Latest / Amplify Your Marketing Message with Christine Campbell Rapin / 188- Fewer, Bigger, Better: How to Audit Ideas for Commercial Wins

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188- Fewer, Bigger, Better: How to Audit Ideas for Commercial Wins · Amplify Your Marketing Message with Christine Campbell Rapin

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  If you are a B2B service based business owner and you are
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  looking to gain more clients, create more impact and more
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  revenue in your business, TuneIn to amplify your marketing
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  message with Christine Campbell Rappin.
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  Every week we're going to take you through how to build an
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  audience of buyers, mastering your marketing message, making
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  offers so you have this great new idea, the perfect idea for a
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  business, the perfect idea to expand your empire, and the
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  perfect new idea, service or offering to bring into your
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  business. Super exciting, right?
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  Well, this week on Amplify Your Marketing Message, I'm going to
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  tell you how to sit with that idea and either confidently
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  green light it or to park it and focus on something incremental
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  instead of brand new. Welcome to Amplify your
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  marketing message. I am your host, Christine
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  Campbell Rappin, and I will tell you there's a giant elephant in
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  the room and that it takes just a great idea to build a
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  business. Hmm.
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  Uncomfortable, right? Well, the truth is, the ideas
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  are the easiest bit of it all. And if ideas were all it would
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  take, we'd have a lot more success stories in the
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  marketplace. It takes so much more than just
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  a great idea to create a business.
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  And if you want to use a great idea and commercialize it, then
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  this is going to be a super important episode.
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  I want you to share. I want you sit with and want to
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  get your notebook out. And I want you to answer the
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  questions I'm going to pose you and guide you through to figure
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  out confidently should your green light the idea or should
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  you park it? Ideas are the easy bet, but the
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  follow through is the key and I think it's important that we
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  audit and get clear. Is the idea something we want to
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  create commercial success with first and foremost.
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  And commercial success is defined by you.
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  You have to decide what kind of effort and reward equation makes
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  sense to you, what becomes personally worth it.
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  So once you've decided what your measure of success is, I want
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  you to pursue these three questions.
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  The first thing when it comes to great ideas and it comes to
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  commercializing great ideas is to answer and to acknowledge
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  this truth. People only pay for outcomes,
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  they pay for a result. So for you, as you look at your
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  idea, what great problem are you solving with this service,
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  program or concept that the idea sits within?
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  You should be able to and need to be able to talk about this
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  result statement in 10 words or less.
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  The clearer it is, the more compelling it is for somebody
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  who is seeking a solution. And you need to be visible to
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  those seekers in order to create intersection opportunity to have
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  an offer made. So if you're talking about a
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  problem that is a gap to be solved, what's the scope of the
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  gap? If you're talking about the
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  aspirational type of program or service, what's the gain to be
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  had? Doesn't matter to me.
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  Whether you play and choose to play within the gap or the game,
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  the result is the same. People will only pay for an
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  outcome. So what is the outcome?
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  You solve and do it in 10 words or less.
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  Second piece of the puzzle is what is the scope, the total
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  available opportunity to be served in this idea, in this
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  solution, in this program or service.
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  And I think when it comes to understanding the available
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  marketplace, there's three key areas you have to dig into.
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  Number one is how many people could you possibly serve?
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  We call this the Tam, the total available marketplace.
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  How many people are out there that would see the problem and
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  be potentially curious around what you are bringing in this
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  idea to the marketplace. The second thing of that is the
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  frequency of purchase because I think smart strategy was
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  something I highly recommend to all my clients is that you find
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  a repeating problem. Repeating problems increase your
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  profit because you can serve the same client more than once.
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  And my friends, again, we've talked about this more on this
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  podcast, but revenue and profit are two very different drivers.
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  You need both, but frequency can increase the number of at bats,
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  the number of offers, the number of wind business, and the number
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  of results you create. And so take a short path and
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  look at frequency. The third thing I think not
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  enough people ask. Please be the exception to the
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  rule. Make sure you ask it are people
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  willing to pay for this solution?
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  And when you're at this idea stage where everything is
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  sparkly and all the butterflies are running, it's hard to know
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  this. We think somebody will pay for
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  this. Don't play in the land of
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  thinking. Plan the land of certainty.
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  So what I mean by that is go not just ask people who will, yes,
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  you, you know, Facebook groups you're at Sally or somebody who
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  really just wants you to stay positive, head in the different
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  direction, look for empirical evidence.
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  And what I mean by that is go to the marketplace, research
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  Google, go to your favorite tools and ask the question, are
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  people already serving and getting paid to solve this
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  problem? You're thinking, ah Christine,
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  that means it's competitive. Yes, competitors are a good sign
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  When you are testing an idea and deciding to red light or green
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  it light it. You can curate demand.
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  Which means you stir the marketplace, you educate the
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  marketplace, you become the first mover to a brand new
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  intersection problem solution and a marriage.
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  I will tell you though, if you're a solopreneur, small
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  freelancer, or a business with just their own bootstrapping
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  money behind them, do not head off in that direction, can you?
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  Yes, but it is really expensive. It will take longer with more
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  bandwidth and the truthful harder pathway than if you go to
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  where the market evidence already is existing.
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  So I tell my clients when they come into my business and they
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  want to say, Christine, I'm really struggling to find
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  clients. And I said, well, let's talk
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  about how many people have this problem?
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  How often is the problem exists? Do you know who else serves this
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  and what are they paying for? I often get a lot of this is
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  uncomfortable. Christine, I'm like, you've got
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  to decide if you have a business or not.
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  And I will tell you, not everybody who comes into our
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  space loves my answer when I say you don't have a business.
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  They have a great idea, but not a business.
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  And until you can solve the people, the frequency and
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  whether they're willing to pay, you will always be stuck with a
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  great idea, but not commercial success.
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  So at this stage, in these two questions behind you, I want you
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  to ask yourself, do I still want to commercialize us?
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  If the answer is yes, keep going to the third question, which is
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  what makes me different. There's three things I think you
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  can bring to the table which will differentiate you in a
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  marketplace. Could be your story, your
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  history, could be your values and how you see the world.
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  And it could be the way that your expertise and your lived
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  experience has created a unique approach to solving the gap and
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  the gain. You do not have to be massively
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  different. Just side note here, we often
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  said in the corporate space, 1% better can be a landslide of
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  millions of opportunities, but you have to recognize what makes
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  you different because what makes you different translates into
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  the way we use language with our clients is what makes you the
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  must hire. You've got to be able to
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  communicate what makes you a must hire.
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  You've got to be able to communicate your values and
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  build trust with the potential buyer in order to see commercial
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  success. And of course, we want to do
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  that more than once in order to create the stability behind the
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  ideas. So right now I've given you
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  three ways to test, audit and validate your great new shiny
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  idea. Let's recap.
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  What problem am I solving? How big is the opportunity and
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  what makes me different? If you're now in a position
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  where you're standing with a green light, I want to bring
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  also some other expertise to the table because again, a great
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  idea is the easy bet. But here's what I also want you
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  to test, and this is going to be important.
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  These are two individuals. I want to share with you 2
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  stories in this section that talk about things that are going
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  to shape how you see the world and learn from some of the best
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  brains, most successful commercial success entrepreneurs
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  that I personally admire. The first one is to think about
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  the size of the game. I said, you know, you have to
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  decide if it's a go, no go. You have to decide if it's worth
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  it for you. And I will tell you, in
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  business, math has to play a role.
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  What's the inputs? What's the output?
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  But a good measure of thumb. I'd heard this review years ago
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  from Alex Hormozi, and he said, you know, I was driving my team
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  crazy because every nanosecond I had a new idea.
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  Hands up if you can relate to that or your team can relate to
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  that. I told you ideas would be easy.
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  Bet they're the easiest bit of entrepreneurship.
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  And it's true for people like Alex, and it's true for people
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  like me, and it's true people like you.
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  But, he said. What I had to realize was that I
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  had to do fewer, bigger, better. And what he meant by that, he
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  said, is I recognize for every new idea I implemented, I
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  screwed up my team. It required my team to change
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  focus, and it took time for that new focus to gain momentum.
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  But in between, there was a huge opportunity cost.
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  We had to write SOP's, we had to train our team.
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  We had to stop doing what we were doing successfully in order
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  to create the space for this new idea germinate, to grow and to
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  thrive. How much did that opportunity
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  cost impact their business? 20% was his number, so he said
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  if I don't gain more than 20%, I did a ton of work, screwed up my
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  team, lost momentum for nothing to end up right back with an
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  equivalent business. Which is not necessarily a super
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  logical decision, right? Which is why a lot of ideas
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  should be parked, not green lighted and they said.
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  So for us, our belief is that we need to see a 5% gain and a
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  recover of 20% lost opportunity and momentum in order for this
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  to be making any sense. So just hold for a second here
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  because this is quite a big number and it really rattled me
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  and it made me really think about how many ideas we should
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  implement in our business. When I heard this, he said for
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  me, when I do my idea audit, I have to be certain that we're
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  going to get 25% growth out of this new thing.
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  If we do not get 25% growth, we should kill the idea before it
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  starts 25%. Wow, It's a big number.
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  Most of us are not certain to any great degree that we have
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  this new idea that will deliver 25%, which means we really
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  should hold Park and not move forward with this idea.
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  And I remember when I'd heard this, I created a podcast
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  episode, it's here on employer marketing message, which was
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  this title Stop creating, go sell, which you've created.
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  And it was done in response to what was going on with one of my
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  current clients at the time, a great creative who was
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  constantly re editing, constantly refining, constantly
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  polishing new offers, but not ever selling them.
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  Sound familiar? Anybody can relate to that?
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  And I said to her, stop it. You're caught in this trap of
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  ideation, of constant innovation, but you're killing
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  your business because your team's confused.
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  They're constantly, we're working on something that never
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  commercializes. I need you to do fewer, bigger,
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  better. And the podcast was a response
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  to that. And it follows this theme of
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  what Alex was talking about. Are you sure it's worth doing?
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  And if not, personally, I have a beautiful notebook that's called
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  my idea notebook. And I put all these great ideas
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  which happen seriously almost everyday into this notebook.
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  And when I take my CEO days, which I take every quarter to go
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  reflect on the big picture of my business, what's working, what
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  could be enhanced, I take stock and I ask myself this.
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  I go through the notebook and I go, wow, that's a really good
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  idea. And some might go, well, I'm
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  glad I didn't pursue that. But I look at the best idea in
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  the notebook and different periods of time will have
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  different ones I select. But then I ask myself this, this
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  is a good one. Pay attention.
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  Make sure you write this down. I say, is it worth pursuing that
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  one new idea for the next 12 to 18 months?
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  Or is there something in our current offers that I could
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  focus on making incrementally better that would give a better
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  net win without the loss of momentum?
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  Because, you know, as Alex said, he's like, we lost 20% momentum
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  to gain 5% better. I needed a net 25 for this to
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  make sense. Often when I do that exercise, I
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  end up in the place where I'm like, I should iterate what I'm
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  already working on. Now that is already working
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  because I don't have to gain 25% for this to be a win.
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  I could gain 1%, two percent, 3%.
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  And those percentages are easier to hit than a massive jump in
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  new IDEA implementation. So that's something we do.
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  The second thing that I want to bring into play is how do you
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  stay the course on not just falling into the trap of
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  constant shiny object syndrome? Well, I love what Jesse Itzler
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  is all about. He is an incredibly successful
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  businessman. He is a person and a wonderful
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  human being. And he has this big ass calendar
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  and I highly recommend them if you have not ever used one.
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  What his concept is, is that you should have one big goal for the
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  year, 12 to 18 months. It's the goal that defines the
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  year. And then you should be auditing
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  your calendar, your focus, and saying I'm going to do that
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  thing. Similar idea.
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  By committing to fewer, bigger, better, you will see more
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  commercial success. And what I observe about most
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  entrepreneurs is that they sabotage their success by
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  constantly falling in love with their own ideas.
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  It's easy to fall in love with our own ideas.
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  But here's the kicker. It's not about us falling in
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  love with our own ideas that matters.
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  It's whether the marketplace falls in love with our ideas
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  that matters. And the only way the marketplace
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  can fall in love with their ideas is that they're clear on
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  what the idea is because we have a clear solution to a problem
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  that they have that we talk to more people, we talk to them
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  more frequently and we ensure that we have paid offers and
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  free offers for people to experience.
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  And we're really clear what makes us a must hire.
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  If you're standing on the crossroads right now, I want you
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  to think about am I sabotaging myself with constant idea
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  creation? And if so, this episode should
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  be on your repeat. And I want you to go find the
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  other episode here which talked about stop creating, go sell
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  something because I know your next client is searching right
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  now for you. And the idea is the easy bet.
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  But where business owners win is by staying the course,
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  compounding, iterating 1% at a time, not constantly reinventing
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  the wheel. Just imagine for a second here,
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  what would your business look like if you state the course on
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  an idea long enough for it to work?
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  Here's the kicker. It might take longer than you
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  think. It's certainly gonna take longer
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  than a nanosecond, But nothing is served by constantly starting
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  at 0. One of the most important
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  business advices I was giving when I first started my
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  consulting company. It's as true then as it is now.
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  It stopped doing the hokey pokey stop constantly starting from
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  zero. It is so exhausting.
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  It's why you're overwhelmed. And trust me, throwing spaghetti
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  at the wall does not work. The ideas are the easy bit.
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  Go to an idea that's already working and just get better at
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  it. I want you to take this episode
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  and focus on fewer, bigger, better.
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  I want you to take this episode and get clear with your ideas
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  that you are dreaming about. Do they have a focus of
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  commercial success? And if they're commercial
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  success viable, they will answer those three things and get green
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  lights. And then if you do get to that
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  place, I want you to set your blinders on like a racehorse and
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  say, I'm going to get graded this.
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  I'm going to stay the course. I'm going to keep the momentum
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  and I'm going to knock to the hokey pokey.
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  I'm going to play to the land of physics, which says an object in
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  motion stays in motion more easily than one started at 0.
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  And I'm going to stay in it. I'm going to pursue this because
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  my friends, don't be 3 feet from gold where you work, work, work
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  work and give up on a new idea. Stay the path.
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  You are just ahead of the great win if you green light fewer
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  ideas and you stay the distance with them.
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  This is hard and I know we struggle with that.
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  I also know this truth. I'm committed to that for this
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  year. I'm committed to fewer, bigger,
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  better. We set our whole programming for
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  the year. We're going to run our play.
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  Every opportunity we say yes to is going to support the big
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  idea. And our business has been known
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  in the marketplace now for five years around 1 core concept, 1
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  core result. We help emerging entrepreneurs
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  pursue their first million and learn how to build consistent,
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  high paying clients in their business.
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  We teach the fundamentals. Every program we offer leads to
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  that North star. Every investment in research,
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  every investment in marketing, every investment in team, every
• 19:41
  investment in programming delivers against that because we
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  know what problem it is that we're solving.
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  If the sleepless night at 3:00 AM when people are like, I can't
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  pay my bills, you can if you know what to do, when to do it,
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  how to do it and why to do it. That's what we teach.
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  Get the reps in if you were bigger, better you with me.
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  I want you to pop me an e-mail to hello at Christine Campbell
• 20:09
  Rappin and what you say. Listen to this episode and
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  amplify your marketing message. I'm in.
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  Here's my one big idea. Here's how we're going to get
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  there. Here's who's gonna pay and be
• 20:24
  accountable to that success. I love when people are
• 20:28
  listeners. Take that invitation to e-mail
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  me personally. I love to see what ideas you're
• 20:34
  pursuing and I want you to win. It's so simple.
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  People ask me all the time, why do I do what I do?
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  I do it because I want to see you win.
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  I want to see you do if you're bigger, better.
• 20:46
  I want you to find your people predictably.
• 20:48
  I want you to love your business and I want it to feel like
• 20:51
  oxygen. Don't over create.
• 20:56
  Go find your people and create success with them.
• 20:59
  We'll see you on our next episode.
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  That's a wrap on another amazing episode of Amplify Your
• 21:10
  Marketing Message with me, your host, Christine Campbell Rappin.
• 21:13
  Be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform so you
• 21:17
  don't miss another great episode.
• 21:19
  And be sure to visit christinecampbellrappin.com/podcast
• 21:23
  to get a free resource on how to master your marketing message.
• 21:28
  We'll see you.