Every great new venture starts the same way. It isn’t with luck, it isn’t as a gift or a random chance event. No, every new path starts with something simple.
An idea.
How that idea takes root in our minds, what path it follows in its journey to becoming a reality and how quickly or slowly it materializes is totally up to how much we believe in, love or nurture that idea. But it all starts with the idea - that is the seed that will be watered and grow.
A few years back, before the days of Pokémon Go, a bunch of us friends had an idea. It was essentially the same exact idea as Pokémon Go (before that game even was announced or existed in any way), only with wizards and witches, in an augmented reality world. Your phone would essentially become your wand and you would walk around in real life battling your friends and monsters, learning new spells and collecting goodies. It was a genius idea, and we all knew it. Yet here we sit, on the sidelines, years later, while others took the idea and put it into reality. We had the idea, we just didn’t have the drive to make it happen. What a bummer.
So, now that we missed our golden opportunity, to be kazillionaires, let’s make sure you don’t miss yours! Here are some great steps to getting your idea out of your mind and into reality.
Putting your ideas on paper can help develop them immensely.
1. Write them down.
Perhaps you already have your award-winning, golden dream idea of a lifetime picked out and are ready to rock. But if you’re like most of us, you probably have hundreds of ideas swirling around in your head, like a giant bowl of alphabet soup, just waiting to see what comes out. Set aside an hour or two one afternoon, grab a cool (or hot) drink, some pieces of paper, and just mind dump. Put them all on the paper - give them names, write some notes about them, think of some of the challenges or benefits to each and get it all all written out. Then, just wait. Be patient. Give it a week, then go back to your list, review it again, and cross off the least best ideas. Repeat this process until you’ve got it down to only one or two ideas, then really start focusing on those, or that one.
2. Test the Passion
Once you’ve selected the idea you’d like to work on, do what i like to call the “‘Passion Test”. Does this idea, or the idea of creating a company around your idea, excite you? In any way? Is there even a twinge? You know the feeling - the excitement of planning a new trip - you just can’t wait to experience it and count down the days until it gets there. If there’s not at least a little flame of passion regarding your idea, definitely take a look at your list again and see if there might be something that does. Remember, great ideas can fail miserably without passion and drive behind them, and mediocre ideas can change the world if we have the full power of our will and desire behind them. Choose carefully.
Wanting to get rich is a poor substitute for true passion behind an idea.
3. Plant the Seed
The idea is only the first part. The desire and the commitment to growing that idea into something more is an entirely different process. It’s your job to figure out how to get that idea off the couch and into action. Start a new journal for your idea, each day doing a little bit of research on what it would take to get it off the ground. Ask your friends and family for thoughts and continually revise your idea of what the end game is for it. The most time you spend cultivating the idea when it’s young, the better of an end product you will have.
So what are you waiting for? Get idea-ing!