Today I thought it might be fun to get practical and talk through where to start when you have an idea or are coming up with a new project or offering in your work or creative life.

It can feel so exciting when an idea or a new thing lands in your mind right? Tingly, interesting, fun, scary, thrilling. All of those feelings have come up for me when I’ve contemplated something a bit new.

And if you’re also like me, the next breath can offer a whole bunch of overwhelm. Where do I start. Which part of the process of bringing this to life or experimenting is the best course to start down…

Often what I have seen is that at this stage, women tend to get tangled up in the practicalities or the really complex aspects of a new idea first: like thinking they need to have a full website built before they can ever talk about their idea (newsflash, I didn’t have a website for my business for the first year – all I had was IG and a paypal account – it did the job to allow me to get on with things and experiment for the first while), or other stuff like setting a budget or working out costs or faffing with spreadsheets or overcomplicating their idea by trying to write business plans or create their own logo. PLEASE. I’ve done it all, I’ve seen it all so I want to call it out as a pre-emptive warning for you to notice if this is where you’re at.

Because I’ll tell you what – nothing can kick the enthusiasm out of a shiny and exciting new idea faster than opening up an excel sheet, am I right? Or spending hours on canva trying to create the perfect logo. This embryonic stage of your idea is not the time to complicate.

Often we overcomplicate things as a form of protection and hiding from really getting on with the stuff we know is going to move us forward. Because: well, fear! I really do understand why this happens. But if this idea is chewing away at you and will not leave you alone, it’s time to take some brave action.

 

So what I want to do is offer two simple strands for starting. Two strands that will set you in the right direction when it comes to slowly breathing life into your next idea or thing.

The two strands I’m talking about are IN AND ON.

These are the small but mighty bits of work we need to do in our idea and the work we need to do on our idea.

So I want to break those two strands down a little bit to see if it might help you know where to start, and give some context to the ways that these two strands separate so you can see how when they are woven together, can create some movement and momentum.

So, working IN your idea.

The in your idea part is all about the inward facing stuff that needs to happen to start to nourish your idea. When I talk about working IN your idea I’m talking about the foundational, root growing aspects of growing this thing.

In the early stages, the IN stuff for me has looked like:

1)     Solidifying your impact – putting language to your idea so you know what it is you want your idea to do, what impact you want it to have, what problem you want it solve. What is at the core of this idea, and what are some of the key ways that you want to be able to bring people towards it? Pick 3 core aspects that you know you can go deep with around your idea and start mind-dumping ways to extract and dispense that information.

2)     The IN stuff may also be about Information gathering; finding out who exactly your idea is right for, zoning in on who this idea is going to be a great fit for, who is going to want to buy it or connect with it or engage with it. And where those people are; where do they hang out online, what are they thinking about in relation to your idea, what are they struggling with? How can you find that out and ask good questions to get more information about the people you want this idea to connect with?

 

From here, armed with this information you can start to move into the ON strand.

The ON strand…

is all about the small steps you can take to start implementing the information you’re gathering and creating messaging about the impact you want to have. The ON or outward facing stuff is how you start to water those foundations, tend to the knowledge you’ve been gathering and allow the idea to start to be seen above the soil.

And the working ON strand for me, when I have a new idea usually looks like:

1)     Starting to share what I know with the people that might need to connect with it. Creating content, blog posts, podcasts, IG posts that speak to the new idea, that break down the new idea into those three core aspects you identified in the IN strand and find the best way to communicate about those things to the people you identified in the places you identified as best to show up in.

2)     The working on strand can also look like starting to map out ways to build community or to take people who are really interested in your idea along with you. This might mean creating some form of content that people can opt into, like a mailing list or a facebook group that they can go to to find out or hear from you more. How can you create something where people can let you know that they want to hear from you more?

 

I know that the ON strand, the actually moving out of inward, behind the scenes information gathering and into some forward-facing, letting people into your idea stuff is going to feel really hard.

It’s going to feel vulnerable because actually, keeping your excitement about your idea in your own little container of happy is going to feel way more safe. And I can’t sit here and promise you that if you release your idea into the world that it’s going to be a huge success (whatever that means).

But I promise you that giving your idea some room to breathe outside of the container of just you is what it needs to evolve. If you keep it in the container too long without oxygen, you will smother it and it will wither.

If you are looking for a way to measure how your idea is going then you can start by measuring your loyalty to it – that’s the only metric that matters.

Are you showing up for it?

Are you giving yourself time and permission to pursue it?

That’s a great metric for measuring how your idea is going. If you try to measure it by any other factor – followers, subscribers, purchasers, money, you’ll be hanging your worth on something that can change with the wind for a million different factors.

The point of taking action on your idea is not so it can be perfect right out of the gate, but so that you can be a learner right out of the gate. So that you can grow WITH your idea as you experiment and give yourself grace to practice and get it wrong and course correct and shimmy in other directions.

Start today.

Take a look at how you can work IN or ON your idea today, and stay fiercely loyal and fiercely gracious to yourself as you explore and experiment.