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.
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