by Chris Brogan
“Hey, I’ve Got an Idea”
Because we’re both in business for ourselves and seem reasonably successful, friends and strangers alike want to tell us their business ideas. Quite often, they’re hoping for validation, and then, a lot of times, they ask us to participate in some way. (We usually have to decline, because our plates are full.) In hearing a lot of these ideas, we’ve come to know a bit about how some people frame their concept of a business.
If I Need It, Someone Else Will Too
We hear ideas like this one all the time: “I was in the market for a bonsai tree, and then I realized that there aren’t really any good bonsai tree–selection Web sites out there, ones that really cater to someone interested in starting from scratch. So I’m going to start that business.” Okay, before we go too far, it’s important to realize that there’s a niche for everyone, and before you discount someone’s business idea because it seems too quirky, remember that there are many people out there who are completely successful doing strange businesses you wouldn’t believe. And yet there are some points to consider.
An idea for a business isn’t good just because you yourself have a need. You might have to validate whether or not others are showing signs of the same need. However, to paraphrase Henry Ford, most people thought they needed faster horses, not automobiles. You might not be able to find evidence that people have a need like yours. You might have to create a prototype and get a few people to test the concept. And “a few people” might mean thousands. It depends on the product or service.
There are other ways to get into a bit of a bind when thinking about business ideas.
I Really Understand These People, so I Can Sell to Them
We’ve lost track of how many people (usually in their twenties) tell us about their ideas to help bands. We used to be a lot more polite while listening to these ideas, but after a while, they all kind of blur. Our most common answer when we’re given a chance to reply: “Bands don’t have money.”
Quite simply, just because you are from the same demographic you’re hoping to sell to or believe you’re attuned to a certain market segment, that doesn’t mean your idea will have business value. Bands, as we’ve pointed out, don’t have money. If you’ve created the ultimate band-promotion site (which has been done successfully several times, by the way), you’ll have to find a way to extract money from some other segment. Think just a moment longer about this example. Audiences don’t like to pay. Heck, they barely like to pay for music. Will the record labels pay? Not likely. Not often. They have a “not invented here” bias problem. So what do you have? An amazing idea that won’t make you money.
I’m Really Good at This, so I Can Do a Business
We feel like we’re stealing from Michael Gerber’s E-Myth books, but hey, if you’re a great cook, it doesn’t mean you’re a great businessperson. The skill set required to cook has nothing to do with the skills required to market a restaurant, get more customers in, and improve your margins while not watering down your product.
There are people who are really good at painting portraits or quirky street art, but there’s a reason people talk about being a “starving artist.” Art either sells remarkably well or it doesn’t. And you don’t have time to sell posthumously.
There are many variations on this particular idea problem. People tend to mistake their aptitude as a shoo-in for business success. There really are some great accordion players out there. We can name one: Weird Al. See where we’re headed with this one?
Ways to Reshape Your Business Ideas
One easy way to determine whether your business idea is potentially viable is to run through this quick checklist:
Do I have a market for this? Do I know how to reach the people who might want this?
Do I have the resources and time and proclivity to do this? (Remember your goals from part 1, and ask if this aligns with them.)
Is this something people will pay for? (This one often seems to be skipped in people’s assessments.)
How sustainable is this business? Can I do it for a while?
Is this business salable? Can I turn it over to someone later on?
You can choose to answer these questions however you like. If you’re part of a larger company, you might modify them to meet your needs. If you are a sole proprietor or the owner of a smaller business, you might face these questions quite often. Remember that if you replace “business idea” with “new product or service,” a lot of the same questions apply to established companies.
Chris hasn’t been very successful at building salable businesses. His business ideas tend to revolve around his abilities and experience, which obviously don’t translate to something one can walk away from. Julien has been fortunate in this regard. But it’s definitely something to consider, if it’s your business and you want to find ways to grow your potential.
Don’t Get Discouraged
There are dozens (hundreds? thousands?) of people who will tell you that your idea will never work. There are just as many people who believe you are doing the same thing that others have done before. Every time you hear this, smile politely. There were many airlines when Sir Richard Branson launched Virgin, and he did great. There were many people selling MP3 players when Apple (then failing and most definitely not a “sure thing”) launched the iPod. There were many people selling personal-improvement seminars and educational materials when Tony Robbins did so and went on to become wildly successful.
For every person who tells you why you can’t accomplish a business idea, including us, be true to yourself. There are so many rejection-letter-to-now-very-obviously-successful-person stories out there that we refuse to list them here. Any one of them tells the same story: Hundreds of people said this person couldn’t do it, and then they went on to be one of the most amazing whatevers in the history of that segment.
That can be you. Work on your idea. Work on building your platform. Understand the human element. Build your own Impact Equation around all this, and you’ll find a way to make ideas that matter.
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People who doodle get a bad rap. Are you a doodler? We are. If anyone has ever questioned whether you were paying attention because you were shading your stick-man Batman in the margin, never fear. We think there are many ways to use visual thinking to improve your ideas.
Have you tried mind mapping yet? This is the act of moving your ideas around visually. It’s a great way to open up your thought processes to the logical flow of ideas.
The basic technique is that you take a blank piece of paper (there are also hundreds of software applications written for this same function—we use XMind and MindNode), and you draw a smallish oval in the middle of the page. Here you put your primary idea. Maybe it’s “popular Web video show.”
From that main circle, draw a line or a branch and pop up another oval, where you might put down “barriers to success.” From that branch, add another oval that lists “lack of funds,” “no skill in making video,” “really ugly looking,” and the like, one idea per oval.
Then go in another direction with a new branch, and write “subjects for video.” Splitting up that branch into its many possibilities, begin with writing “football” and split that up into “NFL” and “college.” Then go back to your “subject” options and write “hockey” and split that one up into its branches as well.
Mind mapping is basically visual note taking that ends up significantly more powerful than traditional methods. It lets you think through ideas in a visual way, work through possibilities, and see all their contingencies. You can create mind maps with many different uses. You can build them to test out an idea, to make sure you’ve thought through an idea, to decide what else will need to happen for an idea to be successful, and more.
Julien uses mind maps to map out blog posts and with games he runs with friends. They work because they fit the way the brain has ideas, by connecting one to another. They’re also much better than simply thinking because they allow
you to go back to concepts you’ve left behind and develop them later.
As Chris started adding to this part of the book, he realized that his mind-mapping software was open. In it was a little map to think about success:
The thoughts that accompany this mind map were about what it might take to be successful. Are you an actor or a spectator? Are you a lifelong learner or did you “drop out” after you finished your degree? Are you a context shifter or a trench worker (do you see the big picture or details)? Are you a wealth builder (someone who uses money to improve the world) or a bargain hunter (someone worried about scarcity)?
That was one side. On the other side Chris wrote about what the external functions of this person would have to be. He or she would have to believe that his or her secondary function in life was marketing, sales, and customer service to his or her idea. He or she would have to be an expert storyteller who understands how to bring an idea to the campfire (hey, yet another metaphor), and this person would have to be a hero maker, meaning that to truly succeed, one must help others succeed. Finally, a truly successful person must have a strong “no” gate: the ability to say no to opportunities or paths that detract from his or her success.
Using mind maps allows you to build a visual of your ideas. You can do this with paper and a pen. You can do this by drawing. You can think visually in lots of ways. If you want a really interesting book on this process that extends into using visual thinking and games to improve your business, check out Gamestorming by Dave Gray, Sunni Brown, and James Macanufo (see also http://www.gogamestorm.com/). Also be sure to get into Chuck Frey’s Web site (http://www.innovationtools.com/), as he’s the leading authority on all things mind mapping and our go-to person for learning what’s new and interesting in that world.
But don’t stop there. Visual thinking can take many forms. And opening your head up to new ways of forming ideas is just as important as everything else in this book.
Our buddies Hugh MacLeod (gapingvoid.com) and Mars Dorian (marsdorian.com) can boil fascinating ideas down to the back of business cards. Their styles of visual thinking can certainly give you a new way of looking at your idea. And though we’re writing about mind maps specifically, realize that you can get there in many ways. How would a little cartoon change your perspective? Could the “voice” of the cartoon be the voice you’re not yet willing to claim as your own?
What if your mind maps were storyboards instead?
Karen J Lloyd (http://karenjlloyd.com/) writes about storyboarding on her blog and points out that it isn’t just for artists anymore. You might just be someone with a business question the mind map didn’t solve. Why not try “telling the story” with a storyboard?
Not sure how to apply that one? Think about it. What if you were debating whether to move cross-country and take a new job in a town where you have no roots? What would that story look like drawn out in boards? You could talk about what it’s like to reestablish a local network of friends. You can talk about what babysitting issues might arise now that you don’t live near your parents. See how the drawing process shifts your thoughts into a different angle?
Though we both write books, blogs, and other linear, narrative works, we both branch into a variety of types of visual thinking when we consider how to improve our impact. The written sentence can be freeing, such as when you’re journaling to “talk onto paper,” but it can also be limiting, as you must use a certain syntax that is already laden with presumptions. Said another way: It’s sometimes harder to see the alternatives to an opportunity or a challenge if you’re using the written form.
Open your possibilities. Try mind mapping. See what other visual-thinking methods might apply to you. What could it hurt?
Discovering the Core Message
In his amazing book Understanding Comics, author and illustrator Scott McCloud explains how emotions get illustrated. He shows how, when your face shows emotion, it usually isn’t a simple expression but a combination of two other simpler feelings. For example, surprise is a combination of fear (eyebrows up) and shock (mouth wide open).
Lots of concepts can be dissected this way—divided in two to make them easier to understand. The movie Alien was first pitched to studio executives as “Jaws in space,” for example. Likewise, we could extend this idea outward, coming up with other “Jaws in…” ideas, such as “Jaws in Africa.” (This might end up being The Ghost and the Darkness, starring Val Kilmer, for example.)
You can use this same method to help you understand yourself, your company, and your project a little better. If you work at it hard enough, you may even get to the core of your message, what you are really about—and expressing it to others will become infinitely easier.
Method 1: The Triangle Method
Imagine a triangle. If you are a company, then each point on the triangle is also a company. If you’re an individual, or if you have a blog, then each point becomes an individual or a blog, respectively. In the middle of this triangle is you.
Think of your triangle as a target, and aim for the middle with the work you do. Keep in mind, it’s okay if you don’t hit the center of this target, as long as you don’t hit entirely outside it.
Now come up with three companies or individuals that will help you aim. For example, a few years ago when Julien first did this exercise, the three individuals who helped keep him on target were Marshall McLuhan, Seth Godin, and Tony Robbins. When he told Chris about the exercise, Chris chose Sir Richard Branson, Lady Gaga, and Howard Stern. (Our choices would be different now, but the point remains the same.)
Now, every time you have a message to articulate, you can remain on target by thinking of your triangle. Are you aiming in the right direction? Is the message written the right way? Or, if you consistently aim outside your target, consider changing your core three.
Method 2: Emotion + Information
This second method is interesting too, but totally different. Do any of these, or all of them if you have the time. Then repeat them a few years later and see how much things have changed.
After you have worked on a few key ideas, consider what the principal information is within them. Usually this can be done by category (social media, business, relationships, etc.). Draw these as circles and see how they overlap, perhaps with a Venn diagram. If you can come up with only one (if, say, you’re all about coffee), then try to distill it into many messages (fair trade, etc.).
Okay, once you have a few of those, think of a few emotions you display them with. This will make you realize that you need to present your ideas with an emotion, or they’ll lack Echo (another Impact Attribute we’ll discuss later). If you’re displaying only information, others simply won’t connect well with it.
One example of this would be the way that Julien wrote The Flinch. People often say it’s written as if by a drill sergeant. What this means is that it’s the information for self-growth alongside the emotion of anger with a smidgen of hope. You’ll notice that combining the information with feelings like sadness and remorse delivers a whole other message for a totally different audience.
Try this out now with your project. If you are delivering a certain message, or if you’re not getting the type of customers you want, ask yourself what emotion you’re placing alongside your message. Is it congruent with whom you want to attract?
Method 3: Being the X of Y
Julien once spent a whole conference (three days or so) helping people clarify their identities and the way they introduced themselves. He came across a great tactic that helped almost every single person figure out who they were, whether as an individual, a small firm, or a start-up. The method is deceptively simple but very effective. Here it is.
Begin with a single character, usually (but not necessarily) fictional. It can be a cartoon character known for a specific thing (say, Captain Planet) or a real-life historical figure (like Ulysses S. Grant). It should always be a well-known name but never what we would call an A-list name (such as James Bond), because t
hat sounds like bragging. Choose someone you admire or look up to.
Then decide what industry you would like to be part of. Political bloggers, MBAs, and others will each have their own answer to this question. Whatever industry you choose, make sure it’s where you want to work or a place where other people would like to be, because this method is about catching people’s interest.
Then, combine the two into “the X of Y.” Simple.
The result of this exercise is almost always a self-definition that is more interesting than what you previously had. For example, one Harvard Business Review writer became the MacGyver of innovation. (She puts small, distinct pieces together into a much better whole.) You yourself could become the Aquaman of globalization (bringing together two separate worlds (water and air) and helping them make sense together). But whatever it is you come up with, we guarantee it will be better than how you previously introduced yourself. Try it.
ARTICULATION: HOW TO RATE YOURSELF
How clear is your idea? This is an important section of the equation because you only get one chance to leave a strong impression. Consider it your elevator pitch. Will your one chance, right this instant, result in a clear impression in your target’s head, or will you end up looking embarrassed trying to explain what you do or what your idea is?
Ideas no longer get second chances. We need to know how to express ourselves clearly the first time.
Now, we assume that other parts of your concept aren’t hindering people from understanding your idea. For example, when someone says, “How is this different from all the other blogs about social media?” they’re asking about Contrast, not clarity. In this example, they know what you do; they just think it’s deeply boring (and they may be right).
