How To: Business Idea Execution

As a business owner it can be challenging to take an idea and move it into execution.

Entrepreneurs are filled with ideas; actually, it was probably an idea that helped kick-start your business in the first place.  But, having an idea and executing on that idea takes different parts of your brain. 

Why?

Sometimes you are so close to the idea that it can be hard to gain the proper perspective and vision, for how to implement it.

Sometimes, the idea is new, and you don’t have a good grasp on the initial action steps to take.

Other times, entrepreneurs experience roadblocks due to being alone in your various ideation phases. You simply need help with flushing it out, brainstorming or white-boarding the idea, to breathe life into it!

Business Idea Execution: Taking It From Thought to Paper

I want to shed a little light on how simple it can be to take something in our head and put it to paper… which is the first step of DIY business idea execution.  

If you are looking to take action on a new activity, then I suggest that you use this simple 3-step process:

Step 1: What?

1. Identify the new strategy (choreographing an event, hosting an open house, entering a new niche or geographic marketplace, etc).
2. Take a blank piece of paper out, draw a circle in the middle of the page (note: the circle does not have to be too big, 1-2 inches around. And, it does not have to be perfectly round). 
3. Then write your new strategy in the center of the circle.
4. This is simply step one for mind-mapping, and take idea-generation to idea-execution. 3

Step 2: How?

1. Take 5-10 minutes to ponder and purge all the loose ends that are swirling in your head. This is the phase where you consider “how” to execute this new strategy.
2. Place shooting-star lines, coming out from the circle and begin to inventory your ideas (note: please do not feel married to these ideas this is a strategy to help you visually see if some of the how-to’s even make sense or are exciting to you).
3. Identify the various ways you will bring this to life (promotion, calls, personal notes, save the date cards, invitations, EDD print, digital, video, social media, email, snail mail, door knocks, etc).  *get all the ideas out!

Step 3: When?

1. Take another 5-10 minutes to think through the timeline of the “how”.
2. List the pre, during and post activities *depending upon the strategy, beginning 3 months out, 1 month out, or even 1 week out.

Entrepreneurship can feel lonely, at times. You chose to be free, with your creativity and ideas. That freedom can sometimes be inhibited by all the hats you must wear. And sometimes paralysis by analysis sets in with all the ideas you have. You can brainstorm solo.

Oh, and if you’re waiting for the fourth complicated step, don’t. It really is that simple when you break the idea down and look at it from a different perspective.