1. Keep to yourself. Initially, you should keep all your ideas and plans to yourself. It doesn’t mean that you will never reveal it to anyone before the launch, but announcing your plans prematurely to other people gives your brain a false sense of achievement. Because of this, you will less likely turn that idea into reality.
2. Write it down. Prevent your great idea from fleeting away by writing them down on paper. This exercise will give you a concrete symbol of your ideas and plans, and the documentation will come in handy once you’ve started to take action towards fulfilling your plans. You can even create a “wall of ideas” to document all your ideas.
3. Take action. When you’re starting a business, it’s always recommended that you do a preliminary research into the plausibility of your plans. While jumping in head first may seem like an exciting notion, being prepared to handle sudden emergencies will make for a longer lasting business. When doing research about your plans, don’t focus on the negative facts or the reasons why your business idea won’t work. Instead, when you encounter these, find ways to remedy or work around them. Once you’ve begun the research and already have the proof that your business plan is achievable, you have made a big step in turning it into reality.
4. Now you can start talking. With the preliminary research done, you can now call your friends or relatives about your business plan. Having other people to bounce your ideas off will give you better insights about why it will or will not work. You’ll also receive suggestions that could help you improve your plan. You could learn industry information that you wouldn’t otherwise have figured out yourself. And best of all, you will be able to test how your business plan’s future products or services will be received by the public, even before your launch.
5. Discuss with people you trust. If you are concerned about other people stealing your idea, it helps to discuss your plans with only the people you trust. It also helps that you’ve done your research prior to talking about it to anyone because you will be better equipped to launch your business plan.
6. Launch at 80%. Unless you’re in the food service industry (or perhaps even if you are), you don’t need to have a complete inventory of products and services for your initial launch. Keeping our launch on hold while you complete everything will only stall your business, at which time some negative notions may get to you and eventually cause you to cancel the planned launch. It is much better to launch partly prepared that never launch at all.
7. Don’t be afraid to fail. The last pointer to remember when turning your plans and ideas into reality is to never be afraid of failure. The fear of failure is the greatest enemy of innovation, so learn to take risks and you might just end up to be the next greatest innovator in your chosen industry.