Show notes
Million-dollar ideas don’t always create million-dollar results. Only focused implementation can do that. I remember the day that I got a phone call from a client who said, “Hey, we hit a million dollars in sales for this year. I’m really excited.” It’s a huge thing, because when you’re looking to grow like that — when you’re talking about multiplying your revenue in a relatively short period of time — there are very specific things that have to happen. Most people don’t know what those things are, and even if they do know what those things are, they don’t take action on them consistently enough to make it happen.
David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing million dollar ideas. Welcome back, Jay.
Jay: Hey, thank you, David. I have to tell you, this is a running joke in my home that I constantly have million dollar ideas. But I never do anything about it. And so I’ll have them.And then years later, my wife’s like, you told me about that, you know, five years ago, why don’t you do something about it? And I’m like, I don’t know.
David: Yeah. And you’re not alone. I do the same thing. I think pretty much anyone I know who’s been involved in business in any capacity has had ideas. And then they see that somebody else did it later.
And they’re like, “Oh man, I thought of that years ago.” And it’s like, yeah, well, unfortunately, as you indicated, thinking about it does not actually get it done. But it’s a fun topic because since we all pretty much have had them, we all have million dollar ideas, the question becomes. What are you doing with it?
Or are you doing anything with it? And as I was thinking back on this in preparation for this podcast, it occurred to me that of the million dollar ideas that I might’ve had, and who knows, the ones that you don’t pursue, you have no idea what they’re worth, especially if nobody else then comes along and turns it into a billion dollar idea, but it occurred to me that I only took action on a few of them, and the ones that I took action on actually yielded some really good results.
And the thing about a million dollar idea is… There’s a time component that really plays an important part in that, right? You could say, all right, my million dollar idea is to make $25,000 a year from the time I’m 25 until the time I’m 65. So if you multiply $25,000 by 40 years, it’s a million bucks, right?
But if you’re earning $25,000 a year and it costs you $35,000 a year to live, then that plan is not going to work for you. But it is a plan. It’s an idea. It’s a million dollar idea. And so as we’re thinking about things that can actually get us from where we are to where we want to be. It’s a good idea to consider that.
All right. Well, what’s the likelihood of generating revenue from this and how much on an ongoing basis so I can have an idea of where it’s going to take me?
Jay: Yeah, it’s such a great point. I think for me, the fear of putting myself out there is one of the reasons why I haven’t pursued.
And I’ve taken, some of them were good enough. I’ve taken a little stabs at them and I want to be successful by just stabbing at them and not really diving in a hundred percent.
And it’s not until I said, “okay, I’m all in.” It wasn’t the idea that was bad. It was my desire to actually put any work and effort.
I’ve just, I’ve always said, I want to have a company where all I do is come up with ideas and sell them. I don’t want to have to actually put the effort into, working on them. Why can’t I just earn the money from the idea?
David: Right. Yeah. It’d be great if it worked that way, but somebody has to do the work that actually generates the revenue.
But when I think about million dollar ideas, particularly as it relates to business. If somebody’s doing $250,000 a year in their business in four years, that became a million dollar idea. Now, again, if that’s your gross sales, it doesn’t mean that you’re making that much, right? It doesn’t mean that you’re pocketing that much, but it counts.
It’s a million dollar idea, and then the question really becomes. Is my million dollar idea a million dollars in a lifetime? Is it a million dollars over 10 years? Over five years? Over a year? Is it a million dollars a month? Is it a million dollars a week? A million dollars a day? Because different businesses generate different amounts of money.
I don’t know what Amazon is generating, how quickly it generates a million bucks, but it’s probably a lot faster than a million a day. It could be down to the minutes and seconds, probably is.
Jay: Yeah, I really think a lot of what you’re talking about is your expectation, right? you’re just saying, I want to have this idea to make money, that to me really kind of feels misguided.
And to be honest with you, a million dollars does not sound like that much money anymore, right? So it’s more a matter of, I think defining better what the idea is and what you want it to achieve.
Are you looking for financial freedom to where you can travel and buy nice cars? Are you just looking to pay your bills?
I think putting some better definition on it is more important than using this word million dollar and somehow that’s a sign that you’ve been successful. Cause as you said, you may be making millions a year in gross sales, but you could be losing as much, if not more. So, yeah, you have to be a little bit more specific than that.
David: I remember when my daughter was young, we were talking about the idea of a million dollars at one point. And I said, well, think about this. Let’s say you make a million dollars. You’re able to save a million dollars and you’ve got a million dollars.
You’ve got exactly a million dollars in the bank. And so you go out to celebrate and you go have lunch at McDonald’s and you spend $12. Now you’re no longer a millionaire. Right? Because you spent your twelve bucks. Whatever it is. And, I don’t know, just the idea of these money benchmarks being some form of accomplishment, I think is a little misguided.
Jay: Yeah.
David: And generally it’s misguided by people who look at it as a goal, think that it’s something to aspire for, and then if and when you get there, it’s like, oh, okay, now what? You know, now you go for more, right? And no matter what your number is, even if you’re Warren Buffett and you’re a multi billionaire, probably another extra billion or two never hurts.
Jay: Yeah, I agree. For me, I kind of think about how I determine success in business. I have steps, like you said, benchmarks. So my first benchmark is, can I just pay my bills? Right? Can I feed my family, pay my car payment, keep the electricity on?
If I can pay my bills, I’ve achieved a level of success because I don’t have to go out and have somebody else tell me how to do my job all day for an hourly wage.
So that’s goal number one. Can I pay my bills with my business year round? Then I start saying, well, can I still make the money I’m making, but do less or spend less to make it?
So maybe I only have to go into this business three days a week, and then two days a week I can be with my family or I can be tinkering, you know, with my car in the garage or something like that.
So I start to look at it more in terms of time than I do in terms of actual dollar amounts.
David: Yeah, the time component is huge and also consistency I think is huge. I had a client who signed up for our Total Market Domination course a couple of years ago. She was doing about $250,000 in sales at the time.
She wanted to get to a million dollars. And so we went over the specific steps that she would need to take to do that. And she was a great implementer. She was able to do it. And I remember the day that I got a phone call from her and she said, “Hey, we hit a million dollars in sales for this year. I’m really excited.”
Jay: Yeah.
David: It’s a huge thing because when you’re looking to grow like that, when you’re talking about multiplying your revenue in a relatively short period of time, there are very specific things that have to happen.
Most people don’t know what those things are, and even if they do know what those things are, they don’t take action on them consistently enough to make it happen.
So for those who are looking to get to benchmarks like that, if you have a million dollar idea, if you know in your bones that this thing is likely to generate that amount of money, but you’re not quite sure how to get there, then we really ought to have a conversation.
Jay: Yeah, and again, we talked about scary things and the fear of the unknown in our Halloween podcast.
That’s what’s so hard, and one thing I keep telling people is, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. This is not the beginning of time . There are so many people out there who have done this and duplicated this over and over again.
And often times, just coming up with a unique idea, that’s one of the toughest parts of the battle.
Then if you can access and not be afraid to talk to people, see people like yourself, who have done this over and over again, and who have helped other people achieve it, if you can get rid of a lot of the unknown, and then just implement your idea, how much better is that going to be for you?
David: Exactly. And so much of it just boils down to focus. It’s about what are the few things, what are the fewest steps I can take, the fewest number of activities that I can engage in to get me to my goals. And a lot of times it’s a lot simpler than people think. But they’re so distracted with all these different things they think they have to do that they end up missing the boat.
And it goes back to your point earlier where, “hey, wouldn’t it be great if I could do less things, do fewer things, and still generate the revenue?” And the truth of the matter is that if you’re doing too many things, your likelihood of getting there goes down dramatically.
Jay: Yeah, and we’ve talked about if the way you run your business is just putting out fires, or just, the squeaky wheel gets the grease, oftentimes those are not the places that you should be focused.
And if you could identify those things, be very strategic in your mind and identify what the most important things are. Focus on those. You’re still going to have fires, but maybe you’ll approach them differently.
That’s how mentorship, speaking with you, you always say give us a call. Sometimes just vocalizing and hearing yourself say it and having a sounding board is all it takes to get a little bit of clarity.
David: Yeah, and we’ve had many conversations with people who were not a good fit for our program, but they still got a lot of great ideas for the call. They had some direction. They had some steps they could take. And sometimes what happens, we’ll have a conversation like this. They’ll implement a couple of things that we’ll tell them on the call.
And then we’ll get a call back from them a few weeks later or a month or two later. Hey, listen, I did that. That really worked. I was able to generate more than enough to pay for the program. You know, let’s talk about that again now.
And it’s about being able to help people to accomplish what they’re looking to accomplish when they either don’t have the exact knowledge they need, or if they don’t have the consistency in the approach.
Jay: Yeah, it’s one of the reasons I love this podcast because, you know, I’ve been in business my whole life and I think, hey, I’ve got some level of understanding here. But you and I get on and we start chatting and either I say things that I’ve never thought of before, but this conversation triggered that, or you have a completely different perspective because you’ve been in different types of businesses than I have.
And I walk away going, you know what? I’m going to use that! I mean, there are things that we’ve talked about just in this podcast that I’m implementing in my new business.
And why? It’s because we talked. That’s it. We just, we’re bouncing ideas off of each other and learning from each other’s experiences.
David: Yeah, and that’s one of the things that I love about talking with you. It’s also one of the things that I love talking about with my customers. Earlier this week, I was going back and forth with one of our customers inside the Total Market Domination course, and she referenced something that I had talked about years ago.
She didn’t put it in those terms, but she was talking about the idea of sort of flying under the radar. And it reminded me of some material that I put together a while ago talking about moving from stealth mode to intimidation mode, like flying under the radar, getting everything in place, getting relationships set up with clients before your competitors even know anything is happening.
And so you’re flying in stealth mode. And then you get to the point where you’ve got this momentum going under the radar. And then when you burst onto the scene, it’s very intimidating for your competitors because they’re like, “Where did this person come from?”
So I believe these conversations, they’re helpful for everybody. When I talk to somebody for the first time on one of these strategy sessions, we have a conversation, very often it will remind me of something else that will help them. And it will also help me in terms of, yeah, wow. That’s something that we should talk more about because we know it works.
Jay: Yeah, and kind of circling back to having that million dollar idea.
One of the things that I’ve always wanted to do is have a million dollar idea and achieve it on my own. That way I don’t have to deal with employees. And is that going to happen? Am I really going to pull off a million dollar idea on my own? Probably not. Maybe as an internet influencer or something like that.
But the reality is… The first step is having the idea. The second step is asking the question, “Who’s going to help me do this?” Whether it’s partners, staff, or consultants. I think the first thing you have to do is get that out of your mind that you’re going to pull this off on your own.
David: Yeah, and maybe there’s some people who do that. I’ve never done that myself. I mean, any business that I tried to do by my, well, I never really tried to do any business by myself, I knew very early on when I would start a business, I’m like, “oh no, I need help with this, I need help with that.”
But maybe there are some people who can do it, but I think the smart way to approach it, in my opinion, is that you look at what you need to have happen. You look at what you need to build and then who can help me do that.
You get those spots in place, filling the seats on the bus. Good to Great. In the book, Good to Great, Jim Collins talks about getting the right people on the bus. And I think that’s really key.
Jay: Alright, well, people who have their million dollar ideas or they’re already working on them, how do they find out more?
David: Go to TopSecrets.com, schedule a call with us, actually TopSecrets.com/call to schedule a call with us, TopSecrets.com is the main website, TopSecrets.com/call is where you can go to schedule a call with our team and we can just sort of talk through things.
What are you looking to accomplish? If you have a million dollar idea or if you know that your business should be hitting numbers that you’re not yet hitting. Let’s talk about it.
Let’s talk about where you are now, where you need to be in terms of visibility and sales and profits, and see what we can do to help you get there.
Jay: And it’s a great first step, David. Thank you so much. Always great to talk to you.
David: You too. Thanks, Jay.
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