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Plan, fund, and grow your business Achieve your business funding goals with a proven plan format. Easily write a business plan, secure funding, and gain insights. Do market research to see if it actually is a “new” idea or if someone else out there is already doing it. If that’s the case, tweak it to make it entirely unique. We use the Jim Collins approach of firing bullets before cannon balls.
Stay focused on your challenge, but try to approach it from different angles. Above all, give yourself the time it takes to see them. If I had to choose one reason for not turning most of my ideas into action, it would be this. Maybe you write some of them down, maybe you even start executing on some of them, but you still feel pretty torn and not sure how to turn your best ideas into action.
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Conferences like FETC can help you to re-evaluate your work, lessons, and instruction. This is because a list of ideas is NOT a to-do list; it’s the seed of a to-do list. So many factors have to be negotiated between the idea phase and the action phase that simply having ideas is no guarantee you’ll ever do anything with them. Actionable steps have to be plotted and planned in a way that maximizes efficiency. Once you’ve established everything that would need to be done, cross it off the Brain Dump list. In this way, you can take your ideas one by one from the Dump to this more actionable phase, ensuring that no idea gets left behind . If you’re not sure how to implement it, simply leave it on the first list.
But without regular thinking time, they almost never see the light of day. Ethan Lipsitz is CEO and cofounder ofApliiq, a creative platform that is redefining the custom T-shirt. He is a member of the Young Entrepreneur Council , an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs.
It’s literally their biggest strength and biggest weakness packed into one big bundle of a mess. We spend an inordinate amount of time sorting through hundreds of apps to find the very best. We put together a short list of our must-have, most-used apps for increasing productivity. You might just find that you are much more creative than you ever gave yourself credit. Scheduling even an hour just to think about your problem or project may give you the clarity you need to move forward with confidence. This is where you just want to get the idea down so you don’t forget about it.
We frequently consider introducing new products, website changes and other ideas. The first thing we do is vet the idea with at least 10 customers. We want to know what our core fans think about changes, especially those that might disrupt their expectations. Set aside no more than $200 to test the basic idea. Get a domain and set up a landing page (easier than you think…), then simplify and test your idea with Google Adwords, Bing or Yahoo advertising. The goal is to see how many people you can get to click your link and at what rate they’re clicking.
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Finding a sweet spot between how much time you spend collecting ideas and time allotted to doing them, takes the pressure off of either phase of the creative process. By pre-deciding days in a week or hours in a day for both aspects, you can strike a balance.
Whether you are an entrepreneur or corporate executive, “giving ideas life” is much like giving birth to a child. You must own the responsibility regardless of the circumstances. No one will ever understand your idea or the dynamics associated with it like you do. In this regard, you are on your own and the journey will require you to learn about yourself – more than anything else will in your career. Diverge before you converge.You want to breed some conflict into your discussions.
It’s important that this step has as little friction as possible. If the process or tools you use to capture your ideas are cumbersome or difficult to use, you’ll find yourself resisting the act of actually capturing it. You may even think to yourself that you’ll remember it later, but chances are you won’t. It’s important you capture your ideas so you don’t forget about them. You can modify the tools or the approach, but if you’re really going to fully develop your ideas to produce the best possible results, you need to have all three. I’ve kicked myself many times for not jotting down a great idea when I had it, then forgetting about it later.
If the answer is “not quite,” place the idea off to the side for now. It’s important to stay focused on achieving your initial goals first. Once you reach those, you can set new goals. Tailor any new strategies to fit your style.
- It acted as my biggest hindrance (needless to say that’s sorted now).
- Sometimes the ideas we think of surface into our reality when we make an effort to achieve it.
- All of the best ventures begin as mere ideas, but they don’t stay in the concept stage.
- Over time, this core idea led to gourmet line extensions that included pasta sauces, salad dressings, etc.
This passage from thought to action doesn’t just turn your ideas into practical realities. It also helps create a feedback loop, spurring us on to further creative ideas. Here’s a process you can follow to turn creative thought into creative action. It comes up with all sorts of ideas–some of them outlandish, others brilliant, even transformational. Sometimes creative thinking is in an end in itself. For entrepreneurs especially, it’s easy to get lost in the thinking and forget about the doing. I know you’re busy, I know you have millions of other things to do.
Ropewalk Between Ideas And Actions
When you put your passion into everything you do, it gives you the power to become a potent pioneer. You will blaze paths few would go down, and see them all the way through to the end.
Invest in small tests of the idea that will help calibrate the direction and profitability/value. Once we’ve narrowed in on the target and determined enough value is on the horizon, we make bigger investments in that direction. Write your business plan with the #1 online business planning tool. Nine problems, three solutions, isn’t a detergent advertisement.
At this point, you’ll be able to see which of these things are irrelevant and can be crossed out, and which ones you’ll want to add to your to-do list. Action steps, Belsky says, are tasks that can be articulated and are verbs.
Why Your Creative Time Is Anything But Ordinary
But what separates successful entrepreneurs and business owners from daydreamers is execution … putting those ideas into action. First, start by classifying your ideas as a project. This will allow you to push them into action. It’s important to take time to reflect before jumping into new ideas or strategies. Three days full of speakers and breakout learning at FETC gave everyone a lot to soak in. Even with a Google doc filled with every note your fingers could type, there’s no way to remember it all. Collect your notes, set aside time to revisit them, and identify some specific action items.
But if you don’t take action right now, you’re probably going to procrastinate. And that is not how you turn ideas into action. Before we get into my tips on turning ideas into action, I want to quickly mention three possible reasons why you’re not taking action right now. In this blog post, we’re going to talk about how to take action and I will give you 3 practical tips that will help you turn your ideas into action.
Don’t ever think you have all of the answers, just because it’s your idea. Ideation is distinctly different than execution.
With so many ideas and so much to do, it’s important to describe to your future self exactly what you were thinking in at least a sentence. You may think you’ll remember what “hamster manicure” means, but by the time you get around to it, you may not. So how do you go about using Evernote to turn ideas into reality? I use a fairly simple 3-step system to store, organize, and act on the whims of my businessman’s brain. Solidify your rollout strategy and then execute it. Getting your creative ideas out into the world is proof of your creativity. Set your ideas free and see how they change as more people get involved, whether they be customers, team members, or speculators.
It’s important to not take criticism personally. Don’t let it bring you down or hinder your path to success. Sometimes starting from square one really means elevating and getting innovative in order to find out what works. Allow other people to take a look at your model. This could be your inner circle, target audience, or family members. You’ll often discover potential setbacks during this process that will allow you to make necessary adjustments.
But in fact, it is the most fundamental commitment one must make to assume any form of risk management. As such, you must find a way to make this level of commitment if you want to continue on the journey. You can’t take action until you believe in yourself enough to handle the consequences of your decisions. Any time you assume the responsibility to give something that had not existed before an opportunity to become a reality – you become accountable for your actions. Today’s fiercely competitive marketplace requires us all to either convert our own ideas – or be a part of converting someone else’s ideas – into a reality. If you are not participating in either of these activities, you must re-evaluate your purpose, what you stand for and your desire to be relevant.
