Pat Helmers recently said to me that “Big ideas aren’t great, follow through is.” He grabbed my attention with that statement, and I had to learn more. That’s what we discussed on this episode. Pat is an international business consultant for technology start-ups, founder of the Sales Babble podcast and brings decades of experience to draw from which he shared during our conversation.

Many people think if they can just get that one big idea then they have it made. Unfortunately, more often than not, they discover that they can’t get traction with bringing their big idea to life. The reason is that there’s no follow through. They can’t get other people to come on board to help them. They don’t test the idea on potential customers and they end up getting stuck with a big idea that never sees the light of day. We discuss how to overcome all of those problems.

Entrepreneurship and Big Ideas

Pat says that real entrepreneurs try an idea and if it doesn’t work, they try another one. And other one. And other one. It’s failing fast and failing early to learn as fast as they can until – finally – they have a big idea that gets traction and comes to life.

Supposedly only one out of ten people have an entrepreneurial spirit. Once you consider that number only one out of ten of them will make it past five years. Half of them will be gone within a year. Those are scary numbers and that’s why most people won’t follow through and stick with it long enough to bring their big idea to life.

How Can You Have Success With Your Big Idea?

You have to dig into your competitive spirit. You have to find something that brings you joy. If your idea expresses who you are, what you’re about and how you can make the world a better place use that to power you and lift you up when you’re feeling down. It should bring a lot of value to your life. It should be fun learning. Fun facing challenges. It can be great to have total control and nobody can tell you what to do, you get to do it the way YOU want to do it. If you focus on those kinds of things, they can motivate you to move forward.

Listen In!

In this episode we also discuss:

What you need to do before you spend a nickel promoting your product or service.
How to get other people to write great sales and marketing copy for you that will sell your big idea to the world.
How to enroll people around your big idea and build a team that will help you find success.
What makes a great mastermind group and how to build one.
The biggest problem with bringing a big idea to life and how to overcome it.
When to give up on your big idea (yes, sometimes you should).
…And more golden nuggets of advice.

About The Guest

 

Pat Helmers is the host of the award winning Sales Babble podcast that shares selling secrets for non-sellers. He's also the founder of Habanero Media, a podcast production company that helps B2B businesses create interview based podcasts that boost brand, authority, influence and trust. On the side he's a sales consultant for tech startups. When the weather is nice he golfs and attends to many DIY projects in the garden and home brewery.