One thing in life that I find frustrating is coming up with great ideas just a little too late (or not acting on them fast enough). President Bush was in town today, and I listened to his speech on the radio. He reminded me of one of those ideas.
Over a year ago, while I was unemployed and without health insurance, I came up with an idea that would benefit millions of small business owners and others who find themselves dealing with extremely high health insurance premiums. Large companies and their employees get health insurance at discounted group rates that small business owners and individuals can’t get. My idea to remedy that could have made me millions. I would start a cooperative that would buy insurance plans in bulk at large-group rates from the biggest providers and resell them to individuals at a small percentage above cost. The providers would get countless more customers, thousands of uninsured people could better afford coverage, and I get a few percent for my troubles. Everybody would win.
Those plans have been dashed during this election campaign as Bush pushes for “Group Health Associations”, which are basically what I wanted to start. It’s not a unique idea any more, and people with a lot more start-up capital than I will be able to get into the market and get it cornered long before I can.
Another money maker I hoped to get into was deep-fried Twinkies. I can’t say I came up with the idea, but I was part of an inner circle that could have made some good money off of it. A good friend of mine told me about the idea, which he came up with along with a friend of his. I came up with a recipe that made it tangible though. We talked about trying to get into the Minnesota State Fair with the idea, but my friend dragged his feet. He had talked to another friend in the food business who convinced him it wouldn’t be as successful as we hoped. Some six months to a year later, a guy in Brooklyn, NY was making news from coast to coast with his new concoction, the Deep Fried Twinkie. Before we knew it, someone was in the Fair with it and it was the hottest thing going.
Some time before we came up with that idea, another friend of mine, who works in the heating and AC business was telling me about an AC unit he installed in a mini-doughnut trailer. He said the owner claimed to take $200k in profits every year during the ten days of the State Fair. Mini-doughnuts being everywhere you look, and not nearly as novel as the latest-and-greatest new fare, I figured we could take close to a half-million.
Still another idea I had involved gasoline. This isn’t an idea that I ever thought would be cool to start a business in, but rather one that I thought would be cool to be a customer of. I thought it would be cool to pre-pay for as much gasoline as you want at once, and take possession of it as-needed. When gas was down to $1 per gallon and less just two years ago, you could have bought 10,000 gallons, which you’d still be trying to use up. As I thought about it, I figured you’re more likely to lose money than make it, as your customers would lock themselves into a price for a product that overall increases in price over time.
When I moved to Granite City, I found there was a business in town that does just that. You can buy as much gas as you want at that day’s price. They give you a card that you put in the pump when you get gas and it deducts the number of gallons you get from an account that you pre-paid for. There are people in town still getting gas at around $1/gallon because they bought it when that was the going rate.
I gotta jump on the next idea that comes to mind before it becomes too late. With a seemingly strong track record of marketable ideas, why work for a living?