How often do you find yourself lamenting the fact that you have too many ideas? Do you have trouble knowing what to do with your ideas? Many an entrepreneur has faced this same dilemma. It’s a great problem to have, especially since many people aren’t creative enough to have the same issue. Hopefully this posting will help you figure out how to turn your ideas into reality.
Laser-like Focus
After organizing your ideas, you will need to begin the process of figuring out which ones to pursue, and which ones to “put on the shelf.” After all, you can’t do them all at once! This means you will need carefully evaluate which ideas are the most valuable.
The Pareto Principle will serve as an effective guideline for narrowing down your list. Also known as the “80/20 rule,” it basically says that 20% of the things we do as entrepreneurs will produce 80% of our results. When applied to your idea dilemma, it means that 20% of the ideas you come up with will produce 80% of your results.
This means that if you come up with 10 ideas, you should first focus on implementing two of them. Determine which ideas make up your 20%. Then you can begin the process of implementation.
The key is to determine which ideas are good, and which ones are not. There are several ways to do this:
- Consult with people you trust. Get honest feedback form people who understand what you are trying to accomplish.
- Do your research. Has anyone already attempted to do what you are thinking about doing? Did it work for them?
- Find out what the experts are saying about your idea. This is a great way to gain further insight.
Of course, one of the most effective ways to find out whether or not an idea will work is to actually DO it. If you feel you have done enough research, there’s nothing wrong with testing the waters.
Executing Your Idea
It’s not enough to come up with great ideas; you also need to put them into action. Many brilliant entrepreneurs fail because they do not know how to put their ideas into action. Good ideas are useless if they are not acted upon.
In an article that discusses entrepreneurs and their ideas, Brad Feld, who is a managing director for a major venture capital firm, writes
“The great entrepreneurs are already focused on the implementation of their idea. They send me links to their website or software. They describe the business they are in the process of creating (or have already created). They point me to what they’ve done to implement their idea and show real users who validate that the idea is important. And they quickly move past the idea to the execution of the idea.”
Most great ideas die because of inaction. Don’t let this happen to you. Figure out the best way to make your ideas a reality and keep moving forward!
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