Chris Mance II - Mental Skills Coach

On the one hand, there is the school of thought that believes the “idea” is king. On the other hand, there is the school of thought that believes that ideas are worthless.

As with many things, the truth is somewhere in the middle. Ideas are neither king nor worthless.

The value of an idea is directly proportional to the industry that idea is applied. As a result, the industry you choose to apply your entrepreneurial passion is more important than the idea you take to market.

The reason behind this is simple, ideas are destined to evolve if not flat out change once it’s time to grow the business.

So if you take the right entrepreneurs, with the right idea in the wrong industry, you will find them ultimately failing.

Conversely, if you take those same entrepreneurs with the wrong idea in the right industry, you will find that they’re able to easily iterate on their idea to become successful.

So the next time you’re brainstorming entrepreneurial ventures, start with researching industries before you start researching ideas.

Everyday we wake up, live life, then go to sleep. So what’s the difference between the days we remember and the days we forget?

The obvious answer is something out of the ordinary. Something unique that happens. Something that differentiates the memorable days from all other days.

The challenge with this is that by definition, 99% of the days we live in our life are not out of the ordinary, they’re not unique, and nothing differentiates them from any other normal day. So that leaves us only remembering a small percentage of all the time we live on this earth.

Your small percentage of memories are not a good representation of who you are. Your personality is made up of millions of events, conversations, and observations that made an impact, but did not make a memory.

For me, this is where the daily blog comes in.  When you write a daily blog you’re forced to touch, feel, and smell every moment of your life to find writing inspiration. As a result, many moments that would normally be lost into the bowels of the ordinary get resurrected as insights cemented in the words you publish.

This makes the daily blog much more powerful than it appears.

Yes it’s a communication tool, yes it’s a marketing tool, but more than anything else the daily blog is a tool to create more memories.

I didn’t plan to go for a run on Christmas morning, but I’m sure glad I did. If I didn’t have someone to push me this morning, I am 99.9 percent sure I would’ve ate a bigger breakfast, then took a long slumbering nap (just like I did last year).

Instead, luckily this morning I had my brother-in-law here to motivate me. He challenged me, and I accepted. Within 60 minutes of his challenge, we were out on the road running 4.8 miles together. Not only that, he pushed me to run the fastest pace I’ve run in over 6 months. I would have never did this without him.

I’m sharing this story because this is indicative of how people go from good to great.  When you’re surrounded with like minded people who are motivated to take it to the next level, it’s inevitable that you will do more and do better.

This is a critical lesson to learn.

If you want to do better, surround yourself with people who also want to do better. If you want to push harder, surround yourself with people who will push you harder.  If you want to be held accountable, surround yourself with people who will hold you accountable.

This is a success secret you would be a fool to ignore.