A Key to Making Things Happen

Show Notes

• The key to getting a lot done is to act quickly.
• If you are faced with a new opportunity or idea, you need to act quickly.
• Even in the course of a conversation, take an action right away to get the ball rolling.
• If you take action immediately, there will be projects you won’t ever initiate or finish and that is okay.
• One of the enemies of small business is saying yes too frequently or doing too much.
• Saying no is one of your biggest allies. You won’t finish everything you start. This only means that you have the ability to discern which projects are most important to you.
• If you are moving some projects forward, but you are saying no to others, that is a good sign.
• Take immediate action as soon as you have an idea.
• Consider finding a team or even one person that can help you to take an immediate step forward.
• Find a way to partner with someone or find someone who has excess capacity that can help you out.
• The delay between the realization of something you want to do and the actual first action is what kills most ideas.
• Perhaps you’ve seen something that was just invented and you said "I had an idea for that a long time ago." The difference between the idea and the first action is a sufficient delay and then nothing was done at all.
• The quicker you move between an idea and the first action, the quicker you can find out if an idea is worth pursuing. This will help you to avoid lost opportunities.
• You may have many business ideas that you pursue and then don’t finish, but being able to recognize the idea and act on it will give you advantage over your competition.

Transcription of Episode

[00:00:00] Hello, this is Ryan Chapman from Fix Your Funnel, and in today's podcast interview I'm going to be answering a question I frequently get which is, Ryan how are you able to get so much done? It seems like you're involved in so many projects and you're getting so much moving forward and done. How are you able to do that and still keep your sanity?

The answer to getting a lot done is to act quickly. At least, that's been my experience. Whenever I'm faced with the new opportunity or an idea, we act quickly. If somebody gives me an idea that I think is amazing, I'll take a moment right there in the course of the conversation to make a note or initiate some action that's going to start that ball rolling forward. What happens when you take a lot of action like that is some of the things that you're going to start, won't end up finishing. And you know what? That's okay. The biggest enemy in small business is actually saying yes too frequently or doing too much when you should be doing less or have less focus in terms of the number of projects that you're working on.

Saying no is going to be your biggest [00:01:00] ally. Saying no means that some things that you start, you won't finish and that doesn't mean that you're not a finisher. It doesn't mean anything about you that's negative. What it just means is that you have the ability to discern between projects. If none of your projects move forward, then you just have a problem. But if you're moving projects forward, but you're having the say no to some things at sometime, that's actually a really good sign.

The key, then, to be able to get a lot of stuff done in a very short period of time and make a lot of progress while other people are hesitating and slowing down is take immediate action when the idea comes to you. If I get an idea for something, I start that process immediately.

If you have a team, this gets even easier. This is another reason for thinking about getting a team around you, even if that's just one person who's an assistant who is at your beck and call to take care of things during the work time. If you do, then you can throw those tasks at them, get them in their queue, so they can start doing something to take a step forward. If you don't have a team, find a way to partner with people. [00:02:00] Find people that have excess capacity and are interested in using that that you can then leverage for their benefit and yours. To get a lot done, you just have to get started immediately.

One of the things that we discovered very early on was we were working with small business owners who were trying to grow their business, trying to advance in whatever they were pushing forward as their life focus, and what we discovered is the delay between the realization that this idea that you have is something that could be valuable for you, the delay from that realization to the actual first action is what kills most ideas.

I know that you've probably run into or maybe you've had this experience, where you're talking to somebody, or maybe it's you, and you see something that just got invented. You're like, oh man, I had an idea for that 20 years ago, or I thought [00:03:00] about that a long time ago. The differences between the idea and the first action, there was a sufficient delay that you just didn't do anything at all, and that's our human nature. When you understand that's human nature, then what you realize is that the quicker that you move from realization to first action, the quicker you'll be able to vet an idea and determine if it's worthy of continued attention and effort versus putting a delay in there, not doing anything with it, and then realizing later that you totally forgot about it and lost the opportunity.

Again, you may have a lot of things that you start and that you don't finish, but being able to recognize that inspiration or that insight and then take immediate action as where you get all the games that other people won't have and thus give you advantage of your competition. This is Ryan Chapman with Fix Your Funnel. Keep moving forward.