All ideas have the potential to work.
If that’s true, why a large percentage of businesses fail within five years?
Usually, how you take a massive action determines the success of any idea.
Let me explain this.
Go for a walk onto your local high street and pick any business of your choice.
You can pick any business, type of business does not matter.
- Restaurant
- Estate agent
- Clothing shop
- Accountant
- Cab company
Did you pick it?
Great, now if you pay attention you’ll see no matter, which business you have picked it, you’ll see in the same industry:
- A few will be killing it
- A large percentage of the businesses will be doing okay or struggling to survive.
For example, if you have picked a restaurant, a small number of restaurants will be doing an excellent business, opening up more stores etc.
But most restaurants will be struggling to keep their doors open.
It is not about what you do, it’s all about how you do what you do.
The problem often isn’t in the business idea, it is all about how the people behind the idea take the massive actions.
I came across this concept many years ago in a seminar, which became an integral part of my decision-making process.
Here is the breakdown of these 4 parts.
Step 1 – Ideas
Often, the idea isn’t the problem. All ideas have the potential to work.
For example, if you are a content creator, people are killing at all forms of content creation.
Below are some of the people who are inspiring with different content forms.
Text
Brigette Hyacinth – Over 2.1 Million LinkedIn followers.
Oleg Vishnepolsky – Over 1.8 Million LinkedIn followers.
Talal Al Murad – Over 300 K LinkedIn followers.
Video
Adam Danyal – Over 400 K LinkedIn followers, sharing only videos of promising tech products.
Denis – A youngster, who has acquired over 7.87 million YouTube subscribers by playing video games in his bedroom.
Ryan – A kid and another YouTuber, with over 21.6 million subscribers in 4 years by reviewing toys.
Photos
Humans of NY – 9.4 Million Instagram followers, Brandon Stanton built this by sharing photo stories of random people in NY.
Dr Mike Varshavski – 3.3 Million Instagram followers, Dr Mike built this massive following by sharing his photographs and being himself.
So Worth Living – 64.4K Instagram followers, they built the brand by sharing inspiring quotes using photos.
All ideas have the potential to work, it all depends on how you make the idea work for you. I think the biggest lesson to learn from these people is that we should play to our strengths.
If you are a content creator, have you figured out what is your strength (text, video or photos)?
Step 2 – Massive Action
Most people fail at this step and blame the idea.
As per Michael E Garber, author of The E-Myth Revisited, small businesses require massive action in the following 7 businesses areas.
Because most small business owners wear so many hats, it is not easy to do justice with all these 7 areas, which often leads to business failure.
How many hats are you wearing in your business?
Step 3 – Results
Those who take the massive action and manage to maintain the balance in all 7 areas above, usually get results from their ideas.
People who are making their ideas to work:
- Cab offices are struggling, Uber & Lift are growing.
- Hotels are finding it hard to fill up their rooms, Airbnb is killing it.
- Blockbuster became the thing of the past, Netflix is making a fortune.
- Estate agents in the UK at least are going down, online estate agents are growing their market share.
- The local high street is dying but Amazon, Alibaba and eBay are taking over the world and declaring record profits.
- Telecom companies are under pressure, WhatsApp is flourishing.
Step 4 – Beliefs
Once you get results, you build a belief on your idea and you repeat these four steps with even bigger action, which creates the ripple effect of growth.
Those who failed at step 2, never able to get results and consequently never able to build the belief system around their idea.
I think the same rule applies around other areas of life as well.
Starting a gym – A great idea to get fit
Massive action – Most people start to back off from their new year resolution of getting fit around 15th of Jan every year, just in 2 weeks.
Getting fit is a marathon, not a 100-meter sprint.
Results – Because most people fail at taking massive action i.e. pursuing gym regularly over a longer period, they don’t see any fitness results.
Belief – Because they don’t see any results quickly, their belief on the idea never become a reality.
What have you learned in your entrepreneurial journey so far?
Are you taking “massive action” on the idea you are working on at this time?
I’m excited to learn from you.
Enjoying learning and sharing to grow together!