Getting Your New Idea Accepted

0:00:03.3 Jacalyn Holsted: Hello. I’m Jacalyn Holsted and you’re listening to On Point Conversations. In this podcast series, we share creative marketing content and branding strategies that help your business successfully navigate the new normal marketing environment.

0:00:41.5 JH: In my podcast today, I want to talk about ideas for your business and the creative process, and how some of the ways you can go about thinking about what ideas you either add to your existing business or you have for a new business, and how those ideas are going to generate into getting support and help from others. The first thing you want to do, if you can, and this is the first step, is find that what might be called an earned secret, something that you’ve learned first-hand, your first-hand experience with something that you know that other people would be interested in.  If you have a current business, and then in the period of COVID-19 right now, we are all, especially small and medium businesses are looking at ways to even enhance further their services. So those ideas and new things that you can add to your current business that you found through your experience would be helpful to other people, are going to be one way that you can look at adding more services or products or things to your particular business. One of the things that you want to look at when you’re looking at these new ideas is you want to show people when you get to that point, how exciting this particular idea is, and show them how the idea is inevitable.  Someone is bound to implement this idea and you want to be the first.

0:02:20.0 JH: Because one of the things we want to do in a business is get to that point where we’re either taking something existing and making it way better, or we’re taking something brand new and adding it to our business and being the first on the block to offer it. As you look at those ideas, write them down/ I would journal or keep track and can keep writing those down as you center on one of those earned secrets. Again, it’s something you’re experience with, something you know, and you’ve seen other people want. Now you that you have convinced yourself first that it is a good idea, because you are the one who’s going to carry it through, you’re the one who’s going to be the torch for that initial idea, and new ideas are very, very fragile. They’re important, but they’re fragile, so you want to convince yourself first of why you want to do this, what the intent will be and how much it’s going to help either your existing business or a new business that you’re developing. Don’t share it at this point with other people, don’t share it with family members, don’t share it with friends, keep it to yourself for now, because as I said, this is a very fragile period. In the creative process, there’s basically four steps.

0:03:38.3 JH: In the creative process, there’s basically four steps. The first step is preparation, and I call that also discovery. So those are steps where you’re gathering information and materials, because you have this idea now and you’re looking for ways, you’re identifying sources of inspiration, you’re acquiring knowledge about the project or the problem, maybe you even look further into it, it’s often… Very much starts with an internal process, you’re thinking deeply about it, you’re engaging with the idea. It’s also an external process, and that process is that you’re gathering some necessary data, you’re looking at resources, you’re looking at materials and expertise. Now as you’re thinking about that idea, you’re going to go into the next phase, which is the incubation, and I encourage you to take the time for incubation. When they incubate an egg, they don’t keep turning it over and turning it over and turning it over, they put it in a warmth and they call it an incubator and it incubates there, and it takes time. So, you tend to take time away from this idea, so you have time for your own ideas to percolate. You take those ideas from what you believe is your discovery, your great new idea, and you take time to get away from it, and you take time, and your brain will consciously, unconsciously start putting things together. It’s going to allow you to focus on the problem, it allows your mind to rest, it allows you to have that time for basically combination play.

0:05:08.0 JH: How am I going to work it? Think about diverse ideas, you find out all these particular things. And in this process too, I would say number three step, which is not part of the creative process, but it’s definitely part of this process. Don’t just figure out if the idea fits the market, figure out if it fits you. Because being an entrepreneur, if this is a new idea in a new company or even shepherding a new idea through your own company requires stamina because you’re going to be receiving naysayers, you’re going to be receiving doubts, conflicts, you’re going to run into deadlines.  Your conviction has to be replenished with that passion of why you’re doing it, you think it’s a good idea, you know what’s going to fit the market and it fits you because you’re the one who’s going to have to put the skin in the game.

0:06:03.6 JH: Now that you’ve got the idea, you’re sold on the idea, you’re convinced, you want to present it to other people. Before you even do that, think about… And you can do this in maybe a small team, very trusted people, is steer into the objections. What are the objections going to be for you to do this idea? You’re always going to have those objections, and as long as you’re thinking about them, you can actually steer into them and you can proactively talk about how those things would work. One of them within a company will most likely be budget, because the first thing they might think about is all the money that they’re going to have to spend. Therefore, you’re going to want to think about how you present this in a way that they’re going to look at this as an investment and step-by step process, so they’re not just stopping at one thing, or maybe the objection is, “That idea is not feasible.” And that’s where your discovery session comes in because you can talk about the number of people that you’ve talked to that have this issue, or the people within your company who’ve talked about it, or your customers who’ve talked about it. Maybe you even know from customer service calls some of the objections that have come up, so answer those objections.

0:07:23.1 JH: And then the fifth thing is neutralizing the fear. People generally fear risk. Now, if you’re within a company, it’s not your company and you’re presenting this to the C-Suite or your manager, there is going to be a fear of risk, because risk comes with challenges and things can be risky. You want to neutralize the fear by answering those fears, by being able to look at it and make it something that you say, “Well, this idea is inevitable because of this and this,” or maybe you have some proof that people are interested in this. Be prepared to neutralize the fears and neutralize the objections, and if you’ve already really discovered those within your own mind and you have already looked at those, then you have a better way of answering those, and if you don’t, then you have a better way of discussing those.

0:08:20.4 JH: So again, the process with this new idea, first ideas are very, very fragile, so be very, very careful with them, be very careful about who you share, and maybe to begin with, you don’t share with anybody, you just start to percolate that idea and you start to look at ways to research that idea and you also look at ways to validate that idea. And then again, convince yourself, convince yourself first that you have a passion, you believe it, you want to do it, and you think it’s going to be so beneficial. And then be sure to also make sure that you are the one that this is the best fit for, that you can do this. Intellectually, it might be the best fit possible, but again, the passion and the time and the resilience it takes with the new idea, you have to have that in place also. And then think about what objections you’re going to come up with, what fears are you going to come up with from your audience, put yourself into their place, into their shoes, and try to think as much as possible about what they would consider to be something that would alleviate their fears to a certain extent, and also to answer their objections. And if they come up with objections after that, then you’re still going to be, because you’ve already got that passion and you’ve convinced yourself, you’re right, you’re still going to be able to answer those objections.

0:09:46.3 JH: Again, ideas are fragile. There’s a children’s book I’m going to share with you. I saw it at Barnes & Noble several years ago, and I wish I’d bought a copy. A boy who was on a bike and found something in the grass and it was a round, it didn’t look like a ball, it actually looked like something with maybe a little bit of spikes in it or something. Anyway, it was a representative of an idea, and it was little. And he put it in his backpack, and he went over to his friends and he showed all his friends and they all laughed and oh, they didn’t think that that was any need for it, and they didn’t see any vision for it. So, he put it back in his backpack and as it goes through the story, the idea gets bigger and bigger and bigger, in other words, he’s been thinking about it, and it actually gets to a point where it’s too big for him, and he has to tell somebody else and when he does at that point, they better understand, and they see this bigger. This bigger idea. And they acknowledge it.

0:10:51.6 JH It’s a cute children’s story. I think it does talk to me today, and it does talk to me about the idea of how you nurture an idea, keep it safe and calm and warm while you’re incubating it, and then when you share it to the world, you have a compelling reason to implement this idea.  Share first with your team, don’t share it to the world yet, but through your team or investors or whoever you need to sell on this idea to fulfill it, you have a better chance and a better foundation.

0:11:19.4 JH: Thank you for listening. This is Jacalyn Holsted at onpointthinking.com. And I do have a website which is On Point Thinking. If you have comments you want to add to this, you have questions, just go to my contact page, I read everything on my contact page and I answer it if it’s a question or something that someone wants to know about, and I will get back in touch with you or if you have ideas for other podcasts that you’d like me to do, I would appreciate that too. Thank you so much.

0:11:52.3 JH: Thank you for listening, and I invite you to join me next week as we talk more about specific actions you can take to reach your own business goals. You can find my library of other inspiring podcasts like this one, at onpointthinking.com. Again, thank you for listening. This is Jacalyn Holsted at One Point Conversations.