We’ve got a buddy that’s incredible at coming up with great ideas.
If ideas were what mattered, the guy would be a millionaire many times over by now.
You can see what’s coming, right?
He’s not a millionaire. And not many times over.
We’ve got other friends too. Friends who “claim” to have incredible ideas, but they never share them. They protect them as if the idea is where the value lies.
The truth is the contrary. Ideas aren’t worth anything unless/until they are executed.
It’s kind of like a golf swing. You can whack a ball super hard, but unless you follow through, the trajectory and the accuracy are going to suffer immensely.
Got an idea for a screenplay? Nothing is going to happen until you finish writing it AND get it into the hands of the people who can do something with it. The idea isn’t worth anything.
You’ll never be a best-selling anything until you finish your idea and make it available to your fans.
Many people have written about this. Derek Sivers, for example, not only agrees, but he breaks it down brilliantly. Check out his post here.
The point is, keep coming up with ideas, but stop complaining that they never go anywhere. Look at the execution required for that idea to succeed, and decide which ideas to pursue based on that equation (idea x execution = X).
If you’re not succeeding in the way you thought you would, it’s easy to figure out what’s going on. Either the idea isn’t great, the execution is lacking, or both.