Treasures From the ETR Archives: The Importance of a Single Big Idea
March 13, 2007

One of my goals when writing for ETR is to help my readers reach all their professional and personal goals. To help celebrate ETR's upcoming Issue #2000, I'm reprinting some of the most useful business and life lessons I've written about so far. To read each full article, click the link embedded in the text.


"If you want to lead - to become wealthy and wise - you need an imagined treasure. You need to see its richness in your mind and communicate that richness to others. You've got to do that and also come up with a treasure map. Not necessarily a detailed map, but a plan that points your people in the right direction.

"Your Big Idea must be desirable. It must offer benefits to you, your customers, and your employees. It must also be appropriate. It must reflect your company's capabilities, as well as its particular strengths and weaknesses - and the plan to achieve it should take advantage of your product's Unique Selling Proposition (USP).

"If your Big Idea is good and your map to make it happen is sensible, you will succeed."

* * * * *
"Coming up with the Big Idea is a big task. It must be important enough to inspire followers, useful enough to create benefits (for your customers, your employees, and yourself), and cost effective. And, ultimately, it must be right. There is nothing so dispiriting and financially damaging as a Big Idea that changes systems, drains resources, taxes everyone's patience, and then falls flat on its face."

* * * * *
"Entrepreneurs have big ideas, grandiose ambitions, and endless options. Line up 10 of them against a wall and you'll have a truckload of 'what ifs' but only a pocketful of 'how tos.'

"'Don't bother me with the small strokes,' they like to say. 'I'm a Big Idea guy.'

"Indeed, success in business starts with the Great Idea. But it won't get any further than that until someone gets down to the little tasks. Nothing happens until the first sale is made. And the first sale can't be made until someone does something."

* * * * *
"Whether it's your Big Idea or someone else's, there are five very simple questions you can ask that will help you quickly determine its strengths and weaknesses: 1. Whom does it benefit? 2. How great are the benefits? 3. Does it take advantage of the company's market? 4. Will the benefits outweigh the costs? 5. What do we do if it doesn't work?"

posted by M. Masterson @ 8:10 AM,

1 Comments:

At 11:03 AM, Anonymous Steve Chambers said...

Michael Masterson and his crew at early to Rise are great at condensing the essence of what it takes to start and to succeed in business. I love this review that is taking place in celebration of their 2000th issue. I recommend Early to Rise and MM's insights to my clients, friends and yes, even strangers I meet when they are looking to get into business.

 

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