When I meet a lot of people at conferences or correspond via email / Facebook / whatever people always tell me about their big idea and what I think of it.

My first question is always,  “so where are you at with it ?”

Generally:

• 60% have done absolutely nothing but think they have the next big thing..  I call this the “excited about thinking about it” phase.
• 30% have done market research,  probably have estimates on what the costs will be, some even go balls out on an excel pivot table.  But haven’t started actually doing anything.
• The last 10% have the site / app ready to go,  its doing some revenue,  but they just want to grow it.

My next question is,  “So why are you not doing it?”.

Usually always the answer is that they are want to team up with a guru to guide them.  This is the most disappointing.  In reality any guru that can walk into any business model and make it work… are doing their own thing.  Sometimes people are so desperate they will give up half the company just to get a “guru” on board.  Sure there are some gurus that can help them in certain areas but most likely they will die off and still maintain equity.

A.D.D. sidenote: I hate the word guru id rather use expert but it is what it is.

But some just want advice.  I never tell people what to do but I will share with them what I have done in a similar situation.  It’s up to them to act on that or not.

No matter what phase people are in the biggest commonality is fear of failure.

I can tell you first hand failure often times helps you so much more than success.  In fact I dunno any of the stuff I have ever done stayed on course with the initial plan because I ran into failures along the way that had me pivot the business model.

But that is not really failure in my book…  its education.

I always get asked what my college degree is in.  I don’t have one.  All of my education comes from just doing stuff and a big part of that is failing along the way.

I love the phrase adversity is opportunity.  I can’t tell you how many times I wanted to implement a major change I thought would work but I didn’t want to mess up what was currently working.  However due to unforeseen issues (legal, deprecated 3rd partys, etc) what was working became dead in the water and that gave me an opportunity to change to what I was scared of before… and most of the time it worked… very well.

There are failures you know will happen but trust me, there are many that you will never see coming.  Some could end you up dead in the water but all will give you an amazing amount of experience and education.

I can’t tell you how many things I have built that used the IP (code) from things I did that did not work out.

In the next few weeks I will be launching a new service called Spamchecka and I already have this on my mind:

• Is my price point right?
• Is my affiliate program too much or not enough payout?
• Are 3rd party services going to sink us if they go down?
• Will it scale properly?

I believe based on my experience I have a good plan and things correct but who knows?  I will tell you who knows…  Its also not the things you have thought of but the ones you haven’t.

So get after it.  Failure is not only an option but its one that could actually turn your business into something great.