How To Create Breakthrough Ideas...
...In Just 12 Minutes
By Eric Ruth
There is a real secret to your success that I’m pretty sure you’re not taking advantage of.
It’s something so profoundly powerful, and yet so incredibly simple, that most people don’t get it.
If there is one success secret that I truly hope YOU “get,” it’s this:
WRITE!
I’ve had economic ups and downs in my lifetime. Every single time I’ve had income breakthroughs, they were directly attributable to one thing:
WRITING!
I’m not talking about writing the next great novel.
I’m talking about writing down IDEAS. Journaling, documenting, planning, strategizing, recording, systemizing – it’s all done by writing – not just by thinking.
There is a PROFOUND thing (for lack of a better word) that occurs when you write.
You can think ideas through all day long and never come close to the breakthroughs you will achieve in 12 minutes of writing.
Don’t believe me?
Let me tell you a story about one of my friends and mentors. A guy who is a marketing genius and multi-millionaire.
His name is Bob Serling, and he taught me a technique for achieving breakthrough ideas – million dollar ideas – in 12 minutes.
And make no mistake – the BIG money comes when you have breakthrough ideas and act to implement them.
Bob was a very successful marketing consultant for many years. In fact, I learned a great deal of what I know from him.
Two years ago, he and a partner used the simple technique I’m going to tell you about to create an idea for a software company that they sold within 17 months of the inception of the company – for a cool $6.2 MILLION.
Here’s how to create breakthrough ideas in 12 minutes.
- Define the problem you want to solve in one concise question (How can I acquire six new clients in 60 days? What should I name my new training system so it pinpoints my target market? How can I land that big corporate training account? How do I create new services or products, or new adaptations of my existing services or products, or someone else’s, that fit the precise demands of my market right now? How can I better address the needs of my market right now? How do I better position my services for this type of economy? How do I create positioning that adds more value? What’s a riveting headline for my next postcard mailing? What information products can I create to promote my new training system?). The more specific you can be, the better your results. Writing this question should take you 10 seconds. Why is it important to write it down instead of just thinking about it? Well, if you can’t write down the problem in the form of a specific question in 10 seconds – then you’re really NOT clear on what the problem is.
- Spend the next 1 minute and 50 seconds listing ALL potential answers to your question by writing as fast as you can. Write every idea that pops into your head. DO NOT censor yourself or edit yourself. Just write – FAST. This is the KEY mechanism that allows your brain to flow freely. It will be hard at first, but the more you practice this skill, the better you’ll get at it.
- Spend the next ten minutes doing something you enjoy (NOT reading, watching TV or listening to music – unless its classical). Take a shower, go for a walk, do a couple sets of pushups and sit-ups, play with your dog. This is the time that your subconscious – the real power of your brain – will process the information and begin searching for solutions to the problem. Don’t try to force this. You have to LET GO.
- Take ten minutes to record your potential solutions in WRITING.
I know it sounds simplistic, but it works. The key is to practice it. It’s a skill that must be cultivated. This is how Bob had his breakthrough idea for the software company and how he solved the marketing problems for that company and was able to sell it in 17 months for a multi-million dollar payday.
Writing is the key to both short and long term comprehension. If you’re trying to learn something – anything – you should write it down. It’s incredibly powerful. When I first became serious about developing my copywriting skills, I would take successful sales letters and copy them down in writing. This programs your mind to think like a good copywriter thinks.
But none of this is possible without writing. You’ve simply got to write. It’s my belief that people don’t write out of nothing other than laziness. The more you do it, the more profound breakthroughs you will experience, and the more you will want to do it. It’s self-reinforcing.
Think about the really big players in the fitness game. Every single one of them has a book. Every single one of them has some method of recording his or her ideas and making them available to their target market.
You don’t have to write a book. But you do have to write. And PLEASE don’t tell me you don’t have time to write. If you want to be successful, you’ll make time. I’m writing this at 12:30 AM on Friday night. While a lot of my peers are out partying, watching a movie or sleeping, I’m writing. I don’t say this to brag. I only say it to illustrate my point. If you truly want success, you WILL make the time to do what must be done. And it’s my assertion that writing may be the single most important secret to your success.
Here’s a tip that has served me really well. Always – ALWAYS – have a pad and paper with you to record your ideas. You never know when a great idea will come to you: in the car, right before you go to sleep, while you’re working out or training a client, whenever. If you FORCE yourself to record stuff as it occurs to you, you will soon find that you are accumulating what I call an IDEA JOURNAL.
Ideas are what create breakthroughs. Ideas are what make money. Ideas are critically important to your success. To have great ideas you have to think outside the box. And the only way to do that is to open your mind. Never censor yourself. (A caveat to that however, is that great ideas are everywhere and everyone has them. It’s not enough to simply create great ideas, you then have to ACT on them.)
The next thing to do is to develop a systemized way to organize and compile your ideas. This is a very personal thing, so you’ve got to come up with your own methodology. But something that works for me is using 3x5 cards and recording each idea, then categorizing them for easy reference.
It’s not enough to just write. You then have to organize your writings. Then you have to act on your ideas. Yeah, I know, it’s getting tougher. There’s more work. But if you keep the big picture in mind – the understanding that just ONE great idea could catapult you to the financial success you want – you will do the work.
Bear with me while I rant for a moment.
Our society is so spoiled and so conditioned towards immediate gratification that we’ve forgotten one of the profound truths of life – smart-hard work and sacrifice are critical to success.
I keep a piece of paper on my bulletin board that is a rant by a guy from whom I purchased a real estate investment course. I want to share his rant with you, cause I FIRMLY believe in it. It’s titled:
Losers In Life and People Who Shouldn’t
Go Into Business For Themselves
People who get off work at 5PM and stop on the way home from work to buy a quart bottle of beer. They get home, catch a buzz, watch TV until bedtime, then do it all over again the next day. Major loser! This is a guy who doesn’t give a Shit about his family, his children’s future or his own.
This is prime “invest in your future” time that is thrown away each day. If you have a regular job, you need to be either working toward something bigger in your off time or working a second job for maximum money. That job you have right now may not be around forever and when it goes so will most of what you now own. The job market is not what is once was.
People who want you to “give” them everything. Sounds like a government program from China! Sorry folks, only those who do something will get something. Dreams don’t pay bills.
People who think buying a business opportunity or self help course ought to come with a guarantee that says at least 99% of the people who invest in the opportunity should be successful. If that many were successful, the price would be up there with McDonalds – one million dollars. The fact is that most people will not work and put in the effort. They don’t know what the words “work” and “effort” mean. Others fail because they don’t have anyone standing over them pushing them to work. First hurdle comes along and they pack everything away and go to the next opportunity swearing the first one doesn’t work. They must think I’m going to come to their home, wake them up in the morning, hand them the phone and talk them through it; every hour of every day until they are successful. And I’m supposed to do this for $500 on their part? Hello?? Anyone home?? When we all retire, the ones who really worked will be driving the Mercedes, while the others are driving a 10 year old Ford wondering how we can afford to live this way.
I’ll tell you, I am blessed. I talk to some of my peers who do what I do in other industries (like the guy who wrote the above rant), and I realize that personal trainers are a different breed for the most part. I have very few whiners and I get very, very few returns of my stuff. I think it has something to do with the fact that you guys worked hard to achieve your fitness level, and you understand that good things come with a price.
But what still disappoints me to this day is that I can’t get more of my members to actually DO SOMETHING with my stuff. But the reality is that only a very small percentage of the population (regardless of the niche) are real go-getters.
So you’ve got to ask yourself – do you REALLY want it? Are you going to be in the top 5%, or in the bottom 95%?
Look, I don’t want to beat this into the ground, but I do want to motivate you. So I want to tell you one more quick story.
In 1993 I met a Vietnamese couple named Lan and Juen. They were boatpeople. Literally. They escaped Vietnam in 1988 by bribing some military guys guarding the port and paying thousands of dollars for a boat ride to the Philippines. They almost died on this tiny little boat that got tossed around in the ocean for weeks before docking.
They finally arrived in America in 1990. Juen worked as a dishwasher in a Chinese restaurant and reupholstered furniture when he wasn’t washing pots. Lan worked as a retail clerk in a clothing store.
These people worked hard. And they sacrificed. Lan went on to get a job in the post office in 1995. By 1997 they had saved enough money to buy their own nail salon in Ohio. I recently received a card with pictures of them with their two beautiful daughters standing in the living room of their brand new $250,000 home in a suburb of Cleveland. They now own three very successful nail salons – all internally financed – they never borrowed a DIME.
They came to this country in 1990 not even able to speak English. Eleven years later they are successful entrepreneurs. They are truly living the American dream!
I read that immigrants to America are 300% more likely to become financially independent than native born Americans.
And that’s predominantly attributable to their work ethic.
Let me wrap up with another writing tip. You need to find the time of day when you are most creative to sit down and write. It’s not enough to just jot down ideas as they come to you. You actually have to spend solid blocks of time writing complete reports, articles, chapters, systems or whatever your writing goal may be. Even if it’s just journaling your day’s experiences. For me, that time is early in the morning. I get up early, have a protein shake, maybe a cup of coffee, then sit down in front of the computer and write for at least one hour.
I still have problems getting hung up on editing my stuff as I write. This is a big mistake and I’m working to overcome it. The best, most productive use of your time is to simply write steadily for 20, 30, 40 or 60 minutes. Then edit. Or put off editing altogether until you’ve completed your project. If you’re hung up on making things perfect right out of the gate, you’ll waste a lot of valuable time. Take it from me, I know. Don’t be a perfectionist. Be a prolific producer!
The most successful people I know do a whole lot of two things:
reading and writing!
67 Fitness Business Owners Reveal The Strategies, Systems And Secrets To Their Extraordinary Success Transforming Fitness PASSION Into Fast Fitness PROFITS!
Click Here To Get Your Copy Now!
|
