Why an Over-Active Mind Makes for Bad Entrepreneurs

Alan talks about the danger of focusing on too many ideas at once.

Note: This transcription has been generated with AI and there may be errors present. 

 

Do you have lots of ideas? Do you constantly come up with ways you can make money? Well, we have lots of creative people that come on the Popup Business School courses. And they come with loads of ideas, they have all of these different ideas all the time that they want to launch. And they’re constantly having idea number one, idea number two, idea number three, and they’ve got so many ideas. And you come into our workshops, and you tell us, well, I’ve got this big idea. And I could do this. And I can do this. And I can do that. And what we found is, those creative people that have loads of ideas, they end up spending 10% of their time doing idea one, and then they do a bit of idea two and spend 10% of their time there, then they do a bit more and spend 10% of their time on idea three, and they spend a bit more their time and do 10% idea four, and they just spend a little bit of time on each one of these ideas. And what we find absolutely fascinating is that these people don’t make progress on their ideas. If you’ve got too many ideas, you’re not going to make the progress you need to make, because you end up flitting between all the different ideas. What you have to do as an entrepreneur, is focus. With focus, comm progress. So what you need to do is work out which one of these ideas is the one you’re going to make progress on. So let me give you two ideas, two concepts to help you do this. Number one is, what’s the lead Domino. Now I’ve been listening to Tim Ferriss a lot online, and he talks about the lead Domino. So what’s the one thing that you can knock over, that will knock everything else over or make everything else easier? So what’s the one biggest thing that will help you make the most progress, and then focus on that entirely. If it’s this idea up here, focus on that entirely at the exclusion of the others, get that one done. And if you just focus on follow on work on it, you’ll start to make the progress you need to make. Take everything else. And this is the second idea for you take everything else, and put it on what we would call the Sunday, maybe list. Sunday, maybe I’ll do number one, number two, and number three, but for now, I’m going to focus on this big idea up here, Sunday, maybe take all those ideas because they could be really valuable. And put them on the Sunday maybe list and focus. If you’re creative with lots of ideas. Focus is what’s going to drive your business forward. And it’s the antithesis of what creatives like to do. Thanks for watching this video about why creatives make bad entrepreneurs, and what to do about it. Some thoughts for you afterwards. Number one, we’re doing daily content on entrepreneurship and startup advice to help you get going. So subscribe to the YouTube channel now to get the updates and support you need. Taking your business forward. If you can, and you’re in the UK, then come along to one of our live events. You can find them on PopupBusinessSchool.co.uk forward slash events. And number four, if you’ve got any questions for us, our whole channel is driven by helping you to succeed starting your own business of making your own money. So send us your problems, your questions, your ideas, and let us help you make money and have fun online.