walk away while you work on the current idea.

“Business opportunities are like buses, another one always comes.” -Richard Branson

Opportunities are all around us. They are everywhere if you look hard enough. But you can’t take care of all of them at the same time. You have to make a decision and stick with it like it’s all you have. And the choice has to come from your passion. I have talked about following your passion many times on my blog because that is what I truly believe in and it is also what many successful people believe in.

If you could take an idea and turn it into a success, you would have all the wealth coming your way. All you need is a great idea. Now let’s take a look at how some entrepreneurs made a fortune from a single idea. Some of these ideas may even seem silly.

Also, some of these ideas were original, while for some, the idea was to take advantage of someone else’s idea.

Here are some original ideas:

o Million Dollar Landing Page

This has to be one of the dumbest but brilliant million dollar ideas!

In 2005, when Alex Tew, the founder of MillionDollarHomePage.com, came up with this million-dollar idea, he was just 21 years old and preparing to start his first semester of college.

At the time, he was thinking of a way to pay his school fees and began by asking himself a simple question: “How can I become a millionaire?” Just twenty minutes later, she got the answer from him: sell a million pixels of ad space on a website for $1 each.

After launching his website, he managed to sell a million pixels in just 5 months to earn $1 million!

Incredible!

o Stones for pets

This is another seemingly ridiculous but brilliant idea that helped its creator become a billionaire. In 1975, the idea for Pet Rocks was conceived by advertising executive Gary Dahl. This single idea had made Dahl a billionaire in just 6 months.

Dahl founded a company called Rock Bottom Productions. The company imported gray pebbles from Rosarito Beach in Baja California, Mexico, and sold the rocks for $3.95 each after repackaging them as live pets. The complete package even came with a ‘Pet Training Manual’ containing instructions on how to care for pet rocks! What a novel idea!

Dahl was estimated to have made over US$15 million from these rocks. And that’s estimated to be around $56 million in today’s money.

or Everything men know about women

By now you should be convinced that even seemingly silly ideas can make you a millionaire. If you need more proof, here’s another good example. At the age of 21, Cindy Cashman self-published her first book, titled ‘Everything Men Know About Women’ under the pseudonym ‘Dr. Alan Francis’.

Since then, this book has sold over a million copies, making Cashman a millionaire in the process. But the amazing part of this book is that it is completely blank! Yes, you heard right. It is a blank book.

It’s meant to be humorous: that men know absolutely nothing about women! Guys… If you got the joke, you’ll know why the women bought the book in trucks to give it to their friends.

Following this initial success, Cashman has since published another 10 best-selling books. One of which is ‘The Book of Smiles’. It is simply a book that collects images of all the different smiles in the world!

That really is one hell of a creativity!

or ebay

In 1995, 28-year-old Pierre Omidyar founded Auction Web as a collectibles auction website after his wife told him about her hobby of collecting and trading Pez dispensers.

Almost immediately after launch, Auction Web enjoyed a huge amount of traffic. People started auctioning a wide range of products on the website for free.

After Omidyar started charging a small fee for the service and rebranded Auction Web as eBay, he was making so much more money than his job that he decided to quit and focused on developing his website.

Three years later, in 1998, eBay went public and Omidyar became a billionaire overnight.

Today eBay has approximately 84 million active users worldwide and the total value of items sold on eBay in 2007 was almost 60 trillion US dollars!

And here are some ideas on how to take advantage of other people’s ideas:

or McDonald’s

Ray Kroc is widely known as the founding father of the world’s number one fast food chain, McDonald’s. But the real founders are Dick and Mac McDonald, also known as the McDonald brothers.

Kroc had always had a great entrepreneurial spirit and immediately saw his golden opportunity when he discovered McDonald’s restaurant in 1954 in San Bernardino, California.

The day after meeting the McDonald brothers, he told them how he thought they could expand their successful restaurant into a national chain. When the McDonald brothers asked Kroc who would do that for them, Kroc replied, “Well, what about me?”

And the rest is history.

McDonald’s today employs nearly 500,000 employees worldwide and generates an annual global turnover of approximately 20 trillion US dollars.

or Chicken Soup for the Soul

The book ‘Chicken Soup for the Soul’ has sold more than 8 million copies and has made its authors, Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, multimillionaires.

However, the authors did nothing more than write the introduction to the book. The stories in the book were simply a compilation of stories they collected from other people.

And since then they have produced numerous volumes of the ‘Chicken Soup’ issue. Many of the books are aimed at a specific audience such as ‘Chicken Soup for the Mom’s Soul’, ‘Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul’, ‘Chicken Soup for the Horse Lover’s Soul’ etc.

So can you see now that all it takes is just one idea to become a millionaire, and maybe even a billionaire?

And it doesn’t even have to be a revolutionary idea. All you need is a simple idea.

Stick to your idea. If you really believe in your own idea and stick to it, you can do wonders.

Regards~