I enjoy coming up with ideas for new businesses. My friends inevitably point out why they won’t work, but I ignore them and just marshal on. I’m sure someone tried to tell Henry Ford that his assembly line wouldn’t work. And then went back to doing oil changes while Henry made his mark and became fabulously wealthy.
My first big idea involved cars. One day I saw a kid wearing a beanie with a little fan that spun in circles as he strolled down the street. My breakthrough idea was to put similar fans behind the grill and on the roof of automobiles, thereby creating a wind-powered electric car. A friend pointed out something about insufficient electrical generation and energy transference.
Science sucks. So do friends who are smarter than you and big words like “transference.”
My next stroke of genius arrived in the waiting room at the optometrist. As I read through a magazine I realized that someone should print copies of the magazines with the words slightly blurry. It would be a great way for optometrists to sell more glasses, maybe even some pricey eye surgeries.
I don’t know how that one got shot down. Probably something about fraud. But that didn’t matter, because I was already onto the next big idea.
One day I was browsing in a book store and I saw a book from a lesser-known author with an endorsement from a famous one on the cover. I was glad for the guy. But I also had a brilliant insight – every author would kill for an endorsement from Stephen King or John Grisham, but those are hard to come by. Well, I thought to myself, why does the endorsement have to come from those authors? There are lots of Stephen King’s and John Grisham’s out there. Just look in a phone book, every big city probably has at least one.
So here’s what you do: you set up a business that offers free books to people who share a name with a famous author. You get paid by authors to send their books to these people. They read the book and come up with a quote.
And when Stephen King (who is an accountant in Florida) says, “Billy Jones is brilliant. He’s the John LeCarre for a new generation” you slap that on the cover of Billy’s book.
Technically, it’s not fraud. But you’d probably get sued into the ground, because lawyers suck. But you could track down guys named Jon Grisham or Steven King and get endorsements from them.
Oh well, it’s back to the old drawing board.
Maybe you should just get a fan of Stephen King to write the review. They could say that they liked it even better than King’s books, because the blurry text made it even spookier!
We need people like you Tom. Keep that thinking cap on!
I think this is a well-thought out marketing tool. However, if you have to say “technically it is not fraud” you are right, the lawyers will be banging down the doors. Worth a shot though! You are very clever!