When Chuck Norris was trying to break into movies and searching for one million dollars financing for his movie Good Guys Wear Black, he met with various financiers with no luck. When he was asked, "Why do you think this movie will make money?" Norris would answer, without much conviction, "Well, all action movies make money."

After two years with no success, Norris finally gave serious thought to what he could say to investors for the next day's meeting. He went to sleep with that thought on his mind and woke up with the answer.

At the meeting, when asked the question, "Why do you think your movie will make money?" Norris answered confidently:

"There are four million karate practitioners in American. I was the undefeated karate champion for six years, so all those practitioners know me. The only way they can see me now would be in a movie. If just half of them see my movie, that's a six million dollar gross on a million dollar investment."

The financiers said yes and offered him $40,000 to star in it.
Why hadn't he thought of that idea two years earlier?

Working on my movie Weapons of Death, I rented a jeep to be used in the film. While driving to the location, I ran out of gas in the middle of a two mile tunnel with no place to pull off. 

Cars honked, trucks zoomed by and drivers yelled. It was a nightmare. Finally a guy in a pick-up pushed me out of the tunnel and then took me to a gas station.

I told this story to the guy I rented the van from. He said, "What? Didn't I tell you that there were two tanks of gas? All you had to do was flip the lever under your seat to switch to the other tank."

Don't be caught sitting on the answer to your problem like I was - and like Chuck Norris did.  Concentrate on a different angle of attack on your problem, and one day you'll wake up with the answer. And sooner is better than later.