This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
The two phases of starting any project are ideas and execution. They are both important and they're both essential. But what if you are better at having ideas than executing? What if you really only like that first phase? Can you focus entirely on idea generation and leave it to somebody else to do all the work?
What a great world that would be. And that's what today's listener is wondering about. So I do have some tough love in this answer. You might already have a bit of an inkling of what I'll say. But I'll also have some advice if you relate to the question.
Because it's true that some people are better at ideas than execution. So can I monetize my ideas without actually doing any work or let's say without actually running the business? Let's talk about that in this episode. [Music]
Hi Chris, this is George from Cleveland and I've been listening to the show for about two years now and I've enjoyed the daily inspiration and helpful advice. My question is, can I monetize my ideas without actually running the business?
I have a lot of ideas that I think are highly valuable but I've learned that I'm not the best at making them happen. I want to sell the ideas themselves along with my notes on what I think the person needs to do to make them successful. Is that crazy? How would I go about doing it? I look forward to your response.
[Music]
George, thank you so much for listening. And first of all, you're not crazy. I do very much appreciate this question. I think a lot of other people might have it as well. But just to kind of depersonalize it a bit, let's imagine someone sitting in a room somewhere it just kind of picturing themselves as a modern day mad scientist or an inventor.
And all they do is they sit around conjuring up ideas and then selling them off to someone else to turn into reality. Now, when I think about that, I think nice work if you can get it but that's not usually how it works if it ever did. In fact, it was Thomas Edison, who's sometimes billed as America's greatest inventor. He had all these different inventions and patents. And he's the one who said genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.
Great accomplishments depend not so much on ingenuity as on hard work. The point there is that even mad scientists or inventors need to do a lot more than just dream up ideas. And I really do believe that ideas on their own don't have a ton of value. Once in a while, someone will write me and say, I have this idea that I'd love to tell you about, but before I tell you about it, I need you to sign an NDA. And I'm always like, okay, that's actually crazy.
George isn't crazy, but that idea of making somebody sign an NDA before you tell me what your idea is like, I assure you I do not have time to steal your idea. So let's take an extreme example of this. An extreme example, the company known as Theranos and its CEO, Elizabeth Holmes. There were a couple of documentaries about this that came out, really good book called "Bad Blood" written by John Carriou that essentially documented the story of this company. They had an incredible idea, an incredible promise, which was essentially being able to do all sorts of medical testing with just a tiny amount of blood, like a little pinprick as opposed to drawing blood.
So incredible idea was actually billions of dollars in valuation on this company built on this idea if it would have only worked. The problem was, as many listeners may know, it didn't work. She just pretended it did. And not just Elizabeth Holmes, but a few insiders as well. The only execution of the idea was the coverup.
So once it was revealed to be fraudulent, the entire company collapsed losing billions of dollars in valuation that was all based on smoke and mirrors. So essentially, the idea is not that valuable. That's the point. And maybe that's an extreme example, but you could come out tomorrow and say, "Hey, I've got an idea. I've got this brilliant idea for a unicorn spotting service.
It's gonna allow you to see unicorns. I don't mean like billion dollar companies, I mean actual unicorns." And no one would pay you for it, right? They would say, "That's ridiculous." At least not unless you could actually deliver results. So bit of tough love there, I realized, but the advice, 'cause I don't wanna just say, "Okay, that's it, you're stuck." What if you are better at having ideas than executing? So that's fine.
You can, number one, improve at execution. I'm gonna recommend a book by Scott Belsky, "Making Ideas Happen." Really good book about going from idea to action. You can also, number two, focus on one idea at a time. Don't try to do too much. Choose one idea for 30 days.
You're not making a live commitment, but do make a commitment to say, "Okay, I'm just gonna work on this idea. I'm really good at coming up with lots of ideas, but I'm gonna choose one for the next 30 days." And then you could also partner up. This is the third option. Work with someone who's better than you at managing the details. The details, the operation, and the day-to-day.
But that's not the same as only generating ideas. So thank you again, George, for giving me that great setup. And I do hope you put one of your ideas to work. Listeners, if you got a question, come to sidehustleschool.com/questions. We'll be featuring them throughout the year, along with updates from other listeners as they go from idea to, what is it, idea to action.
That's right, idea to action. All right, thank you so much. I'll be back tomorrow. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
- From the Onward Project.
