We’ll basically help you to look at where you are now and where you’re looking to be in terms of getting something from ideas to actions and systems. Because without those three levels and without prioritizing it correctly, you can spend a lot of time, invest a lot of effort, and not get to the results you’re looking for.
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David: Hi, and welcome back. In today’s episode, co-host Kevin Rosenquist and I discuss the topic of ideas, actions, and systems. Welcome back, Kevin.
Kevin: Good to see you, David. Let’s dig right in. Why do so many businesses get stuck at the idea stage and fail to even move into action?
David: It’s a great question. I think ideas in a lot of ways are kind of the easy part. We have a brainstorm, we’re like, this is brilliant, let’s do this. And then we have another one has this, brilliant, let’s do this. And here’s another one. This is brilliant. Let’s do this. And then the question becomes, okay, what are we actually going to do?
I know this has happened to me over the years in my own business. It’s happened with a number of people that I’ve worked with over the years. You have a lot of ideas. And then the question becomes, what are we going to take action on? And then, which of the things that we take action on, will we systemize? Get into place so that we can take those actions consistently?
So that’s really the purpose of our discussion today.
Kevin: Yeah. how do you personally decide, which ideas are worth pursuing and which to ignore? Because I can find myself to be an idea guy a lot of times too. I’m like this, I got this, I got this. But sometimes it’s hard to prioritize what is actually a good plan. Then put it into action versus maybe we just skip that one.
David: Yeah, it’s helpful if we start out with essentially a data dump of all the different things that we’re considering. Just write them all down. Then have internal conversations initially about which ones of these are going to be our priorities.
What are we definitely going to lock in? Which ones will we save until later? And which ones are just kind of out there? We don’t really have to look at those at the moment.
Kevin: It seemed like a good idea last night…
David: I find that by,
Kevin: before I was falling asleep. Not so good the next day. Yeah, .
David: That happens a lot, doesn’t it?
Kevin: Yep, it sure does.
David: I have a digital recorder. I take it with me wherever I go and keep it next to the bed. When I get one of those brilliant ideas at night, I record it on there. Then you listen to it the next day and you’re like, that was horrible, what was I thinking?
Kevin: What a terrible idea. I can’t even understand what I was saying.
David: Yeah, exactly. But, I think it starts with that. It’s about gathering all those ideas, because some of them are going to be great. Some of ’em are going to be brilliant, some of ’em are gonna be terrible, but we don’t know it.
Now, a lot of times, it’s a good idea to sort of evaluate them yourselves before you start sharing them with everyone else, so that you’re only talking to your people about the things that you’ve already kind of thought through and believe are the best ways to go, and ideally to prioritize those.
And then do another round with your people and go through it and ask for their opinion on which things should be prioritized and which things should be deprioritized as it were, so that you can sort of work your way through and have everybody be on the same page as far as what we should be working on sooner rather than later.
Kevin: I feel like a lot of times ideas can get just stuck in sort of a neutral. Do you have to put a sense of urgency into turning ideas into action?
David: Well, I think you definitely have to prioritize it. So to say that, we give it a sense of urgency, I would say yes for the things that are most important.
But again, there’s this discernment process that needs to happen on the ideas to determine do they need to be prioritized? Do they need to be implemented at all?
And then once you’ve done that, I think it really helps for everybody to be on the same page so everyone knows what we’re doing and which one we’re doing first, and which one we’re doing second, and which one we’re doing third and so on.
Kevin: How can a small business owner build systems to help their business without adding like an overwhelming complexity? I think that’s a hard balance, right?
David: Well, complexity in my experience, comes about as a result of not doing these things. When you actually think it through, when you start with an idea and you decide, okay, this idea is going to be something that we’re going to work on. And then you think through the idea and you say, where are we going with it next?
is this going to be something that we’re going to build in? Are we going to take action on this idea? And if the answer is yes, then you can sort of brainstorm a list of what are the actions we could potentially take here?
Y ou can come up with a lot of different things that you could take action on. But then you also have to further refine it and say, okay, which of these actions make the most sense for the immediate future and for down the line?
So, in my view, it’s a constant process of sort of refining these ideas, testing them, determining what the most sense right now, and what makes the most sense for the foreseeable future.
Once you’ve determined that, that’s the stuff that you attempt to systematize. And I think sometimes this gets out of whack, in the sense that people come up with an idea and start building processes into their business to get it implemented.
That’s putting the cart before the horse in a lot of cases.
Kevin: Yeah, that’s a good point. But it can be intimidating, right? To try to put new systems into place.
David: It can be, sure, if you are unclear on what those systems need to be.
But a lot of times, I think when you do sort of think things through and you start with the idea and then refine and refine and refine that to get it down to the actions that make the most sense.
Then once you’ve identified those actions, systemizing those actions can actually be relatively simple. Because there are only so many different ways to perform a particular action.
I mean, in sales, things like whatever, dialing the phone, right? There are only a couple ways to do that, and that’s a very primitive example. But even as far as targeting is concerned, if you have ideas about who you’d like to target, for example, and then you have actions in place in terms of how am I going to do that?
Exactly how am I going to identify the people that I want to go after? And then that becomes part of your action. And then you say, okay, now in order to create a system around that, I want to make sure that I’m selecting the right quality, the right caliber of prospect to begin with, so that each time I go back to do this a second time or a third time or a fourth time, I’ve got that system in place, so I don’t have to reinvent the wheel each time.
Because a lot of people waste a lot of time by doing that. They get involved in taking action and each time they have to do something, they sort of forget that they had a process for it. And then they’re reinventing the wheel all the time.
Kevin: Yeah, they just keep trying to redo something that’s already kind of working or already there.
you share an example of a business that put a new system in place and thrived because of it?
David: I think a lot of what we do with our clients in our Total Market Domination system, it’s all about that. It’s about identifying these key points of influence where people are having trouble, where people are struggling, and then getting systems put in place to be able to do that.
So for example, as I said, starting with the targeting, who am I going to go after?
There are a lot of businesses who just wing it day to day and they bring in anybody who can fog a mirror, anyone with a pulse, and that sort of approach is not usually helpful long term.
Whereas if you have a procedure in place for your targeting and you say, I’m, going to identify this particular type of business in these particular markets of this particular size,
I’m going to start with that and then I’m going to hone it down from there and say, alright, since I can’t reach every business in this particular niche or in this particular market, then how can I narrow it down to get to a smaller group of manageable prospects?
We refer to it as our largest, manageable submarket. And then from there, down to the initial contacts that you want to test it out with and the ones that you want to reach out to.
And each of those steps requires different systems, but you have that in place and that gets it down to the people that you want to initiate contact with.
Then from there, it’s like, okay, what are we going to say to those people? And then that becomes about the messaging.
How do we create the messaging that we want to communicate to our prospects and clients about our business? Again, a lot of times people just sort of wing it, or they say basic stuff about what they do and how they’re able to help, as opposed to having a bullet pointed list of the things that they want to make sure are communicated to each new prospect, every step of the way.
And then another example going on from there would be, how are we initiating our initial contact with them? Is it a cold call? A meeting at a networking function? Is it a post on social media? Lots of different ways to initiate your first contact, and then what’s the follow up going to be?
And with each of those steps, there are responsibilities that come with it. The responsibility of doing this consistently.
Because if you’re doing different things with different prospects, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, you really don’t know what worked and what didn’t.
When you’ve got consistent systems in place that allow you to know what’s working each time, now you’ve got something you can build on.
And it also increases the value of the business at some point if you want to sell it in the future. Because when you’ve got these systems in place, your business is just worth more.
Kevin: Sure. Makes sense. think a lot of times too, people get ideas and then those lead to maybe one-off bursts of action instead of building those consistent systems. How can people avoid falling into that trap and going more for a real system rather than just like a, quick fix of action.
David: It’s a really great question because so many people do struggle with this. You get an idea and you just start taking action on it. I start doing this, I start doing this. I start doing that before I’ve even evaluated that action, as we talked about before. Then the next day, you’re like, why was I doing that?
It doesn’t even make sense. So sometimes it’s really just a matter of taking a breath when you have an idea and asking, is this the kind of thing that I really want to dedicate my resources to, that I’m going to be willing to commit my resources to my resources in terms of my own time, the time of my team, money as far as if it requires advertising and all that sort of thing.
You want to really think through that first before you just dive into the action taking stage. So once again, I think the question of prioritization becomes really important, making those decisions up front, because if you just dive in, you’re probably setting yourself up for a lot of extra work that’s not going to amount to much.
Kevin: Yeah. And again, you talked about prioritizing your ideas, making sure that you’re not overwhelming yourself. Do you find yourself doing that? Do you go through sort of your idea list, if you will, and go. This is great. This is a, maybe, this is terrible. What was I thinking?
Like, is that kind of how you do it?
David: Yeah, one of the things that I do is I list everything out and I try to understand what it was that I was talking about when I wrote it down, right? Because sometimes.
Kevin: Why were you thinking of this? Yeah. Mm-hmm.
David: Exactly, and then evaluating it and trying to get a feel. And particularly if you’re interacting with someone else, if you’re generating ideas and you’re bouncing it off someone else.
If someone raises a bunch of ideas with you, you have to make sure that you understand what it is that they’re proposing, so that you can repeat it back to them and say, okay, is this what we’re talking about? Is that what we’re talking about?
And then once you’re clear, with the other person that you’re working with on what it is that they have in mind, then you can discuss and how it makes sense to proceed with that.
How you take it from the ideation stage to the implementation stage, which is about deciding what those actions are going to be.
Kevin: there’s a lot of people who are idea people. I’ve known a lot of those people throughout my life, whether in business or just friends, always got big ideas. Never really do anything with them. Sometimes that can be a personality trait, but can it also just be that you have so many, you don’t even know what to do?
You haven’t prioritized,
David: yeah, there are people who are just great at generating ideas and they just come out fast and furious. There are also starters, and there are finishers in business, right?
There are people who come up with the ideas, but they’re not quite sure how to turn it into something real. And so if you’re struggling with any aspect of this, you need to ask yourself, okay, am I an idea creator? Am I an implementer or am I a systems or process builder, or am I all three of these things?
If you’re all three of these things, then obviously you need to prioritize ’em and try to do them in order. But if you’re an idea person and you’re looking to get things implemented, then you really need to make sure that you’re surrounding yourself with the people who can help you to see that vision through.
People who are not just starters in terms of being able to get a project underway, but to get that project completed, systematized, built into the day-to-day aspects of the business so that you don’t have to worry about things falling apart.
You want to make sure that the wheels don’t start falling off the wagon.
Kevin: How can you keep those people accountable to follow through on the actions and the systems if you’re an idea person?
David: I guess it really depends what your position is in the organization, right? because if you’re the head of the organization and you’re setting the pace, you’re saying, we’re going to be doing A, B, and C, then it really is a matter of identifying who’s going to be responsible for making that happen, and looking at what is the plan for making that happen.
Because as the idea person, you may not even know exactly what those steps are, but you need to be working with someone who can identify that, who can get that ball rolling and get those things built into systems so that the idea can be tested. A lot of times it’s not just a matter of coming up with an idea and then saying, okay, let’s go do this.
The first step has to be proof of concept. We need to test it out and see does this even work? Is this idea viable in the marketplace? Viable with my people? Is this something that I can do without breaking the bank?
So there are a lot of practical considerations that come into testing out the ideas that different people come up with, before you can really start taking action and then building it into a system.
Kevin: This is really fascinating stuff. Idea, action system. It makes so much sense. For anyone listening who needs to know more. Who wants to know more? Who wants to pursue this? How can they get some more information from you
David: Just go to TopSecrets.com/shift. Request a copy of our free report. We’ll basically help you to look at where you are now and where you’re looking to be in terms of that curve: Getting something from the idea stage to an action stage, and then into a process stage.
Because without those three levels and without prioritizing it correctly, you can spend a lot of time, invest a lot of effort, and not get to the results you’re looking for.
So I think just taking some time to look through that, break through that, and have a conversation is probably very helpful.
But if you start out at TopSecrets.com/shift. Take a look at the report and then if it makes sense for us to have a conversation, you’re welcome to schedule it there.
Kevin: Well, thanks so much, David. Good to see you.
David: You too. Thanks a lot, Kevin.
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