If you’ve got one of those juicy ideas that you’ve been sitting on and you can’t wait to turn it into a reality, this episode is for you.

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Big Ideas

Where Did The Idea For This Episode Come From? [1:58] 

The idea for this episode came from me helping my daughter with her homework. There were some worksheets that the kids were working through, and my daughter came over to ask me a few questions. As I was looking over her work, I fell in love with this quote from Thomas Edison, “Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.” The homework was asking what he meant by this quote, so my daughter and I had this great discussion about it and walked through the difference between the two terms. Trying to simplify it, I said “Perspiration is about doing the work. If you want to accomplish things in this world, you have to do the work. You can’t sit there, read, think about and plan on how to be a success. At some point, you have to do the work.”

A Lesson For My Daughter [4:03] 

It was a great discussion, and from that, we talked about our little family business that we have with the kids. It’s at CheekyMonkeyBooks.com where we write children’s books for parents who want to teach their young kids how to grow their confidence, how to be kind and generous, how to give back to others and how to do the work to become great in life. Every night before we go to bed, we make up stories with my kids that teach these life lessons, and then we share them because it’s easier to teach these lessons in stories than it is to try and teach the lessons straight up. 

As my daughter and I were talking about this quote from Thomas Edison, I was relaying it back to the family business. “If this business needs to grow, then you, me, mom, Sam, we have to do the work. We’ve got to write the stories, lay out the books, think through the craft ideas and the activities, and we’ve got to do the illustrations. The only way we’re going to succeed is if we do the work.” 

How Our TRIBErs Are Making Things Happen [5:27] 

I started looking in our TRIBE community that is full of people who are doing the work and getting the results. This one story came from Nigel Moore all the way from Australia. He said he’s added over 400 members to his membership in the last few months. Guess how? He’s just doing the work. Christie Hawkins recently added 580 new members to her membership. Why? Because she’s doing the work. Wendy Batten in her tiny niche recently added another 50 new members to her membership. Brittany Capello, who started from scratch with no audience, set up her Facebook ads and did her first launch five weeks later. Her goal was 20 members, but she ended up welcoming 31 new members, generating $2,400 upfront and $400 a month in recurring revenue. And this is just the beginning for Brittany, because she is doing the work and getting the results. 

And when people tell me they can’t afford to invest in TRIBE, I simply ask them what are they doing now to make it possible for them to be in that learning environment? Alison is a great example. She sent me a message recently, and she is going to be joining TRIBE this year. But last year, she missed the deadline. The cart was closed, TRIBE was not open. However, she didn’t wait around. She did the best she could with what she had available to her. Alison binged and listened to all kinds of podcast episodes, where I was talking about growing a membership. And with what she was able to patch together after a few months since having heard that first podcast, she launched her membership and welcomed 375 paying members. 

Stop Talking, Start Doing [8:53] 

You can make up all the excuses you want in the world, and you’re absolutely justified to be able to make them and sit back and do nothing. But if you want to succeed, you have to do the best with what you’ve got available to you right now. Wherever you are in your business, if you want to make your ideas happen, if you want to turn them into a reality, if you want to start generating revenue with your ideas, you just have to do the work. 

If you need to grow your audience, you need to start creating your first list builder. If you’ve got an audience, then you need to identify what needs they have so you can create a product to serve them. If you’ve already got products and services, you need to identify where the gaps are. Do you need more traffic or do you need more conversions? Maybe you need to improve your conversions, or perhaps you need to improve your retention. Whatever it is, identify your next step and do the work. Stop talking about it. Start doing it. Because genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.

Memorable Quote

“Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.” – Thomas Edison

Resources

Cheeky Monkey Books
Nigel Moore – The Tech Tribe
Christie Hawkins – The Social Easel
WendyBatten.com

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