Do any of these sound like you? As a small business owner with a creative flair, I’m betting so….
- Coming up with new marketing ideas? No problem. You just can’t find enough time to make them happen.
- You love to get involved with and start new projects. It’s fun!
- Most people would describe you as a bit (or maybe a lot) disorganized.
- It’s hard to hand off any of your work to someone else because you just can’t stand to lose control.
- Most of your ideas don’t survive the honeymoon period of excitement….you either forget them or you lose interest.
- You are addicted to generating new ideas.
I’ve worked with creatives my entire career and many of my best friends are creative professionals. So I get it. Idea generation is fun – exhilarating even. The feeling you get from coming up with new ideas is probably a lot like the feeling an addict gets from his or her drug of choice. But actually making those ideas happen…well, you’d rather clean toilets in a public restroom. The trouble with an emphasis on generating ideas without seeing them through is that you won’t ever survive in business or accomplish the level of success you dream of.
So the question is, how do you get better at implementing your ideas?
The first step is to read Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality by Scott Belsky. I don’t care if you haven’t read a book since high school. You have to check it out. All of my friends will be getting it for their birthdays this year, whether they think in pictures or words. Yep, it’s THAT good. No joke, it’s as if Scott climbed into the mind of a creative who knows how to execute, hooked that creative brain up to a diagnostic machine and then charted out exactly what makes it tick. In his book, he spells out what you need to do to get your marketing idea into action.
I recently interviewed Scott and it was pretty awesome. In writing this book, he didn’t literally climb into a creative brain, but he did talk to hundreds of prolific creatives who successfully implement their marketing ideas. He shares what it is these successful creatives do that is so different from every other creative walking around with good ideas that nobody ever knows about. Listen here! You truly don’t want to miss this. And be sure to let us know what you think by posting a comment right here on the blog.