I had an AMAZING conversation with a mini-mentor of mine (mentors / coach’s are the best), and we zoned in on the conversation of taking an idea to launch.

This mini-mentor has worked with 1000’s of business owners / entrepreneurs, and although she’s semi-retired now, she’s still advising some ‘big’ businesses in Western Canada. When we got to chatting, she said something that at-first astounded me, but when I thought about it…it didn’t surprise me at all.

She said, “Everyone has ideas, but only 5% of the population actually acts on those ideas.”

How many times have you said, “Ah-ha! I should do that,” and then of course you don’t. It used to happen to me all the time. Now, I’m taking action, and going for it…with a calculated approach.

When you have an idea, what’s stopping you from acting on it? Do you think every one else with think you are stupid for doing it? Are you worried you’ll fail? Here’s the thing – the feeling of failure always seems to outweigh the feeling of hope. STOP IT! Take the ‘lizard brain’ of failure, and get rid of it. Stop caring about what other people think, and take your failure thoughts and flip them.

“Oh my gosh, people are going to think my online bow tie store will never work. There’s not enough people in the world who wear bow ties!” That’s the lizard brain. Let’s flip it to, “I’m going to test to see if this crazy idea of mine will work. I’m not going to let the start-up costs exceed $500, and if I don’t see some revenue within 2-months of my store being online, then I’m going to shut it down.”

THAT’S CALLED CALCULATION

Any time you get act on something you probably have all three of the things below working for you.

This is what makes your idea come to life. Some people do things without thinking. Some people think so much, and never do. Most people do things, after thinking about them, but don’t feel anything about what they’re doing (aka robots aka the cubicle effect). Generally, when you’re missing one of the items above – you should probably move on to doing something else.

From nothing to something

When you know you’re going to act on something, you most likely are following these steps:

• Think
• Conceptualize
• Visualize
• Test
• Bring to market

This could be true for anything from starting a new business, to launching a new product / service, a new marketing campaign, etc… Side note – you should always be testing, and experimenting with your processes (see my post from a couple weeks ago).

On top of that, it’s okay to ask for help during this process. Don’t worry about someone stealing your idea. No one will. Your idea probably isn’t THAT good anyway. Again, 5% of people actually act on their ideas, so I wouldn’t worry about someone acting on the idea you dreamed up.

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to let you into the world of taking an idea, conceptualizing it, visualizing it, testing it, and finally bringing it to market (plus a bunch of other shit I know you’ll enjoy). Why? Because you’re action takers, but you might not know where to start. Every now and then you let the thought of failure, and the lizard brain take over. You feel something, you think about this business idea, but you’re too afraid to DO it.

Don’t worry – I’ll take you on the step-by-step journey to aid in removing the lizard brain’s awful thoughts. It’s the journey of the “DO.” And I look forward to taking the journey with you (I did not mean for that to rhyme, but I like it).

Love you,

Jordan ‘The Guy with the Bow Tie’ Rycroft