By Cindy Krischer Goodman
Miami Herald.
When I ushered in the new year, I came up with an idea for a book I wanted to write, a business I wanted to start and an app I wanted to launch.
Now, I am eating a turkey feast and realizing I have not focused on turning any of them into reality.
This Thanksgiving, I’m going to step back, look at all I am grateful for, and ponder the ideas I had wanted to pursue in 2014. With one month left in the year, I plan to ask myself some tough questions about where I have gotten stuck and what I can do to move at least one idea into action.
A friend of mine says she, too, has stalled while trying to move an idea forward. She wants to add an ancillary service that could help her pet-sitting business become more profitable. But like me, she has become bogged down in the daily struggle of balancing work and family.
Recognizing we all need help bringing our ideas to reality, I have turned to experts to share their best methods for follow through.
DO YOUR RESEARCH
Wifredo Fernandez has seen dozens of ideas come to fruition as co-founder of The LAB Miami and now as founding director of CREATE Miami, a venture incubator and accelerator at Miami Dade College. Fernandez tells entrepreneurs to propose their idea to at least 100 potential customers and even ask for feedback on how to improve on it. “You need to validate that there is a big enough problem to make a venture out of solving it,” he says.
LET PASSION DRIVE THE IDEA
The pivotal shift from idea to reality happens once you find yourself unable to think about anything else but solving the problem. “The specific idea may change, but if you’re passionate and focused, your drive to solve the problem will push you to execute,” Fernandez says. Miami business strategist Dave Lorenzo tells his clients to pursue an idea when they want to achieve it as much as they want to breathe air everyday. “That’s when it is going to become a reality. That is how badly you have to want it.”
BELIEVE IN THE IDEA
Most people fail in pushing forward an idea because the unexpected challenges become more than they think they can handle. If you want to be successful, “stage the day,” says Anne Louise “Missy” Carricarte, entrepreneur and author of “Power Wishing: Visualization Technology for Manifesting.
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” Take a moment before you step out of bed to think about what you want to accomplish and plan your intention for how it will happen. “Retrain your emotional self to get past doubt without ignoring it,” Carricarte says. By envisioning the outcome you expect, you’re more likely to successfully navigate the challenges.
CONTINUE WITH WHAT WORKS
With a month left in 2014, consider what you have done already to move an idea forward, rather than what remains unfinished. “That can shift the outcome,” Carricarte says. If you have moved an idea forward 10 percent, look at how you accomplished it, rather than at the 90 percent you haven’t achieved. “Build on what’s working,” she says.
TAP YOUR NETWORK
Whether an idea involves starting something new or building on something that exists, look at who you know that can help you convert it to reality. One restaurateur I know found an investor for her food truck concept through her child’s teacher. When Kim Weiss got an idea to package her photos of sunsets into a book, she enlisted her boyfriend to write the accompanying haikus and a publisher friend helped to get it into print. “There are people you surround yourself with who can help you realize your dream,” says the author of “Sunrise, Sunset: 52 Weeks of Awe and Gratitude.” “Everyone has a network they can tap.”
STAY STRONG, FOCUSED
Shark Tank fans know successfully converting an idea into a reality is a marathon, not a sprint. Real work life conflicts will arise, as will naysayers. “The only way to get over disappointment, frustration or distraction is to get to work on your idea,” says Janet Burroway, author of plays, poetry, children’s books, eight novels and two textbooks. “It’s easy to terrify yourself into inactivity.” Burroway believes the longer an idea rumbles around in your brain, the less likely you are to act on it. When she has an idea for a book, she says she puts anything that pops into her head down on paper. From there, she allows her creativity to expand.
DO SOMETHING NOW
Rather than wait for the next calendar year, or for when you have more time or money, “take some sort of action today towards making your idea happen,” says Lorenzo, founder of Miami’s Valtimax Consulting. “Even if you proceed in the wrong direction and make a mistake, you can take quick corrective action.” As a business owner, Lorenzo says he carries a notebook and jots down ideas all the time. Some morph into newer ideas and go through twists and turns before he brings them to life. Remember, he says, “The idea is not dead until you decide it is.”
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ABOUT THE WRITER
Cindy Krischer Goodman is CEO of BalanceGal LLC, a provider of news and advice on how to balance work and life.
