Mark Zuckerberg got the idea of facebook from his roommate. Bill Gates got DOS from a college student. Fracking, or using hydraulic pressure to extract fossil fuel was thought of by some guy who did not get a penny for the idea while it is now a trillion dollar industry. History tells us there are countless ideas that were thought of by people and implemented by others while the originators never got a cent from them.
The thing is this. These very good ideas were given to the world freely by the originators. The originators of these ideas just did not have the will to implement them and so they gave these ideas out as a form of cloud talk.
Recently, I have achieved financial independence from passive income and have had a lot more time to myself. I started pondering about this topic. Why? While I would like to think I was the one that came up with my business idea that has given me financial independence, I actually got the idea from someone else.
Back when I was still working a full time job as an engineer, I was already looking for an exit strategy from having to work a full time job for the rest of my life just to get a gold watch when I retire. Real estate seemed like the logical thing to do. The problem I ran into was everything cost too much. I would have to take out a mortgage for each property. Banks only allow you to take out a mortgage for an investment property once every other year or so. So, going via this route would have taken at least 20 years to gain enough investment properties to get to a point where the passive income could replace a full time job.
One day, I was at a party. Some guy was talking about a gap in the real estate market that he found. He was giving out a detailed plan he came up with to exploit this gap in the market. He was really cloud talking more than anything else to impress the group of people he was with. How do I know? This was about 4-5 years ago and he is still working his full time job and never did anything with real estate. Anyway, I listened in and people were like "really? wow..." It was just cloud talking. I asked some questions and whatnot.
Afterward, I started looking things up and sure enough he was right. Seemed to be an unexploited part of the investment market. It's literally a gap in the real estate market. Using the plan he was outlining, I worked out the math and the ROI was through the roof, far greater than any traditional investment will ever give you back.
See, up until this point I had been doing a lot of research into real estate investing. And as far as I can tell, the method he came up with wasn't generally known or taught. But it's brilliant!
About 2.5 years ago I actually quit my career and started doing this full time head on. Because this is a gap in the market, rapid expansion was amazingly quick. The passive income from it far exceeds anything I ever made with all the jobs I ever had. Actually, after 2 years it's already twice as much as the highest salary I ever made in my engineering career.
I recently befriended another business owner. He used to be a PNC bank VP and quit that to start his own thing. While we shared stories, he told me that he too got his business idea from a guy at work that was just telling people an idea he had. That guy never followed through with his idea, though. But my friend started a business based on that idea and now he barely ever works at all.
Legally speaking, if you thought of an idea and just freely telling people about it, anyone who actually has the will to go through with it can take your idea and benefit from it. But morally speaking, is it right that one can benefit greatly from an idea that came from someone else, even if the idea was given out freely?
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