In this Ask Evan episode, Evan Carmichael responds to a viewer, Dave, an inventor who was previously exploited after sharing his product idea. Evan advises Dave to strike a balance between protecting his concept and sharing it selectively to attract help. He stresses that successful entrepreneurs rarely work alone; they recruit qualified teammates who can execute the vision. While caution is needed—avoid broadcasting the idea indiscriminately—complete secrecy prevents the formation of a viable business. Evan argues that execution matters more than the idea itself, so surrounding the idea with a capable team is essential. He concludes that the benefits of sharing with the right people outweigh the risk of theft, encouraging Dave (and other viewers) to move forward with measured openness.
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Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael. Welcome to another edition of Ask Evan. In today's episode, I'm going to answer a question from one of our readers, Dave, who is an inventor, created a product about 15 years ago and got burned. Somebody basically took his idea, ran with it, and made money, and he got kind of screwed over there. And now he's worried about sharing his new ideas and being able to build a business off of them. So he wanted my advice on what to do. So, Dave, my advice, uh, you do have to be cautious with who you tell your business idea to, so you don't want to broadcast it everywhere online and clearly lay out exactly how you're going to be successful with your company. But at the same time, you can't do everything yourself. You don't see successful entrepreneurs do everything themselves, so you're going to have to go out and get help. And if you don't tell people about your idea, nobody's going to be able to help you out. And if you hoard it yourself, you're not going to be able to turn it into a successful business. So you're going to have to tell some people about it and recognize that you need help beyond what you know how to do with your business. So with every entrepreneur, every successful story, you see that they've gone out and gotten people to join them and help them and, you know, they build a business together. So you will have to go out and tell people about it. And I appreciate that you've been burned in the past and It could be difficult for you to get out there and, you know, trust people, but that's going to be part of the process. Because if you don't do it, you're going to hold on to it yourself and you're not going to be able to turn it into a successful business. So you do have to get out there, you do have to tell people about the business idea, and recognize that the benefits of telling people and the odds of somebody being able to help you out far outweigh the risk of somebody coming up and taking the idea and running with it. The execution is far more important than the idea for most businesses. So it's more about how you run with the idea than the idea itself. And to do that, you need a really qualified team around you. So you have some expertise that you bring to the table, you created the idea, you have some ideas on how to make it work, but you're going to have to surround yourself with a team who can help you take it up to that next step. So hopefully that's convinced you to want to get out there a little bit and share your idea. Obviously you want to be a little bit cautious over who you share it with, but You will have to get out there and tell people about the idea. So I hope that helps, Dave. For everybody else, if you like the video, please give it a thumbs up. I love seeing those thumbs ups come in. And if you have any other thoughts to add to this, please add a comment below the video, and we'll see you on the next episode.
