I had a call this morning with someone who is launching a new idea and was seeking advice on how to get it off the ground. In her words, “I’m so passionate about this one issue, but I have no idea how to solve the whole thing when I’m starting so small.” Here was my advice to get an idea off the ground :
1- Publicly set a bold but attainable goal. By putting your stake in the ground, you can hold yourself accountable to a clear ambition. Once you’ve hit that goal, grow it through exponential jumps. I began with $25 and knew I could rally my friends to give small donations, so my first big goal was to create just one school. At the time, that felt massive! Once the first was built, I set my sights on getting to ten schools. Then one hundred. And now those ambitions have once again increased exponentially as we’ve expanded our school building goals and added teacher training and student scholarship programs as well.
2- Maintain momentum. Creating anything from scratch is tremendously difficult. It’s an uphill battle every single day. So it’s your job to find the wins, no matter how small or big they are, and draw energy from them. Celebrate them with those who made them possible, but always reinforce that there are greater mountains to climb ahead. This will also help you draw in volunteers, supporters and staff. Business teaches you the same lesson we all learned as kids through sports, that people like to be a part of a winning team. And the only thing better than a winning team, is a winning team that still has potential to get even better.
3- Acknowledge how much you have to learn. Unless an entrepreneur’s company is their second or third venture in the same exact industry, I’m a complete skeptic of pre-launch claims that someone has the answers to something others are seeking. You have an idea, that’s it. Until that idea has been executed time and time again, and you have a proven model that works, you should be spending your time asking questions rather than giving answers. Every day you should be going through a process of internal evaluation, advice seeking, and iteration. I directly request advice into a tough problem I’m facing in 95% of the external meetings I have. Learn from the experiences of those who came before you. And here’s the best part – the people who give you the best advice usually become those most invested in your execution of their wise words.
Simpkins
Sound so nice! I will subscribe to that author and his potential books.
Michael Kenshol
I am registered with you. I have misplaced the “30 Inspirational Mantras” I was wondering if you could resend these to me. Thank you.
Michael Kenshol
Laliesha
Now that is just the advice I needed, I’ve been sitting on an idea for a while. I’ve now just been given to push to try and make it work
Cornelia
Wow! Great to find a post with such a clear meaesgs!
Joshua Miller
Keep up the good works my friend. You seem to have the sense of the common. I applaud your efforts!
Savory (@Miss_Savory)
Inspiring 14 year olds in other countries…. If that’s not amazeballs, I don’t know what it.
Ren
Braun just chanced upon this and think it is such a great post. hope all is well and so happy to hear how PoP is doing. Miss the good ol days – Ren
ed24-singapore.com
Thank you so much for sharing your fantastic web site!
GRIBI Noor
Hi Adam !
My name is Noor, I’m 14 years old.
I’m french. I hope you will answer my post, because it’s more than serious.
I will doing my first film on 2014. I want to give the income to PoP.
It’s possible to talk about it with you ?
Thank you, have a good day
Marissa Walsh
I love this, a great read!