RockstarHandyman
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I've been an entrepreneur for over 5 years now, and so far my path has been wrought with challenges, false starts, and failures. Regardless, I still love business and have as much motivation as ever to see an idea through start to finish.
The problem I am struggling with is being overwhelmed with too many ideas. It seems like every couple of days I'll notice a problem, or an angle on something, and get hit with some amazing idea on how I could create a product or service that would catapult me into the life of a millionaire. Along with the idea comes a flood of energy and enthusiasm, and an overwhelming need to get started ASAP.
Something that MJ discussed in The Millionaire Fastlane that really hit home for me was comparing the components of business to a chess board:
King = Executing
Queen = Marketing
Bishop = Customer Service
Knight = Product
Rook = Employees / Team
Pawn = Ideas
As soon as I read this it snapped my head into perspective about what keeps happening with all my business efforts. I get a new idea, get a flood of enthusiasm, get started as quickly as I can (build a website, buy a domain, set up emails, register a name with the state, start developing a MVP, etc). But after a few weeks or a few months, as I start to hit road blocks and hurdles, I lose my enthusiasm for that idea, and I start to get distracted by a new shiny idea that floods me with energy again.
Now after reading MFL, and with all the failed ideas I have under my belt, I realize there's so many things that have to happen after the idea to make a functioning business. An idea is only as good as your ability to execute on it start to finish.
So after years of trial and error, I find myself still at the starting point of entrepreneurship. I have plenty of ideas, some experience, and no idea what I'm going to do to get into the millionaire fast lane.
In an effort to make sure my next move has the absolute highest chance for success, I built out a tool to organize my thoughts, make me slow down through the idea phase, and give me clarity on the best course of action.
The tools consists of 2 parts: The first is a spreadsheet where I can list the idea, then give it a numerical rating to determine how well it meets different Fast Lane criteria.
The first 2 columns (accessibility and energizing) aren't quite as important because they're more about my personal feelings toward the idea. Therefore their total value is divided by 2, which makes their score only carry half the value as the other categories.
The next section are the CENTS categories we're all so familiar with.
The last column is a concept I came across recently called your "unfair advantage." The concept made a lot of sense to me, so I'd like to take a moment to explain it further here.
The idea of an "unfair advantage" is where in life do you have knowledge, experience, or a unique understanding that gives you an advantage over 90% of everyone else out there. For example, one of the many ideas that I tried was an ecommerce dropship store. I singed up for an online course that taught me how to get everything set up start to finish. I got my store up and running, and even did $20,000 in sales in my first month. The only problem was the margins were so tight that I ended up barely breaking even after all my other expenses. After 2 1/2 years of running the store with the same results, I finally decided to close it. After reflecting on what happened, I realized I had the complete opposite of an "unfair advantage." I had zero experience with online marketing, I had never built a website, I don't know how to read or write code, I didn't understand shipping or logistics, I didn't have any unique connections to manufacturers or new products. No wonder it failed. I jumped into an industry that I had zero experience in because the idea overwhelmed me with enthusiasm and I thought it would make me a millionaire.
After being introduced to the "unfair advantage" concept, I started asking myself what "unfair advantage" I do have. One of the things that came to me was that I have an unfair advantage understanding how my local economy works. I live in world class destination ski town in Colorado. I was born and raised here, and have spent the majority of my life working and living here. I have a very thorough understanding of the seasonality of the town. The type of person who comes here to visit. The types of businesses that operate here. Why ones succeed and why the fail. The type of people who live here full time. Why they live here. And I can go on and on.
It would make way more sense for me to pursue an idea here locally because I have an unfair advantage.
So to get back to the tool I built, after I give a rating to the idea in each category, all the numbers are added together, and only ideas that exceed a certain value will be worthy of considering.
The second part of the tool is a word document template with basic business questions that will force me to think through the idea more thoroughly, do some basic market research, and look at some financial metrics to help determine how much money something like this could actually make.
So for ideas that add up to a high enough number to be deemed worthy of being pursued, I can create a link straight from the sheet to the google document, where I'll be prompted to explore the idea more.
I'm hoping this tool will help me focus my efforts better. I would gladly take any ideas or feedback. It would be great to get the input of other business minded people.
The problem I am struggling with is being overwhelmed with too many ideas. It seems like every couple of days I'll notice a problem, or an angle on something, and get hit with some amazing idea on how I could create a product or service that would catapult me into the life of a millionaire. Along with the idea comes a flood of energy and enthusiasm, and an overwhelming need to get started ASAP.
Something that MJ discussed in The Millionaire Fastlane that really hit home for me was comparing the components of business to a chess board:
King = Executing
Queen = Marketing
Bishop = Customer Service
Knight = Product
Rook = Employees / Team
Pawn = Ideas
As soon as I read this it snapped my head into perspective about what keeps happening with all my business efforts. I get a new idea, get a flood of enthusiasm, get started as quickly as I can (build a website, buy a domain, set up emails, register a name with the state, start developing a MVP, etc). But after a few weeks or a few months, as I start to hit road blocks and hurdles, I lose my enthusiasm for that idea, and I start to get distracted by a new shiny idea that floods me with energy again.
Now after reading MFL, and with all the failed ideas I have under my belt, I realize there's so many things that have to happen after the idea to make a functioning business. An idea is only as good as your ability to execute on it start to finish.
So after years of trial and error, I find myself still at the starting point of entrepreneurship. I have plenty of ideas, some experience, and no idea what I'm going to do to get into the millionaire fast lane.
In an effort to make sure my next move has the absolute highest chance for success, I built out a tool to organize my thoughts, make me slow down through the idea phase, and give me clarity on the best course of action.
The tools consists of 2 parts: The first is a spreadsheet where I can list the idea, then give it a numerical rating to determine how well it meets different Fast Lane criteria.
The first 2 columns (accessibility and energizing) aren't quite as important because they're more about my personal feelings toward the idea. Therefore their total value is divided by 2, which makes their score only carry half the value as the other categories.
The next section are the CENTS categories we're all so familiar with.
The last column is a concept I came across recently called your "unfair advantage." The concept made a lot of sense to me, so I'd like to take a moment to explain it further here.
The idea of an "unfair advantage" is where in life do you have knowledge, experience, or a unique understanding that gives you an advantage over 90% of everyone else out there. For example, one of the many ideas that I tried was an ecommerce dropship store. I singed up for an online course that taught me how to get everything set up start to finish. I got my store up and running, and even did $20,000 in sales in my first month. The only problem was the margins were so tight that I ended up barely breaking even after all my other expenses. After 2 1/2 years of running the store with the same results, I finally decided to close it. After reflecting on what happened, I realized I had the complete opposite of an "unfair advantage." I had zero experience with online marketing, I had never built a website, I don't know how to read or write code, I didn't understand shipping or logistics, I didn't have any unique connections to manufacturers or new products. No wonder it failed. I jumped into an industry that I had zero experience in because the idea overwhelmed me with enthusiasm and I thought it would make me a millionaire.
After being introduced to the "unfair advantage" concept, I started asking myself what "unfair advantage" I do have. One of the things that came to me was that I have an unfair advantage understanding how my local economy works. I live in world class destination ski town in Colorado. I was born and raised here, and have spent the majority of my life working and living here. I have a very thorough understanding of the seasonality of the town. The type of person who comes here to visit. The types of businesses that operate here. Why ones succeed and why the fail. The type of people who live here full time. Why they live here. And I can go on and on.
It would make way more sense for me to pursue an idea here locally because I have an unfair advantage.
So to get back to the tool I built, after I give a rating to the idea in each category, all the numbers are added together, and only ideas that exceed a certain value will be worthy of considering.
The second part of the tool is a word document template with basic business questions that will force me to think through the idea more thoroughly, do some basic market research, and look at some financial metrics to help determine how much money something like this could actually make.
So for ideas that add up to a high enough number to be deemed worthy of being pursued, I can create a link straight from the sheet to the google document, where I'll be prompted to explore the idea more.
I'm hoping this tool will help me focus my efforts better. I would gladly take any ideas or feedback. It would be great to get the input of other business minded people.
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