Last week, I wrote about how to become more creative. You can however have so many ideas all written up in your notebook, and those ideas remains dormant. Has this ever happened to you? – when a new product or service comes to the market, and you sigh ” That was my idea!”. Yes, it was your God given idea, but the difference between you and the creator of the new product or service is that they went to work on it and produced something.
Converting your creative idea to reality is really hard work – in terms of time, resources, plus you will have to stretch to learn how to do the new thing, especially if you have not done it before. As I mentioned last week, my new 7-week course and 6 month coaching course is something I developed from scratch and it is now becoming a tangible product after several months of development. I am beginning to feel the excitement as I had my 1st webinar yesterday evening.
Some of the lessons I have learnt so far as I convert my creative idea to a tangible product or service include:
- Believe in Yourself – While this appears to a simple statement, the fear factor is always lurking its ugly head, doubting your ability to move forward with your idea. I always say that if I could have come up with the idea, then I am resourced to convert that idea to reality, and so are you! Believe in your abilities, in your ideas. There is no such thing as a foolish idea, and it’s important to know that other people may not appreciate the value of your idea because they don’t see it the way you do, so don’t take comments of naysayers’ personal. Rather consider all constructive criticisms as it helps improve on your idea.
- Form or belong to an Accountability Group – This is probably one of my most important factors. I am so sure that if I had not joined my virtual community of other high value course creators, I would not have made the progress I have made. This is because creating a high value course from scratch is not something I have done before, so I needed to learn from more experienced people. However, I find that I am also contributing to the group because I am bringing my own expertise in other areas. A group such as this creates accountability, support and learning opportunities.
- Embrace Risk as Your Best Friend – Embracing the risk of failure or that things will not go as planned is vital. It is wise to assume things will not go as planned. In my first test webinar yesterday evening, 20 qualified participants had registered to attend the webinar. Guess how many showed up – 2! It was just at the start of the webinar, I realized I had not set up the integration from my webinar tool to my email software, so my participants did not receive confirmation emails! I had this and 5 other lessons which I promptly shared with my accountability group and will now incorporate these learnings into my upcoming webinar which is next Wednesday.
- Connect the dots – Everything is connected to something else. Learn how to spot the paths of connectivity along the journey. What may be your “core idea” today can mature into something bigger as you connect other tenets that naturally associate with your idea along the way. A great example of this was Sir Alexander Fleming who ironically was searching for a “wonder drug” that could cure diseases. It was not until Fleming threw away his experiments that he found what he was looking for. He had noticed a contaminated petri-dish he had discarded contained a mold that was dissolving all the bacteria around it. When he grew the mold by itself, he learned that it contained a powerful antibiotic, penicillin.
What else is helping you convert your creative ideas to reality?