I was recently giving a talk to some aspiring entrepreneurs when a young woman- let’s call her Christine- who wanted advice on the viability of her business idea. When I asked Christine about her idea, she went silent. The kicker was that she wouldn’t tell me (or the rest of the class) what her idea was for fear that someone would steal it. If you’ve been quiet about sharing your business idea with colleagues, friends and family then you might be making a tremendous mistake. Look, we get that you want to protect your idea so that no one else can “steal” it but realize first that a business idea is really just the tip of the iceberg. 99.9% of ideas don’t really go anywhere because it takes time, energy, & money to turn that idea into something viable.

Unless your Uncle Buck can pull together an awesome, expert team as well as bring all of the enthusiasm and energy that you can to the table, it’s not likely that he’s going “steal” your idea. Consider talking to the people around you to see if you can “convince” them that’s it’s a viable idea  and take notes when they give you constructive criticism.  You don’t have to take it all to heart, but you need to learn from both positive and negative comments. If you want to see if you’re idea is viable, take the quiz here.