Help with installing Lion from bootable usb

Hello everyone,

I've got a bit of a problem here:

basically I own a mid 2007 MacBook but unfortunately two months ago my harddrive died.

It took me a while but I finally decided to buy a new harddrive. Did it, switched between the old and new harddrive etc. A friend of mine gave a usb stick telling me that I just needed to plug it in to install Lion. But, after trying several times now, looked everywhere on Google and everytime I turn my MacBook on while holding down the option key, nothing happens at all (white screen).

What should I do?

Thanks for the help!