Cathy Stucker - The Idea Lady

Attract Customers and Make Yourself Famous

Three Simple Steps to Put Your Ideas Into Action

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As the Idea Lady, I know that coming up with a great idea is a wonderful feeling. Having a great idea is only the first step, though. Ideas are not worth anything until you put them into action. 

Putting ideas into action is where many people stumble. They may be afraid to try something new, or confused about how to get started. Or they may think they do not have the skills or resources necessary to make their idea successful.

Here is a simple three step plan for going from idea to action:

Make a plan and write it down. A big project is less intimidating when you break it into a series of small steps. If you are not sure where to start, work backwards. For example, if your project is to create and sell a new product online, one of the last steps might be to make sales. What do you have to do before that? You need to have a sales page on a website, a way to accept payments and the product itself. What steps will you have to take to put those things in place? Keep working backwards until you reach the beginning.

If you are not sure what needs to be done, then your first step is to learn. Identify the resources available to teach you what you need to know or the people who can help you.

Put dates with each of the steps in your plan to keep yourself moving along.

Forget fear. Do not let fear stop you from getting started. Do not worry about what other people will think if you fail. Anyone who would criticize someone for trying and failing probably doesn’t have the nerve to try anything themselves, so forget about them. Besides, you are not going to fail. With your plan in place, you will succeed.

Start now, and keep going. Choose a task from your list and do it. Then another, then another. Take action every day, even if it is a small thing. Do not worry about choosing the “perfect” thing to do, or getting things just-so. There is a saying that, “The perfect is the enemy of the good enough.” It means that some people worry so much about making everything perfect that they end up not doing anything. Just do what you need to do and keep moving toward your goal.

Do not get discouraged if your progress slows or your lose ground. Just get back on track and start moving forward again.

Although having an idea can be exciting, seeing it come to fruition is incredibly satisfying. Take action to make your idea a success.

Repackage Your Services for Maximum Profit

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When you sell a service you perform personally, your revenue is limited by the number of hours in each day. After all, you can only fit so many appointments into the day, and you have to eat and sleep sometime.

One way to raise your income ceiling is to hire additional people to work with you. Your staff may perform the same services you do for clients, or they may provide support to you so that you have more billable hours.

Marketing your services in new ways can increase your income while you work the same number of hours. For example, instead of performing the actual service, offer group consulting to do-it-yourselfers. Each member of the group pays a lower rate than they would pay for your undivided attention, but you make more per hour.

This works well in fields where the basic skills can be taught, but performing the service may be time-intensive. For example, a publicist could work with a group of similar clients help them develop effective press releases, then teach them how to follow up with media on their own.

Offer a seminar to share your knowledge with others. Your audience might be from your target market, or you might offer continuing education or other learning opportunities for others in your profession. You may present in your local area, or take your seminars on the road.

A new way of teaching that eliminates the need for travel is through teleseminars and Webinars. Teleseminars are courses presented over the telephone. Webinars may be strictly Web-based or they may combine Web and telephone presentations. You can teach students all over the world without leaving your office.

Keynote speakers may receive $2500 – $10,000 or more for a one-hour speech. After honing your speaking skills and material through teaching, you can have a highly marketable talk. Just a few days each month spent traveling and presenting could increase your annual income by $50,000 or more.

All of the ideas so far have still involved getting an hour’s pay for an hour’s work; however, that hourly rate may be much higher than your normal rate. If your typical rate is $200 an hour, but you have 75 people each paying $39 for a one-hour teleseminar, you will gross $2925 for that hour. Even after expenses, you may net $2000 or more. The first time you present it you will invest time (perhaps as little as two or three hours) to develop the content, but subsequent presentations will require little or no preparation.

If you really want to explode your earning potential, you need to go beyond these ideas and create products that provide ongoing income. Write a book or ebook. Record your speeches and teleseminars and sell them on CD or as audio downloads. Create a membership Web site where members get access to your articles, teleseminars and other resources for a monthly or annual fee.

Look for new ways to package and market your services, and you will find many opportunities to increase your profits.

Quick Ways to Generate Business

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You should think of marketing as something you do every day, every week, every month, for as long as you are in business. However, there are some things you can do to bring quick results. 

The next time you need to generate some revenue in a hurry, try some of these fast and easy ways to get more business from new and existing clients.

Send an email. Create an email list of customers and prospects. Only add people to your list with permission, not just because you have an email address. A great service for managing your email list is at http://www.MailYourCustomers.com/. You may wish to send an email newsletter on a regular schedule, such as monthly, or just when you have news. The email will remind them about you, and you can give them a reason to visit your web site or your location by making a special offer or other call to action. I always see more visitors to my web site after I send one of my newsletters.

Get out of the office. There are networking events every day. Head to the local Chamber of Commerce luncheon, or the after work mix-and-mingle, or the meeting of your professional association. These meetings will help you to come in contact with new customers and connect with other professionals who can make referrals to you. Even if you do not get immediate business, you may learn something useful from a speaker, or just get energized and motivated.

Call some customers. Tell them about a new product, or offer a special price when they place an order today. Sometimes just calling to thank them for their business can result in a sale when they remember that they need something from you. Consultant Marcia Yudkin says that calling a former client to ask if she could use them as a reference resulted in getting additional work from them on the spot.

Follow up on leads. If you have leads from a trade show, networking, your web site or other sources, call them to follow up. Answer their questions, offer a deal or schedule an appointment to meet with them. They have already expressed an interest, so take the next step toward closing the deal.

Distribute a press release. Find something newsworthy about your business and alert the media. Email a release to your personal media list, or get a custom media list made for you and get your release in the hands of media, bloggers and the news wires. A good release can send visitors to your web site, bring customers in the door and get your phone ringing.

The next time you need customers and you need them now, try one or more of these techniques. Then get in the habit of doing them regularly to keep new business flowing to you.

Finding New Business Opportunities

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If you are looking for an idea for a new business, a way to tap into a new market, or a product line expansion, the answer may be right in front of you. The secret is to learn to see the opportunities that exist.

An article in the Wall Street Journal told about entrepreneurs who profit by providing stylish ways to wear those security badges so many corporate employees are now required to carry. The businesses mentioned range from an intensive care nurse who sells crystal beaded holders for $30 – $50 each to her fellow nurses, to a jewelry company that has sold 100,000 badge holders at prices ranging from $10 to $300.

Although the scale and execution differ, what these entrepreneurs have in common is that each one saw a need and a way to fill it. The nurse designs and creates her holders as a side business, and turns away business because she doesn’t have the time. The jewelry company sells both retail and wholesale, and creates special holders for large customers. (Boeing wants theirs made using ball bearings!)

Both the nurse and the jewelry company started their lines for nurses; however, with the increased security in place these days, more companies are requiring the use of security cards and the demand has increased.

What can you learn from this? First, if you are looking for business or product ideas, solve a problem faced by yourself and those around you. The above businesses addressed the desire of employees to avoid those tacky lanyards and express individualism within a corporate environment.

Listen to complaints and suggestions about existing products and services. Whether customers are talking about your products and services, or you hear comments about other companies, each negative is an opportunity to create something new that meets a need.

Keep your eyes open for people who should be your customers, but aren’t yet. The badge holders were created for nurses, but found a large market in the corporate environment when employers started requiring employees to carry cards. This change created entire new markets that had to learn about the availability of the products.

Look for new uses for old products. Caboodles cosmetic cases were launched when the company learned that women were buying fishing tackle boxes to store their cosmetics. (Insert your own obvious joke about what the women were trying to catch here!) They created a line of boxes especially for that purpose in bright colors to appeal to women. Same boxes, new look, new market.

As needs and circumstances change, watch for opportunities to meet the needs of new and existing customers—sometimes by offering things they don’t yet know they need!

Make Your Content Original

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How do you know that your creation is really your original work, and not just a regurgitation of the work of others? Most of us don’t intend to plagiarize anyone, but it’s hard to determine where the ideas of others end, and ours begin.

One of my favorite sayings is that when you “borrow” from one source it is plagiarism, but when you borrow from many, it’s research. This is a clever way of saying that most creations are the result of taking in ideas, concepts and words produced by others, processing them through our brains, making unique connections, and putting our own influence on them.

I heard someone say that we take lots of information into our heads, the thoughts and bits of data float around our brains, and when two seemingly unrelated pieces connect, a new idea is born.

It has also been said that there are only 14 plots possible in fiction. Every book, play or movie is simply a retelling or combination of these 14 plots. What makes each work unique is the choice of characters and settings, the dialogue, and the twists and spins invented by the author.

We are all exposed to many of the same stimuli, and we may independently develop similar ideas. How many times have you seen a movie or a new product and thought, “That’s my idea!”? You know that there is no way they could have “stolen” your idea, but somehow the same thing occurred to someone else.

That’s why it is important to take action when you have an idea. Sooner or later, someone else will have the same idea you did.

What should you NOT do?

Don’t take someone else’s work, and simply reword it. That is plagiarism. It is illegal and immoral. Visit https://copyleaks.com/businesses/duplicate-content-checker-for-seo-agencies to have a clear idea of whether or not your work is up to scratch.

Don’t try to duplicate the success of others by creating confusion between your product and theirs.  Using deceptively similar titles is one way this happens.

Don’t think that just because you CAN copy something, it is OK to do so. Computers and the Internet have made it easy to copy the words, images and sounds created by others, but that doesn’t make it right. Respect the work of others.

So, how do you make your work “original”?

Make unexpected connections.

Put a new spin on an old idea.

Use your own voice, and language which gives your work a unique sound.

Imprint your work with your life experience and values.

If necessary, stay away from works related to your topic while you are writing. That way, you won’t inadvertently copy from them.

Here’s an example from my own experience. Lots of people have written books about going into business for yourself. I took a different approach when I wrote about how I built a career for myself that helps me live the life I want to live, and shows readers how to do it, too. The lifestyle element is important to my book, but it is often overlooked by business authors. I used my specific experience in writing the how-to, and I created a new word, “Solo- preneuring,” to describe it.

Act honorably, and respect the work of others as you would want them to respect yours. But don’t be afraid to put your ideas into the marketplace as your ideas, in your voice with your unique insights and perspectives.