Come Up With Thought-Leader Level Ideas (Consistently)
Come Up With Thought-Leader Level Ideas (Consistently)
Idea generation is, perhaps, the most important skill for solopreneurs.
The new year is fast approaching, and I was wondering what kind of e-mail to send out as my last of 2023.
After a lot of consideration, I decided to celebrate ideas.
If you’re only going to learn one thing in 2024, learn how to generate amazing ideas.
Idea generation is, perhaps, the most important skill for solopreneurs.
It’ll help you:
Build a brand that stands out from the crowd.
Create content that makes people pay attention.
Come up with new ways to market and sell yourself.
Solve problems in new, effective ways.
Offer one-of-a-kind experiences to your audience and clients.
Attract the attention of the gatekeepers in your industry: influencers, agents, journalists, and big clients.
Reach a thought leadership status.
The best thing about learning how to generate ideas? So many people ignore this skill and think it’s all about execution—then wonder what went wrong when they execute a poorly developed idea.
By learning quality idea generation, you’ll literally be among the top few who stand out.
Secret to Success: Come Up With Groundbreaking Ideas (Consistently)
In this newsletter:
How important are ideas? More than you think.
Science-based idea generation process. (Part of this is for paid subscribers only)
How to prime your brain for coming up with great ideas. (For paid subscribers only)
How important are ideas?
The other day, I asked this question on X, and it became my most popular X post.
People were in two camps:
Ideas are very important. They are the start of everything.
Ideas are nothing. It’s all about execution.
Whenever I see two (or more) distinct camps fight over anything, I immediately switch on Dialectical thinking mode.
“Dialectical thinking is defined as seeing things from multiple perspectives. A fundamental principle of dialectical thinking is that everything is composed of opposites and that to understand things more fully, we need to understand their opposites.”
Things are rarely black and white in the world. Instead of fighting over what’s more important—idea generation or idea execution—we can all agree that both are equally important.
However, most people have a lot more experience executing ideas.
They’ve executed in school, where they’ve used scientific principles to create homework projects.
They’ve executed at work, where they’ve used the principles of the specific business to produce results.
They’re in execution mode every time they decide to put an idea into practice: how to lose weight, clean the oven, and cook dinner.
Yet, few people have ever taken the time to learn how to generate great ideas.
What’s more, practice shows that there’s no such thing as poor execution of a great idea.
One of the things that most often leads to poor execution is that the process of ideation hasn’t been completed. The idea was never developed well enough, so it stands the pressures of execution.
For those reasons, today, I’d like to offer you a method for consistently developing great ideas to help you progress faster.
“We have trouble finding good ideas that we can't afford to ignore any.”—Warren Buffett.
Science-Based Idea Generation Process
Reframe the way you think about ideas.
The first mind shift you need when it comes to ideas is that great ideas take time and work. Of course, it happens that a great idea comes out of nowhere while you’re in the shower—but even those instances are usually preceded by intense learning.
Most people see ideas as meteors and just wait for a nice, big one to hit them out of nowhere. The thought leaders in any industry spend time on idea generation.
Whenever you feel like you need a great idea—which, as a solopreneur, should be daily—make sure you block some time in your schedule for idea generation.
Practical step: Block idea generation time in your schedule this week.
Determine what a good idea is.
Most people count on their intuition to determine what’s a good idea. They don’t know if it’s good—it just feels good to them.
That’s not a bad method. Your intuition is your subconscious, which you’ve been developing for years. However, if you want to be among the thought leaders in your industry, you can’t count only on intuition—it should be just one of the factors.
To make sure you select the right idea, think about what you’re trying to accomplish and how you’d evaluate ideas.
For example, a quick Google search about good business ideas will give you this result:
Now, it’s time to create your list—and don’t forget to put in how you feel about your idea. If you want to feel intrinsically motivated to follow through, that’s important.
Practical step: Create your own list for evaluating ideas based on the topic of ideas.
Generate a lot of ideas.
Bad ideas are the soil of amazing ideas. Unrealized ideas are the soil of amazing ideas. All ideas are worth it.
That’s why companies like 3M, Google, and many others encourage (or even require) employees to dedicate 10-20% of their working hours to side projects and idea exploration.
In his book Become an Idea Machine, best-selling author James Altutcher explains the value of ideas and shares the 10 ideas approach.
It’s simple: any time you face a challenge, sit down and generate at least 10 ideas. If you can’t generate 10, generate 20, Altutcher says. Because that’s how your brain works, isn’t it? The moment you raise the target, it starts working harder.
Altutcher invites people to generate 10 ideas every day about anything just to practise idea generation.
Practical step: choose a topic and generate 10 ideas about it.
Steal ideas.
So many successful businesses, inventions, paintings, melodies and books have been inspired by others, sometimes mimicking the original to the point of stealing.
And yet, some of them are more successful than the originals.
Steven Johnson explores the importance of the environment for ideas in his book Where Good Ideas Come From. He looks at it from multiple perspectives:
The adjacent possible. Great ideas can only happen and/or prosper when the environment is right.
“ Twitter could only be built because the internet existed. Now, countless apps have been built to work only with (or for) people with a Twitter account, thus stacking innovations on top of each other, thanks to using previously developed platforms.”
Innovation happens in large networks.
The deeper you go into your professional community, the easier it will be to come up with relevant ideas. I know this means finding connections online, which isn’t always easy. Instead of going after random people, find the people who inspire you and have achieved what you want, and reach out.
Also, by consistently showing up on social media, you’ll have people reach out to you. When you feel a connection, don’t ignore it. Keep messaging, set up a call to have a chat, or at least check on each other from time to time.
With time, you’ll start noticing these conversations inspire some of your best ideas.
Reinvent
No idea is ever complete. Any idea can be further developed, reinvented and improved. So reinvent.
Practical advice: Subscribe to at least ten newsletters in your industry. Follow everyone you can on social media. See what others talk about, grab their ideas, do a little bit of extra research, include your perspective, and voila—a good idea reinvented.
Develop ideas.
The best ideas evolve over time; they’re not sudden breakthroughs.
Most solopreneurs stop before their ideas get good. They don’t give them time to form fully; don’t ask more questions; don’t read more on the topic.
If you want great ideas and easier execution, develop your vague idea into something worthwhile.
Practical step: Any time you get a good idea, ask yourself these 3 questions:
Why? Why this idea? Why is it important?
What? What more can be said that’s not said? What more can be done that’s not done? What can you add? What story can you tell?
How? How can this idea be put into practice? How to put it into practice better than everyone else?
Test ideas.
Testing is a must-do step for scientific ideas. It’s also wildly used in marketing. As a copywriter, I’ve often used user testing platforms to ensure my copy will be well accepted by a wider audience.
Testing is fun! As a solopreneur, you can test in multiple ways:
You can post your article ideas in one sentence on X and see if people care. (I did this with my idea to write about ideas).
You can test your headlines using an online headline tester (I use Monster Insights).
You can test various behind-the-scene methods to boost your productivity.
You can test various behind-the-scene methods to improve the process of working with clients.
Test. Then, iterate and test again. It’s the must-do for success.
Practical advice: List 3 ways in which you’ll test your new idea.
Your idea generation process, summed up:
Step 1: Block idea generation time in your schedule this week (and every week)
Step 2: Create a list of factors for evaluating ideas based on the topic of ideas.
Step 3: Choose a topic and generate 10 ideas about it.
Step 4: Subscribe to at least ten newsletters in your industry. Follow everyone you can on social media. See what others talk about, grab their ideas, do a little bit of extra research, include your perspective, and voila—a good idea reinvented.
Step 5: When you select a good idea from your list, ask yourself these 3 questions: Why? What? How?
Step 6: List 3 ways in which you’ll test your new idea.
How to prime your brain for coming up with great ideas
Do hard things
“But creativity is also about a willingness to consider and test ideas outside of the boundaries of conventional wisdom, and to acknowledge that what you think you know may be wrong. “You’re testing. You’re doing things that may be dangerous, and that may break something that you’ve created,” Kataoka said. “To really experiment is to do something completely outside of the scope of the way we’re thinking about a problem.” Beyond embracing uncertainty, that process brings the risk of an unwanted outcome or even outright failure.”—The Surprising Link Between Creativity and Risk
Great ideas are risky. To prime your brain to welcome them, you need to teach it that it can handle any outcome.
Do things you consider hard—read a hard book; sign up for tennis classes and try to get ready for a hobby tournament (I assure you, for a beginner, hobby tournaments feel like Wimbledon). Post a controversial opinion online. Share an idea with your boss’s boss. Run a marathon.
Prime your brain for doing hard things, and you’ll teach it that it can handle any risk.
Build up your confidence.
You can’t have great ideas if you don’t have the confidence that you can have great ideas. If you start doing hard things, that will already have a great effect on your confidence, but let me give you more scientifically tested advice:
Start telling yourself you’re great
Start telling the world you’re great
“Your words make your reality. If you don’t like your reality, change your words.”—Marisa Peer
Relax more
Research provides us with a playbook for unleashing our best thinking. It’s a popular concept: to have that breakthrough idea you’re looking for, first, fill your head with information, then relax. While you’re relaxing, your subconscious will give you the answer.
There’s one problem, though. Most of us suck at relaxing. We’ve completely forgotten how to do it. We’re always checking e-mails and social media; we’re always thinking of the next client or the next piece of content.
Stop. That. Now. Unless you want to burn out completely and ruin your brain for years.
Learn to relax. Force yourself to relax if you have to. At least one day a week, nothing work related.
I know you have the other part down. You learn, read, and struggle to grow in every way you can.
But the relaxation part—work on that bit.