Make your idea unique.

One of the best things you can do as a business owner is to try to come up with an idea that really is completely new. If you replicate another company's creation, you're going to be hard up to generate a demand for your product. Why? Because there simply isn't a need for it—the market for that product has already been satisfied, and since the other company has likely been around longer, chances are they already have a bigger customer base. It's okay, though, to improve on an idea that is already in the marketplace. Julie Clark didn't invent children's videos—she saw a hole in the existing lineup and developed something to fill the void.