At the start of a business idea, you have lots of drive and want nothing more than to create meaningful things. You feel like big things take time and will come with more parts and pieces: more features or layers of systems or ideas. At that time, I found myself in a constant state of slow progress and a lot of trouble executing.
What went wrong? As I began my career as a budding entrepreneur and innovator, I began developing many opinions on how to develop an idea. My early beliefs focused on the fact that larger concepts would always yield the best solutions. Consequently, I was trying to create more, rather than attempting to create clearly. The outcome was a lack of clarity for both me and those whom I intended to serve.
How simplicity speeds up execution in the business world
At first, I expressed my ideas through complexity. I stacked ideas and added depth, but not clarity. I assumed people could follow. They couldn’t. The problem was not trying; rather, the problem was understanding. People could not connect with things they did not understand.
Being an optimist allows you to see what could happen; being an innovator gives you a creative mind that produces something novel; if your communications are not clear, the ability of others to understand your vision diminishes.
You need to be clear and to have a defined direction to focus your ideas. I have changed the way I approach my ideas to reduce the amount of distracting information that would hinder the communication of one idea at a time.
By developing clarity about who I am and my beliefs, I provided greater clarity and direction for my audience to be able to understand my viewpoint. If you want practical strategies for simplifying ideas, check out Dream Big and Win
How creating a simple personal framework changed how i present myself
Ambition is the foundation of every idea. You desire to build a meaningful venture and believe that scale is achieved through complexity: more features, more systems, and adding multiple ideas together. Ultimately, you observe that as you create this way, your progress slows down, and execution becomes more difficult.
As I began my career as a budding entrepreneur and inventor, I began developing many opinions on how to develop an idea. My early beliefs focused on the fact that larger concepts would always yield the best solutions. Consequently, I was trying to create more, rather than attempting to create clearly. The outcome was a lack of clarity for both myself and those whom I intended to serve.
Why keeping things simple makes you look more confident and polished
Initially, I focused on sophisticated solutions, believing that greater depth would create more value and allow for greater accumulation of value. The opposite actually occurred, and my deep solutions caused slow progress.
Over time, I’ve learned to build small. One idea. One small solution. One small outcome.
The way I’ve changed my thinking around innovation is I now quickly test ideas, I validate my ideas based upon the feedback I received, and I modify my ideas according to the results of my testing.
Instead of building a complete end-to-end platform, I have now begun testing single features individually; rather than launching my platform with a massive customer base, I have begun focusing on a very small number of potential customers.
Both of these changes have dramatically reduced my risk and increased my speed of learning.
This approach is similar to how you present yourself to others. When someone has a firm understanding of your vision, they have greater confidence in your process. When someone has greater confidence in your process, they will have greater interest in your ideas. For a deeper guide on focus and clarity, grab a copy of Dream Big and Win
Having clear ideas creates trust. Trust motivates action. You're a visionary, an innovator, and an optimist. The benefit you have is when you can express your vision so that others can easily recognize what you are trying to achieve. Develop clearly defined ideas. Build intentionally. Allow simplicity to guide your execution.