Ideas Are Worthless

This is an excerpt from my book entitled “Business Around A Lifestyle“.

Ideas Are Worthless

Right now there are 10 people out there making moves and taking action on the same idea you have in your head. The difference between you and them is that they are going to give it a try, and you are going to keep thinking that just having the idea is good enough.

It’s not.

Ideas as worthless unless they are acted upon. As a marketing person with several books I get contacted multiple times a day by people who have great ideas and want me to make them happen for them. The conversation always goes like this.

Them: I have this great idea Jim, and I want to give it to you, and we’ll both be rich.
Me: Why don’t you just do the idea yourself?
Them: Because it’s too hard to start up and I figured you’d handle it for me.
Me: So what do I need you for then?
Them: Because I have the idea!
Me: But you haven’t done anything yet. You haven’t done the hard work to make it a reality and it doesn’t seem like you want to.
Them: No, I’m too busy or don’t want to waste my time and see it fail.

That’s about the time I go into my “ideas are worthless” speech you’re reading right now. You see, ideas are nothing without action. If you don’t “do the hard part” then you will ALWAYS fail. Always. Every great business started with an idea. We all have them. In fact, if you read my book Attention! This Book Will Make You Money I give you countless sure-fire methods for generating ideas. I’d just put them here in this book by Attention! is published by Wiley and they will not allow me to republish it here in my self-published book.

Stop for a second and rethink this. You have an idea. You want to see it succeed. There is absolutely no way that is ever going to happen unless you make it happen yourself.

Period.

I want you to ask any person who has ever created anything that has succeeded how hard they worked in the beginning to implement their ideas. What you’re going to hear is they they poured their blood, sweat, tears and in most cases, their bank accounts, into trying.

My mentor, billionaire Mark Cuban, sold his company Broadcast.com to Yahoo! for a few billion dollars because he took action on his idea. Imagine if he walked into Yahoo!’s office and said this instead, “I have this great idea for a company I want to build that does this and will make this much money. You guys should fund it and give me 90% for the idea, and you do all the work and take all the risk, and then we have a deal.”

They’d laugh him out of the building. Do you see how ludicrous this sounds when put to a real situation? We’re talking about your lifestyle here anyway. Do you really believe that anyone else is going to do it for you? Why would anyone want to help you build your perfect life?

I know, I ask a lot of questions. You know why? Because you need to begin the process of asking them to yourself as well and feeling ok with it. That’s your problem in many ways. You’ve never thought you were allowed to ask those questions to yourself. You are. In fact, it’s an amazing way to challenge yourself and figure out what you really want.

Ask, then answer, then analyze. Then… ACT!