Making ideas happen

So you’ve come up with a great idea – but what now? Here are 5 strategies to make it happen.

1. Tell a lot of people about your idea.

This may at first sound like the total opposite of what you think should be done and you may be thinking, “Won’t someone steal my idea?!”. Well, the reality is that 98% of the time, you’re not the first person to come up with an idea, and generally, your first initial idea is actually not all that great (because it needs refining). With entrepreneurship, success doesn’t simply come about because you were first to think of an idea, no, it has everything to do with execution and how well you do it – nurture your idea into reality. For example, the social giant that is Facebook wasn’t the first social network, it was just the platform that had the best execution enabling it to continue to build itself to what we see today – and it’s ever building.

The reason for telling others about your idea? Well, it’s going to improve it. By sharing your idea with people will help you improve how you talk about it – articulation and clear conveyance is crucial. When you do come to dispense the great idea on your trusty peers, you’ll find that they’ll usually counter with some critical feedback (if they’re good enough to listen that is – if not they may only give positive or neutral reactions). What’s more, often people can recommend resources that can help move your idea along (“Oh, I’ll give you my friend’s number, he should be able to…”).

2. Get involved with other creatives and entrepreneurs.

It’s often said that you “become the average of the five people for whom you surround yourself with”. So in essence, if you want to be a musician, you should consider hanging around with 5 other people who are already musicians – the same premise stands for those that want to be an entrepreneur.

The journey can be long, very long, longer than you probably expect. But, by surrounding yourself with fellow creatives and entrepreneurs you’ll push yourself further, harder and longer, and you’ll even dream bigger all while meeting others that could potentially help you on that journey.

3. Develop your understanding of specific strategies for innovation.

Two leading methodologies have come about in the last decade which helps summarise the actual process of “innovation” and making ideas happen. The Business Model Canvas and the Lean Startup Methodology are the two strategies in question – it’s a pretty big deal for many industries right now, but mostly with the startup, creative, technology and business worlds. So much so that there are now copious books, conferences, evangelists, workshops and thousands of more successful innovative companies. What’s best is we can simply learn these methodologies and put them into practice.

4. Fail a lot, but keep trying.

Another counter-logic strategy is to let failure take its course and not fight it. Learning from failures can be tough and even crushing, but they teach us vital lessons helping to constantly improve and not make the same mistakes. Just keep trying, and the lessons learnt will help you get better at making your ideas happen.

5. Look out for startup and networking events.

People make things happen, so meeting new people will develop your network and present opportunities that you may have never got. Some events charge fees, but the risk is minimal (a little bit of money and a few hours of your time) and you will come out of it with new ideas, new friends, new knowledge, and I almost guarantee you’ll be fired up even more to take action on your ideas!