Small Business Marketing Blog(412) 228-0504

 

The Faster Way To Make Your Business Idea Happen

Car zooming by at a high rate of speed

Lots of people have lots of great ideas but most never act on them. Instead, they spend all of their time creating detailed multi-year strategic plans, trying to account for every possible doomsday scenario. They become so fixated on “business planning” that they forget about “business doing.” And opportunities quickly pass them by. 

In Zoom: The Faster Way to Make Your Business Idea Happen, authors Ian Sanders and David Sloly focus on one simple thing—helping you move your business from idea to action as quickly as humanly possible. That means forgetting about mundane details (ex. spending countless hours worry about what font you should use on your website), avoiding unnecessary distractions (ex. watching a Mad Men 24-hour marathon on TV), being able to make important business decisions in under 60 seconds (see font example above). In Zoom, Sanders and Sloly provide a guide to help you launch a business in as little as 60 days.

A few things I immediately loved about this book:

  • I’ve always cringed at the notion of creating incredibly detailed 5-year strategic plans. As they point out in the book, today’s world is moving way too fast to be able to predict the future. That way of thinking is outdated and usually only gets you bogged down in minutia.
  • They include case studies and links to video interviews from a smattering of successful entrepreneurs including one of my all-time favorites, Richard Moross, CEO and Founder of MOO.com.
  • The chapters are short and sweet. After all, if you’re writing a book called Zoom, it better not be a Harry Potter-length novel.
  • They used salami as a visual for helping readers break down huge projects or challenges into smaller more manageable slices. The frame of reference was spot on and salami is delicious. I’d say that’s a win-win.

The biggest takeaway from the book is for entrepreneurs to focus on action. If you’re going to be successful, you can’t be afraid to make decisions or to experiment. You need to find a way to free up as much time as possible for “doing.”

And, if you’re still looking for a little extra boost, I’ll leave you with my favorite motivational quote from the movie Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.

"Ricky Bobby (Insert Your Name Here) is a driver. He is a doer. And that's what you need to do. You don't need to think. You need to drive. You need speed. You need to go out there, and you need to rev your engine. You need to fire it up. You need to grab a hold of that line between speed and chaos, and you need to wrestle it to the ground like a demon cobra!"

[Image: Flickr user Tony Hall]



Leave a comment