So many ideas, so little time. ?>

So many ideas, so little time.

Starting something new isn’t easy.  We’ve all been there.  Whether you are changing jobs, buying a new home, or simply trying a new morning routine, different can be daunting.  What if it doesn’t work out? What if I fail?  Particularly when stakes are high, fear of failure can make change a scary thing.

Personally, I’ve never been afraid of change.  If I’m not learning and growing, I’m generally not happy.  I suppose this is why I became an entrepreneur – to build new things, to solve big problems, and to venture into the unknown and do something different.  I’ve built and sold businesses and experienced my share of failures along the way, but I stayed the path I created for myself.

I don’t fear failure, as it truly is the best way to test yourself.  But I do fear wasting time.  It’s the only finite resource we have, and the thought of spending weeks, months or years focusing on the wrong things is terrifying to me.  So much of my career has been teaching myself better ways to say no, so that I can have the time to say yes to the right things.

In that spirit, I recently made a decision to find the next “right thing” for me.  Since selling my first business in 2009 I’ve spent the last several years as a startup investor and advisor, held senior executive roles in large businesses, and had the opportunity to work with smart people and learn a lot in the process.  But eventually I realized that I needed to create my own path again.

But this time I wanted to take a different approach, applying what I’ve learned to make better decisions.  I thought there must be a smarter way to say no to ideas so that I can focus my time and energy on the best ideas.  And as it turns out, my friend and colleague Bob Beach was facing a similar challenge so we decided to tackle this together. And this led us to the 30 Ideas Project.

The 30 Ideas Project is our experiment in decision making.  We have given ourselves 30 days to evaluate 30 business ideas in order to pick the one (or more) we will invest our time in, and potentially build into our next business.

Why 30 ideas or 30 days?  We have plenty of ideas -in fact, most people do.  The challenge is saying no to most of them so you can say yes to the ones that matter.  But how do you do this effectively?  We began by clearly and honestly defining our “personal criteria”; our personal and professional goals, constraints, and other real-world factors that will drive our decisions.

On this site, we’ll share each idea with you in detail.  We’ll share our personal criteria and take you through our thought process and approach toward evaluating each idea against this criteria. And ultimately, we’ll share our final decision to pull the trigger and start building.

[tangible next steps, what to expect, what is in it for the readers, etc.  possibly a “call to action” – subscribe, contribute, etc.]


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