Reach out to people in the industry you want to be a part of on LinkedIn. Send a personalized note to each person you try to connect with the note function when sending a connection request. Say something like

"Hey Bob, I'd like to connect with you since I see that you're in the oil and gas industry. Lets chat once we connect since I have a few questions about what you do!

Cheers,

Dompie"

Works almost every time. Then just talk to them through linkedin. It's free and only costs you a bit of time. If you like them enough, get their phone number or skype ID and call them. Ask them what problems they face on a daily basis. Do they need more drones for surveying pipelines? Do they need faster rail delivery? Do they have a shortage of welders? Are roughnecks not rough enough?

You can talk to any one you want to, and everyone has a cell phone, just go out there and get their info. Make connections until you meet the person you've been wanting to meet. Ask questions and provide as much value as you can and you'll have more opportunities than you can handle.

 

For cheap or free networking: find industry events or business clubs and offer to volunteer to help organize/work the check-in table. Not only do you get to talk to every single person and know who is coming, you get in free. Often you get to meet the speakers BEFORE everyone mobs them after their talk as you help mic them up/act as a concierge. Plus you can start to get a reputation as a reliable person quickly if you do a good job organizing.

(Always helps to know venue staff, too, which is something you start to learn.)

 

This. Couldn't have made it any simpler.

+Rep

 

I understand that you can get into conversations. I understand that these conversations don't result in closed deals. What I don't understand from your post is what your goals, talents, interests, experiences are. What do you add to the conversations? What do you hope to do in business? Make a lot of money of course, but how? in what way? by what criteria? What are you trying to sell to the people you're talking with, that they aren't buying?

 

Looks like "networking deal-maker of big ticket sales" might be a good way for you to go.

Check out Fox's discussion of selling a lead generation web site in the oil & gas industry for a lot of money. The web site wasn't fancy, but it was worth a lot of money because he knew how to present a drilling equipment company in a way that could help them make a few new sales. The equipment's expensive enough that only a few new sales means a LOT of money.

There might be some threads here about syndicating deals and doing fundraising. Oren Klaff's book Pitch Anything is all about Oren's a total stud of big sales presentations. It's also about the techniques and ideas he used to get into the big sales presentations, with lots of networking that got him the opportunity to raise lots of money and get paid well for it.

The Youtube channel Mergers & Inquisitions gives free samples of the training materials from Breaking Into Wall Street. Lots of stuff about how to build a financial model in Excel and how to endure 3 am sessions revising Powerpoint for a cranky boss. But also lots of stuff about how investment banking is all about sales: selling the owner of a company that the banker should get to pitch the deal, then selling the potential buyers that they should buy the company.

There are real estate discussions on this forum.

Also some stuff about buying & selling businesses rather than building them up from scratch.

These might give you a few more specific ideas that could help you narrow down what appeals to you.

 

A good way I've noticed is to just talk to people. You don't need to do that call people up and ask them what problems they have, that's kind of cringey and probably not too effective.

Literally just talk to people throughout the day at work and they'll bitch about their problems. Most people love complaining. Ignore the personal life problems, but you can find plenty of opportunity if you just listen.

"I want..."
"I wish someone would make..."
"Why hasn't someone invented..."
"They should..."

You get the point. If you can solve their problem, then you have a client and a good network/contact whatever.

I'll give you an example. I was reading my client's personal blog (client research) and saw he complained about a particular problem that EVERYONE in this industry encounters. It costs money and people just shrug and say, "Cost of doing business."

I figured out a solution to this problem. Working on building it now. It won't save the client a ton of money - maybe two thousand dollars per year - but it's 100% automated.

How easy of a sell do you think it is to call the client up and say, "I found a solution to this problem you mentioned on your blog."

You can, and should, scale this up with people facing much bigger problems than $2000/year, but the underlying concept remains the same.

Oil & gas is a high dollar industry, so you can find plenty of big problems. You just have to turn on your opportunity ears.

 

ideas are bull****

pick an industry that sparks your interest & solve problems in that, people over analyze the perfect idea to much

if you cant manage to save up a few grand to invest into your own product or service you are not going to make it in the business world, even if you do have some ''amazing idea'' someone with bigger pockets than you will come in and crush you like a bug.

get started in something, anything and learn from failures

 

That's popular on this forum, but it's not all there is to the total world of business. Intel Corporation was founded by a $2.5 million investment in 1968 ($18 million equivalent in today's money). The money did NOT come from the pockets of the founding engineers. There is absolutely no way they could have been more creative at the kitchen table, to set up a chip manufacturing line.

Commercial real estate is another area where a lot of times, the amount of money involved is way beyond the personal savings of entrepreneurs. Being a deal-maker who raises large amounts of money, is a valid way to be an entrepreneur even if it can't be called bootstrapping.

Henry Ford got investors to start Ford Motor Company.
Steve Jobs got an investor to start Apple Computer.
Walt Disney got investors to start Disneyland.
Thomas Edison got investors to start his R&D labs.
Donald Trump's pretty famous for making most of his profits leveraging money from investors.
John Rockefeller got investors for his oil business.

Dompie's talents might be better put to use finding a big enough idea to attract a lot of money, rather than scrambling to "just do something, anything, fast" with a few thousand dollars of cash on hand.

 

yes sorry you are totally right.

what he should do is sit around and day dream while thinking about the next great idea that noone has had before, how silly of me

 

"P.S. this thing with “walk around with a pen and notepad and write down everything you may think is an opportunity” have you done this??? I highly doubt it due to how inefficient this is. You mean to tell me that out of, let’s say, 15 mil welders that not even one 1 has thought of and executed on sunglasses that are durable, can be used for welding, easy to clean, are cool looking, etc and much more?"

There are probably thousands of people who have had that exact same idea and there are thousands of people who have no ambition or faith in themselves to execute. I posted a quote a while back about the fact that the richest place on earth is the graveyard partly because of all the million or billion dollar ideas that died with them and were never acted upon. Find an idea however you want and then execute and put your own spin on it and be better than the others in the eyes of those who are the buyer of your product and you will have a winner. I should take my own advice typing this

 

I do the notebook thing and also started looking for entrepreneurship interest groups through meetup.com. I found there’s a local Venture Cafe group and have been twice. I haven’t quite been able to pinpoint what I’m ‘looking for’ when I’m there, but one of the major goals is just to get out of my apartment, get out of my own head, and be around people who actually want to do something with their lives. That alone has been helping.

 

There will always be more to read and more to learn. They are core principles that account for 80% of the results. After a certain point it makes more sense to stop reading and start doing, putting the knowledge into practice.

As far as "the pen and notepad" idea goes, think about it differently. The value is not so much in the ideas you are writing down, but more so in the exercise you are going through. What you are doing is:
- practising your ability to spot things that can be improved or potential gaps that can be filled
- looking the world through a producer lens
- focusing your attention on producing.

Now, what if you take it as a decision journal? What if you go back, look at your idea and reflect on what made you think those where "opportunities"? What if you think through your ideas and brainstorm solutions? Doing that in itself can lead to more ideas, to connecting things in novel ways.

What if you take advantage of that to refine/improve your thinking process? In the long term, it will pay immensely.

And yes, somebody might have thought about the concept. But so what? you are bringing your own perspective and own experience to it. So yes, maybe someone had already tried to execute on your idea or is executing on it. But something in the way you arrived at that idea yourself can give you an advantage.

Dont try to. Do apply your knowledge. Clarify your outcomes, and work backwards to identify the actions you have to take to make them happens. And take those actions.

 

you could give people an idea and id bet my money on 99% of people not even taking action on it.

heres an idea that can make you a few hundred million dollars right now,

design me a shoe that doesn't rip (i skateboard)

and i will buy a few pairs from you

noone will bother to execute this idea

The Van Doren Rubber Company is unique in that it manufactures shoes on .... In November, Vans passes $1 billion in annual global sales for the first time in its

here is one company (VANS) that I have bought from

 

MJ, what is your opinion on why this myth is so prevalent? I know it held me hostage for far too long... years...

I think the brain likes to believe it for many reasons. One being so you can sit back and do nothing whilst you're just waiting for 'that idea'... mmmm comfort.

It hit me one day that no successful company that I could name (Nike, Starbucks, Mcdonalds, Chrysler etc) are coasting off that 'idea'.

Irony would have it that even if you do give birth to something completely new, and it is a success competitors (a lot of them) will be coming for the jugular...(not necessarily a bad thing)

 

False dichotomy. I am not saying that the one and only way to be successful is to have a big idea, which can lead to marketing to the millions, or to investment of many millions.

I am also not saying that the one and only way to be successful is to have a good enough little idea and hustle, hustle, hustle.

But, it seems to me that you are saying that for someone you've not met, only the simple and small path could possibly be his way to succeed.

You're dismissing and denying that he might have personable social skills and conversation style that could make sales and marketing and networking especially successful for him. You're encouraging him to narrow his focus and totally reject any possibility of thinking big, of seeing if there could be larger ventures where he could be successful at networking and sales.

As for me, I'm not enough of a prophet to see into someone else's soul and future, and know for sure what they can't ever do. If someone seems eager to work hard at something that might work - once they figure out what that might be, which they haven't done yet - I see it as useful to help them have a wider palette of options to consider and explore. If some of my suggestions aren't applicable, a mature person can revise or discard them. But I don't want to help shut down possibilities before they're even considered at all.

 

majority of people action fake and scheme a grand idea

they can do something now