Risk & Business Magazine Miller Insurance Magazine Winter 2018 | Page 21

GREAT IDEAS NEED GREAT IMPLEMENTATION
and mechanical devices that allowed
consumers to record their favorite
television show onto a cassette tape.
One year later, JVC introduced VHS, a
rival format and Betamax began a long
downward spiral into obsolescence. Why?
JVC’s better implementation!
Most people agree Sony made the better
product. Betamax video quality was
superior to JVC’s VHS. Sony was able
to satisfy the technical purists, but JVC
seemed to satisfy the rest of the world.
The JVC design was simpler, making
manufacturing easier and with fewer parts.
Fewer parts brought the weight down
considerably, bringing transportation
costs down. And the simpler design was an
incentive for other electronics companies
to license JVC’s technology.
But sometimes the simplest of decisions
at the corporate level are the ones that
resonate most with consumers. A Betamax
tape held one hour of recorded video, the
perfect length for a TV show. The VHS
tape held two hours of recorded video, the
perfect length for a movie.
It didn’t take long for video rental stores to
pop up in nearly every city and town with
a sizeable population making the VHS
format the clear favorite. One year after
JVC launched VHS, Sony released its own
two-hour version of the Betamax tape, but
it was already too late. JVC had won the
war through superior implementation.
SOME DOS AND DON’TS
Got a great idea? Don’t be so in love with
it that you want to protect your idea
from what you perceive as competition.
That’s just crazy! Collaboration is the
name of the game. No entrepreneur
ever became successful on his own.
Teams of entrepreneurs succeed. Single
entrepreneurs with solid mentors or
entire support communities succeed.
Most importantly, entrepreneurs flush
with capital succeed. Investors want to
see how you’ve implemented your idea.
Work with them and they’ll work with
you.
Get your idea out into the marketplace.
Did you notice that in writing this article
I didn’t go into a lengthy explanation of
what implementation is, even though
it can incorporate hundreds of little
actions? I gave you a few key points (just
enough so you’d get the gist of what
I’m talking about) and then I moved
on. Do the same with your idea. Don’t
get bogged down with the little details
but do address them when they become
important.
Take a look at the competition in the ride
sourcing space as an example. Uber is the
name that’s become synonymous with
using your smartphone to hail a private
car instead of a commercial taxi. But they
weren’t the first company to do this. Others
came before and quickly faded away. Their
implementation sucked! Then for a while,
there was only Uber. Now there’s Lyft and a
host of other companies. Who will win and
who will lose? Keep an eye on how each
company implements their ideas.
IT’S ALWAYS ABOUT THE THREE 10S
It doesn’t matter how small the idea or
how big the company that implements
it, the success of any venture always boils
down to The Three 10s. People say “yes”
when they’re totally in love with you, your
product and your company.
This is an immutable law of my Straight
Line Persuasion System. +
All the best,
Jordan
Now let the testing begin. Your idea
might fail as you begin to implement it,
but that’s not the end of the world. You
might have to go back to the drawing
board, but now you’re that much closer to
understanding what really resonates with
customers.
BY: JORDAN BELFORT
In the 1990s, Jordan Belfort built one of the most dynamic and successful sales organizations in Wall Street history. During that time, he soared to the
highest financial heights, earning over $50 million a year, a feat that coined him the name “The Wolf of Wall Street.”
As the owner of Stratton Oakmont, Belfort employed over 1,000 stockbrokers and raised over $1.5 billion and started more than 30 million-dollar-
companies from scratch.
He’s acted as a consultant to more than 50 public companies and has been written about in virtually every major newspaper and magazine in the world,
including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, The London Times, The Herald Tribune, Le Monde, Corriere della Serra,
Forbes, Business Week, Paris Match and Rolling Stone.
Today, his proprietary Straight Line System allows him to take virtually any company or individual, regardless of age, race, sex, educational background
or social status, and empower them to create massive wealth, abundance, and entrepreneurial success, without sacrificing integrity or ethics.
Jordan’s two international bestselling memoirs, The Wolf of Wall Street and Catching the Wolf of Wall Street, have been published in over 40 countries
and translated into eighteen languages. His life story has been turned in to a major motion picture starring Leonardo DiCaprio and directed by Martin
Scorsese.
jordanbelfort.com
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