Warning for Entrepreneurs: Avoid The Trap of Idea Overwhelm

Today, we are going to tackle the most common problem for any entrepreneur or a business owner. You have way too many ideas and don’t know which one to pursue so you do what every well-meaning smart person would do: You put all of them on hold until further research and analysis.

You have enthusiasm, you have determination, you have guts, and you want to do great things. Your heart is in the right place, and you embrace entrepreneurship with open arms. Except you are a little stuck.

Which of Your Great Business Ideas to Pursue?

You tell yourself that you obviously need a road map to success. You need to know which idea is going to fail and which will succeed and you want an “expert” tell you this in explicit terms. That way, you only pick the ‘successful’ idea because nobody likes to waste time failing, least of all you.

Failing: What a silly thing to do on your path to the big great success. Others might have to fail, and that’s too bad, you have compassion for them, you totally want to learn from their failures but you would rather be safe and totally avoid that whole ‘failure’ mess if you can help it.

So you wait and wait and then you wait some more, all the while, time is ticking away. You invest in classes and courses and you hire consultants and coaches and you even get into the habit of running your idea by others, anybody that is willing to listen. You call it research and data gathering mode and carry on with it.

The Good News and the Bad News about Ideas

Say you want to build your own website, and you have ideas about layout, branding, positioning, content strategy and target market, and because there are so many options for each, you go into an indefinite research mode on which to use, pros and cons, pricing and people’s opinions on each, and you never finish building out the website!

The more you do this with your ideas, the more confused you get because the randomness of the feedback is a little overwhelming. Your uncle is totally against your most popular idea, but your brother who runs startups for fun has “guaranteed” that the idea your uncle just voted for is old-fashioned and will not go anywhere. Your mother has her eyes on a different idea altogether because it suits your personality, and your coach is having you do exercises to figure out which idea you are more passionate about.

Yes, I too am a business coach and I put my clients through that and more rigorous exercises, absolutely, but I am also about to tell you what I tell clients in my coaching sessions, and this part is the most important part of all so pay attention here.

I have the usual dreaded good news and bad news scenario and I will choose which to give you first: the bad news:

Having 97 great business ideas, all of which impress at least some of your friends and a few strangers, is not a big deal. Having more fresh new exciting business ideas coming to you during your morning shower does not make you an entrepreneur – or a penny richer for that matter. Ideas alone, brilliant as they may be, do not in anyway shape or form put you at an advantage from a business or entrepreneurship perspective.

That was the bad news.
You are still special, and I love having you as a reader, and the good news is coming so hang on.

The good news is that the minute you start doing something about any one of those ideas, even the stupidest, dumbest, simplest and most outlandish and sure-to-fail one, is your turning moment on many, many levels.

That step in the process, the step that takes you from thinking to doing, can change everything, regardless of outcome.

It’s All In the Act of Doing

Why? Because …

It’s in the doing that you strike the gold …or rule out the possibility of finding it on this path and that path.

It’s in the doing that you really set yourself apart from the thinkers or the idea-boasters out there.

It’s In the doing that your idea will have some value – large or small – to another human being, or thousands.

It’s in the doing that you walk your talk and start seeing what actually works and what doesn’t.

This knowledge only comes to you in the doing. No expert, no matter what their status, can predict how a business idea will really turn out, and that’s why an idea is worthless until you do something with it.

So pick an idea, and run with it. Have some confidence. You gotta start with one idea or you might as well not have it in the first place, because it serves you no good to just tell it over and over. It is only valuable when you do something about it.

Think it through? Sure.
Research and learn about it? Totally.
Investigate the pros and cons? Would be good.
Run it by your trusted circle, if they get that kind of thinking? Definitely.
Oh and have more than a remote interest and curiosity in it, even if it’s not a full-blown passion? Yes please.

But sit on it for weeks and months and even years? No! Please do not make this mistake. Nobody will offer to buy out your idea or pay you lots of money because you thought it up.

Remember, you will have nothing to show for it, if you don’t pursue any of your ideas but if you do, there are two possible outcomes:
– It makes it.
– It doesn’t make it.

Either way, it’s really not that scary. The scary to me is when you don’t pursue any idea and never find out what could’ve been.

In the world of business, ideas are dirt cheap. It is those who walk their talk, who put themselves out there, who stand up and say: “This is who I am and this is what I created from my idea.” that win the game. Be one of them. Pick up and idea and run with it already!