Ideas are cheap, implimentation is expensive

This thought came from a conversation at our SEO Meetup on Tuesday this week.  I talk to a lot of interesting people who show up at the meetups.  It’s a rare opportunity for me to interact face-to-face with people who are interested in similar topics.  There really aren’t that many of us that think SEO is a fascinating topic!

I think that a lot of the people who are in the SEO industry, who are doing it solo, suffer from a similar affliction.  Heavy on the ideas, light on the implementation.  I know that applies to me.  I can come up with a dozen great ideas in a day.  A great idea for a company isn’t worth much.  To me at least.  The value lies in the implementation.

What good is an idea if you can’t get it off the ground?  I can’t count the number of great ideas that I’ve had over the years.  Sometimes I go as far as registering a domain for the idea.  I have a hundred domains that have a great idea behind it.  When exactly I think I’ll have time to build a hundred businesses, I don’t know.  No answer to that question.  It astonishes me when I meet people who do the same thing.

What’s the solution?  I think for me that there’s a ceiling that I’ve reached.  Working solo has been a lot of fun.  Too much fun. It offers a flexibility that cannot be rivaled.  To get to the next level, though, I think that I need to be part of a team.  I’m not sure what team.  Sometimes I think that it doesn’t even matter what the idea behind the business is, I could add value to anything.  It does though.  Matter, that is.  It has to be something I could be passionate about.

When I was a graduate student at the University of Maine, a favorite professor told me that it isn’t enough to have talent.  You need to have a passion for what you’re doing.  My passion didn’t lie in becoming an academic.  I had a passion for doing research.  I didn’t have a passion for teaching, or the politics in academia.

When I launched the Small Business Forum, I was passionate about it.  It disappoints me that the investor that I sold it to doesn’t have the same passion.  He hasn’t brought it to the next level.  But, I don’t believe I could have brought it to the next level by myself.  Wearing many hats is part of being an entrepeneur.  Wearing many hats stifles passion.

Adam McFarland has a passion for his venture, Sports Lizard.  He also started a venture with some friends, but I think that’s less of a passion, and more of a calculated venture aimed at making money.  Is a passion enough?

I don’t think passion is enough.  Maybe it was for the professor at UMaine.  He has a tenured position; he doesn’t need to worry about where next month’s mortgage is coming from.  Most of us entrepreneurs do worry.

Shared passion, a good idea, and implementation are what lead to entrepreneurial success.