How to Know When You Have a $1,000,000 Idea
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There are at least ten million dollar ideas in these journals. Here's the test that tells you early whether the one you're holding is one of them.
Good morning.
Closing out journal number five this morning. Spring of 1997. About to open number six.
And the thing I love most about going back through these is spotting the very first scribble of something I now know turned into a million dollar idea.
I was tallying them up in my head over coffee. Counting them like platinum records.
At least ten of them. A couple I'd call diamond... ten million and up.
Two have already surfaced in the journals we've been through so far.
The Guide to Halton Hills was the first one. A model that gets a result without me in it, that I could hand to somebody else and install in their business.
I'm still using that idea thirty years later.
And then the first inklings of the eight Profit Activators, which is exactly where journal six picks up.
So sitting there this morning, here's the question I kept circling.
How do you actually know when you've got a big idea?
Because at the start it's only a proposition. I think this might work.
Here's the good news. You can find out for almost nothing.
You can test an idea cheaply, and you can test it quickly, and what you're testing for is simpler than people make it.
Can you get somebody to raise their hand and say, hey, I'm interested in that.
That's the first gate. That's the whole thing.
Then you bookend it. The raised hand at one end. The result they actually wanted at the other.
And everything in the middle is the marketing. Telling the stories, sharing the information, building the case that lets somebody experience the result before they've got it.
But work it out on paper first.
You have to be able to see the whole path. How you'll find the people who might be interested. How you'll educate them on what it looks like to have this. How you'll convince them you're the one who can help.
See all three of those, get it to work once, and from there it's infinitely scalable.
Now here's the second gate, and this is the one that quietly kills good ideas.
It can't depend on an extraordinary person.
If it only works when somebody remarkable is running it, you haven't got a scalable idea. You've got a job that happens to be going well.
What you're really building is a package that lets ordinary people get extraordinary results.
And once you've proven that, you're on the line.
Then... and I wish I'd learned this thirty years sooner... find somebody who'll take it and run with it.
Because the curse of being wired the way I am is that novelty is the drug. A new idea is always more exciting than carrying the old one all the way through.
I've been listening to the Founders podcast, and David Senra profiles Todd Graves, who started Raising Cane's.
The entire business is one idea. Chicken fingers for everyone.
And he has done nothing since but execute on it. The chicken finger dream, run all the way down.
That's the part I'm still learning.
Some of my ideas have been thirty-year pursuits. The seven things everybody spends their money on, and that whole advocacy idea sitting on top of it. Big, and I've only ever come at it from the top down, because there's never been an easy foothold.
I think I finally know how to get one. We'll get to that.
Journal six opens with the eight Profit Activators, and we're doing a video on each one of them.
If we're talking about million dollar ideas, that one is the crown jewel. Because it's the idea that makes other ideas.
And here's your nudge for today.
Take the idea you've been carrying around and run it at the first gate before you build any of it.
What's the cheapest, fastest thing you could put in front of people to find out whether anybody raises their hand?
Do that this week. It'll cost you less than you think, and it'll tell you more than another month of thinking about it ever will.
Transcript
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Good morning. One of the greatest joys I get out of looking back through all these journals is to see the beginning thought of something that I know now 30 years later is going to be a million dollar or more idea. I was just cali tallying in my mind this morning knowing what's coming that there are at least just off the top of my head at least 10 of these million dollar plus ideas and I've been I was talking with Josh and counting them as like platinum records you know ideas that have made a million dollars and some of them would be diamond or $10 million uh idea ideas and I'm looking back now at this transition. We're moving into journal number six.
So, this will be a good time to do a little inflection here. It's kind of um you know, spring, end of spring 1997. So, I've been journaling for just over a year. I've been in business for eight years or nine years u at this time.
many most of that as a real estate agent. So, you know, I marked that 1996 as the transition into getting results for other people. Up until then, I was a practitioner of of real estate. And so far in the journals that we've talked about so far, there's been two of these million-doll ideas that have surfaced at this point.
The first was the guide to Halton Hills. That model of creating something that is going to work without me. That's a duplicatable model that I could install in someone else's business to get a result for them. I have used and still to this day used that idea and have created millions of dollars both for me and u for everybody who's used this uh that model.
So that's very rewarding. The uh the other thing that came out of this and the reason I was so reflective on this is that we saw the appearance of the first the first kind of inklings of what became the eight prophet activators. And I was looking as we're going into this into journal number six. Most of the beginning of this is about a deeper exploration of those ideas.
So we're going to come into profit activator week coming up here where I'm going to go and do one video on each of the each of the profit activators. But as I look at this, I started thinking how like how do you know when you've got a big idea and and knowing what I know now about how ideas turn into uh reality. So much of it is that you can get the base idea, you can get the idea as a a thought, you know, as a a proposition. I think this might work.
And the great news is that you can test your idea very inexpensively. You can test it very quickly. you can see what what happens uh whether people are uh buying into this idea. Like every no matter what, especially if we're talking about marketing ideas, the most important thing is that you're going to be able to get people to raise their hand and say, "Hey, I'm interested in that."
And if you can do that and you can bookend that with a way to actually get them the result that they really want, all this middle stuff, that's where the marketing really comes in is telling the stories, telling the information, building your case that will let people experience the result that they really want. And I'm thinking back now, we've seen um some of these ideas that I've had have been like these 30-year pursuits that I can't really point to in itself has turned into a multi-million dollar idea. Like I I keep mentioning these seven uh the seven consumption wheel here of where people spend all of their money and this advocacy idea of it. It's it's it's a big idea and I've always been exploring it kind of from the top down because there's not an easy way to kind of get a a foothold um into it.
I think I know now how to do it and we'll we'll explore that. Um, but the baseline is that listen, if you've got an idea, write it down and work it out on paper first. First of all, you have to be able to see how all of these uh how your idea is going to go from finding people who might be interested in it, find educating them about uh you know how it might look if they got this result, convincing them that you can help them. And uh once you do that, then it's infinitely scalable.
Like once something works, once you've got something that works, it really truly is about taking that idea and and running with it. And you know, I guess the curse of of having ADHD is that we're driven by novelty, right? and that it's less it's more exciting to come up with new ideas than it is to take one idea and see it all the way through. I'm fascinated by I've been listening to the founders podcast uh on uh on Spotify and uh David Senra is the guy who does the uh the podcast and he's got all these founders that he profiles and one of the most fascinating guys is the uh the guy who started um uh Kane's is it Kane's chicken fingers?
Yeah. uh what's his name? Todd Graves. Todd Graves started, you know, Kane's uh chicken fingers.
And his whole idea was based on a premise of chicken fingers for everyone. And he's done nothing but focus 100% on executing what uh David Summer calls his chicken finger dream of getting chicken fingers in the hands of every American. And uh they've done that in an amazing executional way. And uh so I think that if you think that you have ideas, I think that the best thing that I could say is execute it.
Think about it. It's got to be something that doesn't depend on an extraordinary uh person on somebody being able to do extraordinary things. The best thing that you could do is package your idea or work on the idea in a way that allows ordinary people to get extraordinary results. And when you have an idea like that, just proving it and knowing that it works is a that's getting it on the line.
And then I would really recommend just partnering with someone who can take your ideas and run with it. I wish I had learned that earlier in uh in my 30-year journey here, but we're in for some amazing things coming up in journal number six, starting with the eight profit activators, which if we're talking about milliondoll ideas, that idea is like the crown jewel of everything that I've done because it's the idea that creates other ideas and I can't wait to share that with you. Coming up, I got a funny email the other day from Rick. It says, "Dean, question.
Are you saying you can teach me to make fat stacks by hanging out at a pub drinking coffee like you?" And I laughed to myself because I was thinking, you know, yes, I I can do that. That's what I do. is the funny thing.
What I really realized is that every idea that I've had, every dollar that I've made over the last 30 years has gone through my brain, through my pen onto a piece of paper in my journal before it went out into the real world. And if I can turn people on to that activity as a driver for what to do, what to think about, what to ask yourself to draw out, what the next most valuable action is for you, and how to find the most profitable things that you can install in your business. I'm all for it. m.
I'm going to do for the first time a 50inute profitfinder workshop and you're going to join me live on Zoom and we're going to go through a 50inute exercise. Bring your pen. Bring a notebook or piece of paper. And I'm going to guide you through a thinking process that will help you identify where the lowest hanging fruit is in your business and maybe some fruit that you didn't even know was there.
But I'm going to show you where to look for it. So, it's free. It's for you. m.
this Friday. Just watch. Go to What did we call the website, Josh? >> 50inut profitfinder.
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