How do you decide which idea to pursue?

[Claude Roy]

Hey Guys,

How did you pick one idea that you had and just go with it? I'm honestly feeling like I'm action faking a lot when I'm just searching for ideas. I'm browsing the net, asking questions on forums of what people need and I came out with a list of over 40 ideas that could be profitable. I find myself still searching for other ideas because I feel that I haven't found 'THE' idea. Sometimes, there's already a lot of competition, or I think the market is too small for it. I want to be certain that I can succeed with the idea that I'm going to pick and just be able to go with it and give my 150%, though I'm sure everybody had some problem with this at some point. I have set some big goal for this year, before the next summit and I need to really figure it out and stop searching everywhere for ideas and actually start acting on it.

Do you guys have any tips/stories of how you came to the decision to pick your idea and start with it?

If you've read up to here, thank you so much for your time, I'm really grateful for it

Claude

 

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[livestronger]

I second this, I also think about this as well. In for replies, thanks OP for posting this.

Sent from my SM-G935V using Tapatalk

 

[becks22]

I have a simple checklist and then I evaulate any idea through NCEST. If it doesn't fit all of them (usually most ideas don't, at least not at first), I make sure that in the future I can abide by all of the NCEST commandaments.

If I can make it work, I move forward. If it doesn't work down the line, I would either find a way around the problem or find a new idea. Some problems you can overcome, some you can't. If you have a crappy product, you're better off finding a new business. Just pick one and go with it and adjust as you need to. Don't pick flashy businesses, that's where everyone is going. Just see what you can do with 60 days focusing 100% on one business. That's all you need to show that it's viable.

 

[TKDTyler]

Hey Guys,

How did you pick one idea that you had and just go with it? I'm honestly feeling like I'm action faking a lot when I'm just searching for ideas. I'm browsing the net, asking questions on forums of what people need and I came out with a list of over 40 ideas that could be profitable. I find myself still searching for other ideas because I feel that I haven't found 'THE' idea. Sometimes, there's already a lot of competition, or I think the market is too small for it. I want to be certain that I can succeed with the idea that I'm going to pick and just be able to go with it and give my 150%, though I'm sure everybody had some problem with this at some point. I have set some big goal for this year, before the next summit and I need to really figure it out and stop searching everywhere for ideas and actually start acting on it.

Do you guys have any tips/stories of how you came to the decision to pick your idea and start with it?

If you've read up to here, thank you so much for your time, I'm really grateful for it

Claude

Honestly, just pick something and try to do everything you can to make it work. You are looking for "The idea" because you are scared of failure. You don't want to enter a competitive space because it's harder. It is competitive because there is more money to be made in the space - instead of being afraid, focus your thoughts on how you can be successful against the competition.

Any market you enter will become competitive eventually if it is a profitable market. It's your job to figure out how to beat competition. If you can't do that, you will fail regardless of if your product is "the product" because someone will out execute you every time.

With that said,

Pick something off that list and make a sale.

Can you make that 1 sale profitable? Can you make 2 sales? 10?

Don't think so big, just get some momentum and learn the process.

Remember that you have to learn a metric ton of information when you're starting out. Do you know how to source? Vet suppliers? Are you being scammed? How can you ensure product quality? What questions do you ask? Do you need to source from multiple manufacturers? Do you know how to prep a shipment for Amazon, or ship freight for that matter?

If you don't start, you are not gaining the knowledge over time necessary to be successful in the long term. The longer you procrastinate at failing, the less you will know when you need to execute the most.

 

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[Claude Roy]

I have a simple checklist and then I evaulate any idea through NCEST. If it doesn't fit all of them (usually most ideas don't, at least not at first), I make sure that in the future I can abide by all of the NCEST commandaments.

If I can make it work, I move forward. If it doesn't work down the line, I would either find a way around the problem or find a new idea. Some problems you can overcome, some you can't. If you have a crappy product, you're better off finding a new business. Just pick one and go with it and adjust as you need to. Don't pick flashy businesses, that's where everyone is going. Just see what you can do with 60 days focusing 100% on one business. That's all you need to show that it's viable.

Great advice, thank you so much

 

[Nomadic]

I too have struggled with this issue and am curious of the answers.

Lately though I think I have figured out why we look for idea after idea and never act: because we are waiting for that idea to come that we are POSITIVE will succeed. The problem is, that idea will never come. It is an infinite cycle to just "look" for ideas rather than acting on them. Before you know it, you will wake up one day, be 60 years old, and will still be looking for that idea.

To defeat this, you have to think about anyone that has ever been successful. Take Elon Musk for example. While helping start paypal, do you think he knew it would be successful? He had no idea, yet he worked on it religiously. All of those hours of work, he had to have had the question in the back of his head "what if all these hours are for something that doesn't work out in the end?".

Take A-list actors in Hollywood; do you think any of them knew if years and years of being told "no" at auditions would lead to one day being a household name? No, but they continued on anyway.

I think that the doubt we have in our mind about an idea, is the same doubt that ANYONE successful felt before they tried the idea, and even while executing on it. That is why being a successful entrepreneur, I think, is such a great feat. You have to overcome the most instinctual human feeling of "what if I'm wasting time that I will never get back?".

 

[Claude Roy]

Honestly, just pick something and try to do everything you can to make it work. You are looking for "The idea" because you are scared of failure.

Pick something off that list and make a sale.

Can you make that 1 sale profitable? Can you make 2 sales? 10?

If you don't start, you are not gaining the knowledge over time necessary to be successful in the long term. The longer you procrastinate at failing, the less you will know when you need to execute the most.

That's definitely right, I'm scared of failure so I action fake. I need to trust the process. Thank you so much for your answer!

 

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[IGP]

What Tyler said, but....

You're asking the wrong questions...

What's your goal? 50K/yr? 100k/yr? 1MM/yr?

How can you decide on an idea if you don't know what you want the outcome to be?

Once you decide on what your goals are, then you can start to study the market, demographics, competition, etc. and make a decision on whether your idea can support your goal.

If that becomes a yes, move forward with your plan of execution.

 

[GoGetter24]

Choosing a good idea (or "play" as I prefer), is very important. So I don't agree with "just pick something and do it". Nor with specific return goals. Business return has a hockey stick shape. Picking the wrong thing will most likely result in failed effort. And if it succeeds, you can't predict how much it will make.

But at the same time, you can only analyze & predict so far, and you only have so much experience. You have to be willing to accept that even after you've chosen a play and done your due dilligence, you end up discovering you were wrong. That learning helps reduce the chance you'll be wrong next cycle, until finally you can enter the blade of the hockey stick.

I keep it simple: supply and demand. In an ideal world, you hit a completely unsupplied market with an unknown large demand, and get 100% of the profits at high profit margin for as long as possible.

Of course in the real world, you just have to look for the closest approximation, and treat any sunk costs from failing to hit a worthwhile return as your education costs. Just make sure if it fails, you understand clearly why.

Remember that part of this sentiment you have comes from your wage slavery. The wage/salary is a certain, fixed amount. You get absorbed into that comfort. But the real world has no such thing as a fixed return for a fixed hour. Basically the opposite of that.

So probably best you drop a line in the sand. Commit to another 30 days of market due dilligence on your existing ideas, determine the one absolute best play in that list, and at that 30 day mark, commit solely to executing that single idea, until it is ready with acceptable quality, in the market, and being marketed.

 

[TKDTyler]

What Tyler said, but....

You're asking the wrong questions...

What's your goal? 50K/yr? 100k/yr? 1MM/yr?

How can you decide on an idea if you don't know what you want the outcome to be?

Once you decide on what your goals are, then you can start to study the market, demographics, competition, etc. and make a decision on whether your idea can support your goal.

If that becomes a yes, move forward with your plan of execution.

+1 to goal setting.

But at the same time, I am cautious to recommend creating monitory goals to people who have analysis paralysis - it shifts focus onto “what will make me money” rather than “how can I provide value,” or “I need to learn this.”

For people who haven’t made a sale, the first goal should always to be making that first sale. Experience creates great execution.

When I train new kids to begin competing/fight, it’s never about winning medals; it’s always about setting goals to be better than we were a week ago.

What skills can you learn today to take you 1 step closer to that goal (monitory or otherwise)?

 

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[IamCJTurner]

I was browsing the internet when I read about a company in the Telecomms space, crushing their niche.
After looking through their literature and doing a bit of homework, I decided that I could do it better.

So without any hesitation, I started to put things together.
Now I have a telecomms company.

How did I pay for it?
I left a 6 figure job on a whim to pursue it.. now I'm extreamly skint but loving it.

Obviously, I have seriously condensed it down but only to make a point.
My advice - pick one and just do it.. and do it now.

 

[Real Deal Denver]

And now for something completely different (for you Monty Python fans).

I have six business ventures in the works. I like them all, so I'm not going to choose. I'm going to do them all. BUT I'm taking them in sequence, from easiest to most difficult.

My plan is for the easiest ones to ramp up and give me an income stream so that I can 100% focus on the "difficult" ones. The difficult ones will be enormously successful, but they will require a full time effort, and then some.

My first one to launch is tremendously simple. I like that. The market is proven. There is a lot of competition. That makes me very happy because I know the pie is there already for me to carve out my piece of it. The last two on my list don't exist in any form yet. They will require a completely different approach. I have to scale them very fast before the competition arrives. If I do it right, it will be worth it.

So I am using ALL business models, starting with the easy saturated market one, to the high end, high profit, sell my one of a kind product. Couldn't be more opposite than that!

There are advantages to all business ventures. Some have a ready market, some are unique and you can make a lot of money at them. I am not good at choosing - or sharing, for that matter. I want it all, and I want it my way.

I never thought being a spoiled brat as a kid would foster such good business skills in me! LOL

(Actually, I was poor and appreciated everything I had. And I was fascinated by business. I even developed my "signature" in the fifth grade, and yes, I use it today. I knew I was going to be in business all my life.)

 

[Sprocket]

Unscripted talks about this in detail: We think high competition = too hard / too much risk etc, no competition = no demand. It's a cycle and you never make a decision. I can relate to this. Use the principles in the books, they're gold. There is no absolute answer. You and your resources are unique, there are too many variables to ever possibly predict what will work and not work.

Do your research, have faith in yourself and try (dream, dare, do)*

 

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[Claude Roy]

Thanks everyone for your valuable answers. What I'll now do is dive deeper into some of the ideas from my list, do goal settings and dive deeper to do my due diligence to see what I'll consider and what to eliminate. I'll be sure to have a look again at the part in Unscripted that talk about it as well.

Thanks all again for your valuable time, I really appreciate it!!!