Give Yourself A Gift

There is no shortage of ideas. After all, there are great ideas, good ideas, and bad ideas. As entrepreneurs, we have them flying around our heads at all times. And on top of that, there are also those bright, shiny objects that fly by, distracting us from what we know we should be doing. 

The talks of all these ideas are a very familiar topic of conversation in our mastermind groups. And the coolest ideas get the most attention. We think about them and try to get them perfect in our minds. It all takes a lot of bandwidth and can suck our resources (mostly time and attention) dry. 

In Maverick Drycleaners, I share tested mindsets, strategies, and tactics that once they are deployed almost always turn into a massive success. Even knowing this, our members struggle to take action and implement them. Why? They (like most of us) are stuck in their routines. They have normalized their present and are not as hungry as they could be to get future results. They have become complacent. They stop before they even get started. And this in turn creates guilt over having great ideas, but not implementing great ideas.

Here's the solution of how to take an idea and put it into action:

1. The first 20% of progress is up to you, the leader. You have to make sure the idea is congruent with where your company is going and conduct a basic proof of concept. Having a mentor or peer group that tells you an idea is proven can help speed up this step.
2. The next 50% is taking action on the idea and implementing it. This should NOT be your responsibility. It probably is now, and that is why you have an entire parking lot of ideas with little or slow action. I recommend giving yourself the gift of a Marketing Intern (on the less expensive side – from a local college) or a Project Manager (for larger companies, on the more expensive side).
3. And the final 30% you can worry about later. The last 30% of any idea will almost always change once you get client and team member feedback from the first 70%.

Your job is to get the idea through proof of concept only and then handed off to someone else to implement. And then, you circle around to optimize it for the last 30%. This will be challenging for you at first. But the benefits of a faster implementation rate far exceed the potential risk of it not being perfect. Focusing on perfection will limit your progress. Focus on progress over perfection.

As the semester turns at most colleges, and kids come back for their second half of school, think of a Marketing, Finance, or HR intern you could hire. You choose what specialty based on what you want to implement. This will be a gift to yourself as your progress will skyrocket with your focus on implementation.

You also get to help someone else to grow, and that can be an absolute joy. The right intern is hungry to learn, and while they might not be perfect, they will try very hard when implementing your ideas. And almost always, they pay for themselves – meaning the profits that come from the implementation more than pays for the intern’s compensation.

Just like an orchestra, I would like to see you directing the orchestra rather than playing one of the instruments. When you are playing one of the instruments (trying to implement), you cannot see where the whole orchestra is going and cannot direct the performance.

Consider giving yourself this gift as we celebrate this holiday season. A little help implementing might be just what you need to make 2023 your best year yet.

Happy Holiday Friends!

-Dave