The Myth of the Great Idea
Yes it’s true– great ideas don’t matter.
Back in early-2008 a buddy and I had decided to use our education and no-BS approach to become “amateur financial advisors.” We met up a bunch of times and attempted to make plans about how we would make money by helping college students with their financial situation. We would explain to them how to save money, invest in retirement, and still manage to have fun. It was a great idea on paper. Who doesn’t want to save more money? We actually talked about this business idea for months. Then finally one day I started doing some research online to see how we would price our services. Unfortunately, I found out that there was about a couple hundred personal finance blogs already giving advice on how to save money– FOR FREE! The other issue is that the financial industry is sort of regulated and you can’t just go around charging people for investing tips. Oh well. A few months later I eventually entered the world of personal finance blogging.
Before you close this post and think that I’m a moron for my lame story, let’s answer why don’t great ideas matter?
There’s millions of great ideas.
Every day so many great ideas hit me. I feel like I’m really going to make it big. I go online and find out that someone has already figured this out. That’s cool because for every idea there’s a plethora of different ways you can implement it or tweak it. That’s what excites me.
Ideas are not tangible.
So what if you have a decent idea? What are you going to do about this? The problem is that most of us think of good ideas and do nothing about it. I mean it’s fun to get together with friends and conspire to make lots of money. It’s lame when you realize that months have gone by and you haven’t started anything tangible yet. This is why I decided to write down my ideas and create a personal finance blog where I would share my ideas and also learn from others.
So now that we know why great ideas don’t matter, what can we do about this?
Take action.
Seriously. We all need to take action more often. We all have that friend that has aspirations to start working out and get in phenomenal shape for next summer. We all know the end result. Nothing happens. When I say take action, I don’t mean start setting deadlift records. When it comes to working out I’m talking about something as simple as going for a quick job or busting out 50 push ups in the morning. When it comes to your freelance business it can be something as simple as finding one client that’s willing to pay for your services. This will be far more valuable than any website, SEO, or Twitter page that you brew up.
Focus on results.
For me results are everything. I write about personal finance because I have tangible results in the field:
- Finished college debt free.
- Been on 10 trips in the last 5 years.
- Purchased a condo at age 20.
- Starting planning for my retirement at age 17.
I’m not saying any of this to show off. The point that I’m trying to get across is that expertise is all about results. You don’t have to think of the next Google algorithm, but you do need to create tangible results that you can share with others.
Am I on to something or did I just ramble on?
(photo credit: by lorena)
