Our society loves to celebrate companies and individuals that launch innovative products or services. From Apple® to Facebook to Google, we hold these companies up as shining examples of success While we often talk about their innovative ideas, are we really recognizing the ideas themselves or the way the ideas have been executed?
The fact is that without execution, the greatest idea in the world is nothing more than a doodle on a napkin, a cool concept typed into a Word document or just a thought in the back of someone’s mind. Ideas are wonderful and you need one to develop something truly innovative, but the idea is just the first step in a process. An often long and exhausting one.
Execution over Everything Else
Did Apple invent the MP3 player? Was Google the first search engine? Did Facebook come up with the concept for the social network? In each case, the answer is no. The underlying idea for each of these success stories had already been imagined and executed by others multiple times before. But, each of these iconic companies took the initial ideas, put their own spin on them, brought them to life in their own ways and did a better job in executing on the ideas than the competition did in the eyes of consumers.
On a more individual scale, how many times have you seen a commercial for a new product and heard someone (maybe even yourself) say something along the lines of “I had the same idea,” or “they totally stole my idea”? Not long after the Snuggie® became a sensation, I mentioned to my wife that the next obviously ridiculous idea would be the Snuggie® for pets. Within a month, I saw the first ad for the Snuggie® for Dogs. Unless they have hidden microphones in Bed Bath and Beyond (where I made the comment), I think it’s safe to say that I wasn’t the first person to come up with the idea. Instead, I was just one of the lots of people who had the thought independently but didn’t act on it by creating a product – while the creators of the Snuggie® did.
The point of all this is to make the argument that everyone has ideas. What separates the mere brainstormers from the success stories is the execution.
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Top performing affiliates are great examples of execution in action. They often take some fairly common ideas (develop a website that promotes dating offers, builds an email list that will be responsive to EDU offers, etc.) and execute more effectively than their competitors (i.e. other affiliates). This isn’t to say that super-affiliates don’t come up with original ideas – they do – but it is how they follow through on the ideas that make them successful, not the ideas themselves.
If you want to take your affiliate business to the next level, it isn’t always about coming up with some entirely new idea. Don’t get hung up on the fact that you haven’t come up with a unique concept that no one else has ever thought of. Instead, focus on ideas that you think are good (whether or not you came up with them first) and find your own ways to follow through on them. This isn’t a guarantee of success. Your execution might turn out to be less effective than your competitors. The only guarantee is that if you never put an idea into action, it will never succeed. As Wayne Gretzky once said, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” If you want to succeed, you have to take the shot.
In other words, ideas are everywhere and everyone has a million ideas what matters is what you do with that idea. Find a way to put your idea into action regardless of the ground situation. Always remember nothing comes easily in this world. Thus finding a way to manoeuvre over the challenges and make sure you succeed in your idea. Those people who own big houses, big cars, business firms, it all started with a simple idea like that you have right now. Let this be a wake-up call, go and turn your ideas into money and to real life. You will never regret what you will find at the end.
