Motivation for creating your ideas

Many people come to me for coaching and start talking about their ideas for marketing, products, courses, businesses and entire new life directions. I can see the happiness and light behind their eyes. Then, it often clouds over as they suggest they need to create, write, build or market something far more practical.

Screw that. We’re told to fit in and be beige. But the truly successful people think of doing something sparky and spunky – and then consistently work towards it. Here’s how to stop mushing around in the low hanging fruit and get your creative idea on.

Motivation for the week:

The difference between a good idea and a bad idea isn’t a goal, for surely people who don’t succeed or win the cup also have goals. It’s the system and the application. So, instead of thinking of the goal and how far off it seems, break down the steps you need to take and build yourself a system to make sure you are ticking off a step or two each week.

Ask yourself the following questions:

How do I keep myself motivated?
What level of routine do I need?
How much flexibility do I need to not get overwhelmed or make this seem like homework?

Marketing tip:

Not sure if your idea is going to fly with your audience (or the audience you are yet to find)? Go lo-fi!

Setup a Wufoo form or Jotform that states, “sign up for early access” with a strong blurb and test the sign-up rate
Launch a survey and see what happens (Freelance Jungle began with a survey with 166 respondents)
Hold a half an hour free webinar to test appetite for a paid, full-length course
Perform a five-minute open mic in front of an audience to test the material for a larger comedy routine
Write an essay or blog based on the idea you have for a book and see what happens

Creative prompt:

Grab your new idea and:

Write yourself a list about what is new, innovative and really special about it
Imagine explaining your idea to one of your most supportive friends in person or written form

Now take the confidence for the idea into the pitching, planning, production, and marketing!

Self-care prompt:

Get comfortable with uncertainty. Nobody knows if your new idea will work until you get it out in the wild. We keep doing the same things because our brains confuse social proof and ‘monkey see, monkey do’ as proof that it works. But we also know that we want novel ideas that pique our curiosity. As do the audience.

We can’t get there if we do what everyone else has done before us.

Challenge your brain to reflect on why you are looking for certainty in your ideas – and work out what you find underneath. Most of the time, fear it what’s holding back our most original ideas. Fear of success, fear of failure, fear that the idea we have might not be as cool as we think, fear about what we might learn about ourselves. It takes a little grounding to sometimes crack through.

Ask yourself:

Do you want to know if the idea works?
How can you test that with the minimum amount of risk?
If you fail, what’s the worst thing that can happen?

Reminder to:

Use WOOP to get clarity with your projects in one page or less.

Opportunities:

Turn up to virtual coworking, the 2024 Deadline Party (kicks off the week of May 15th 2024), and the Jungle Lounge to ask for your fellow freelancers to hold you accountable and cheer you on. It will pleasantly surprise you with its impact!

Something to remember:

No one else will make your wilder ideas a priority. Only you can do that!

An idea to inspire:

Check out Cal Newport’s book, Slow Productivity. It not only helps you as a freelancer step off the hamster wheel, it advocates for making production a joy of its own, regardless of outcome.