Anatomy of an Idea

After the sudden deaths of his parents in 1999, University of Oklahoma employee Jim Miller was devastated. To help ease his grief, he began working at a local retirement community and writing a question-and-answer column for seniors in his hometown of Norman. 

At first he did it for fun and to help the retirement community get a little free publicity, but the deeper he delved, the more he realized that easy to understand information pertaining to senior issues was hard to come by. 

Miller was convinced that there was a market for his Savvy Senior column. When finding a syndicate to distribute his column failed, he decided to self-syndicate, contacting small newpapers throughout the country. Thousands of letters and follow-up telephone calls brought in hundreds of buyers at $3 to $5 each. 

Miller’s idea continued to grow. Not only does his column appear in more and more newspapers every week, his Web site The Savvy Senior  is loaded with more great information. 

His first book, also called The Savvy Senior, was published by Hyperion and he now makes regular appearances on The Today Show sharing new products designed for the senior market and offering tips.

So what did Jim Miller do right? And how can we follow his example? There are several obvious and a few not-so-obvious aspects to his success story.

°  His business was born from his heart.  Miller got a master’s degree in education, but never got past teacher training because he found out he didn’t enjoy working with kids.

Through volunteering, he discovered that there was a group of people he enjoyed being around and helping. 

° He identified a problem—saw something was missing—and set about to solve it. Many great ideas come about in just this way. Most people who find something missing simply sigh and say, “Why doesn’t somebody do something about this?” 

The entrepreneur recognizes that a void is something that needs to be filled—an opportunity to explore.

° He focused on his niche market. Miller’s audience was clearly defined. His idea to market the column also was highly focused with small local papers being his target.  

° Began with intellectual capital, not big financing. Miller created his business by generating cash flow with a minimal financial investment.

° He was willing to do the groundwork. Locating and contacting thousands of small papers was a grueling, time-consuming task, but Miller embraced the chore because he was convinced that his idea was a good one.

° He was not intimidated by his youth, his lack of credentials or existing organizations that served his market. In other words, he focused on his vision, not his obstacles.

° He kept building his expertise. Research is a big part of what it takes to become an expert.

Miller didn’t start out being an expert in the fine points of Social Security or Medicare, but he proved that he’s a willing learner and thorough researcher.

* Personal touch is crucial. Miller answers all e-mail questions himself and gets his column ideas from the mail that comes in. His audience is an on-going source of ideas.

* He took advantage of opportunities to grow. Collecting his columns into a book was a natural progression; getting a gig on a popular morning television show required a willingness to stretch.

So what did Jim Miller do right? Just about everything, it appears. We can all learn alot by applying this same process of analysis to successful enterprises and see what winners have to teach us..