15.
Put the idea ínto Actíon

Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.

Will Rogers

A vice president in an advertising agency is a “molehill man.” A molehill man is a pseudobusy executive who comes to work at 9 a.m. and finds a molehill on his desk. He has until 5 p.m. to make this molehill into a mountain. An accomplished molehill man will have his mountain finished even before lunch.

Fred Allen

When I was kidnapped, my parents snapped into action. They rented out my room.

Woody Allen

As we discussed in chapter 7, you must screw up your courage and tell somebody about your idea.

And if it meets with yawns or jeers, you must press on.

But what happens when it’s met with applause?

George Ade was a prolific writer in the early part of the 1900s. I once read an interview of his mother by a man who was not an admirer of her son’s work, and he was indelicate enough to ask her about George’s alleged capricious style and wobbly structure and shallow characterizations.

Finally Mrs. Ade had enough. “Oh, I know that many people can write better than George does,” she said. “But George does.”

“George does.”

It’s one of the finest things anybody ever said.

In two words it crystallizes what happens with so many people (me included), namely: They get an idea, they tell some people about it, the people all say, “Wow, that’s great!” and then they go on to something else and never do anything more about the idea they told people about.

I think the reason is that “Wow, that’s great!” is reward enough. It gives you the nice warm glow that comes from knowing you got a really good idea, that everybody thinks you’re a whiz.

But if nothing else happens with your idea, if it doesn’t help someone, if it doesn’t save or fix or create something, if it doesn’t make something better or solve some problem, what good is it really?

The truth is: There is no difference between (a) having an idea and not doing anything with it and (b) not having an idea at all.

So if you don’t plan to do anything with your idea once you have it, don’t come up with the idea in the first place. It’s just a waste of time and energy.

And when you do have an idea, either (a) don’t tell anybody about your idea or (b) don’t let “Wow, that’s great!” be enough.

OK? We’ve agreed? If you have an idea, you promise to screw up your courage once more and take the next step? Good.

OK, here are some things that might help:

Start Right Now

Will your enthusiasm for your idea be greater or lesser tomorrow? Then why wait?

Ralph Waldo Emerson said: “Nothing great is ever accomplished without enthusiasm.” And the more enthusiasm the better.

Besides, most of the time, waiting to start anything is wrong.

Get it going now. Once you break the inertia and start it rolling, an idea takes on a life of its own and starts going into areas you never dreamed it would fit in; it creates opportunities; it bowls over barriers and leapfrogs objections and overwhelms logic.

If You’re Goíng to Do it, Do it

If you don’t commit yourself to making your idea work, you’ll probably be looking back weeks or months from now saying, “Gee, if only I had done” this or that.

One of the best ways to commit yourself is to commit your money. Take some money out of your savings account or borrow some money from your brother-in-law, open up a checking account with it under the name of your idea, and spend some of it on something you need to do to get your project going.

That’s commitment. And commitment creates action.

Give Yourself a Deadline,
the Shorter the Better

It’s amazing what you can get done if you know you must get it done.

Thomas Edison often predicted he’d invent something or other by such and such a time.

F. R. Upton, one of his closest associates, said: “I have often thought that Edison got himself into trouble purposely, by premature publication . . . so that he would have a full incentive to get himself out of trouble.”

I used to do this all the time in developing advertising. “We’ll get three more ideas,” I’d say to my partner at noon, “and then we’ll break for lunch.”

Sure enough we’d get three more ideas. Lunch is essential.

Make a Líst of the Thíngs You Have to Do
if You Are to Put Your idea ínto Actíon

Then every day do at least one thing on that list.

If you feel you’re in a bit over your head because your idea is outside your area of expertise, go to the library or surf the Internet and read up on that area. Or ask someone about it. Or take a college course on it.

If you need a drawing made, get it made.

If you need a patent attorney, call one. The idea for barbed wire had been around for years, but Joseph Glidden did something about it. In 1873 he applied for a patent for a two-strand design called Winner and made millions.

If you have to write a brochure, start writing.

If you have to learn to play the guitar, put down this book and phone a guitar teacher.

If you have to . . . ah, you get the idea.

But remember: Do something about your idea every day. Open your computer or your folder or your notebook and do something. Every day. Even if it’s only to review what you did yesterday, do it.

At the end of a month you’ll be surprised at how much you’ve accomplished. At the end of a year you’ll be astounded.

“Burn Your Boats”

Julius Caesar and other generals used this technique when they invaded a foreign country. It was a dramatic demonstration to their troops that since retreat was impossible, they must either conquer the country or die; there were no alternatives, there were no excuses.

What excuses will you use if you fail? Burn them.

You didn’t have enough money? OK, borrow some money. Now you no longer have the lack-of-money excuse to fall back on.

You didn’t have enough time? OK, burn that boat: Get up an hour or two early every morning and work on your idea.

You didn’t know enough? OK, learn.

“Burn your boats.”

If You Have Trouble Selling Your idea to
Somebody Else, Do it Yourself

Thomas Adams tried to sell to a major company his idea of a gum that people would chew. They turned him down. So he made and sold it himself and started a whole new industry. His four sons each inherited a fortune.

Walt Whitman couldn’t find anybody to publish his Leaves of Grass, so he published it himself. e. e. cummings did the same thing with No Thanks. So did Mark Twain with Huckleberry Finn; and John Grishham with A Time to Kill; and Irma Rombauer with The Joy of Cooking; and Richard Bolles with What Color Is Your Parachute? And so did thousands of others with their books.

After Marion Donovan invented the disposable diaper, she tried for years to sell her invention to established manufacturers. No one wanted it. So she started her own company.

Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak went to Atari and said: “’Hey, we’ve got this amazing thing, even built it with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we’ll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we’ll come to work for you.’ And they said, ‘No.’ So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, ‘Hey, we don’t need you. You haven’t got through college yet.’” So the two Steves decided to make Apple computers themselves.

Do you really believe in your idea?

Then why let people who haven’t thought about it and worked on it a tenth as much as you have put the kibosh on it?

Attack.

Stay wíth it

Everybody has a story about getting an idea (“I’ve got this idea, see?”) for an investment or an invention or a new product or a new service or some new use for an existing product or some new way to use an existing service or a way to save money or an event or a promotion or a discovery or a screenplay or a book or a parlor game or a video game or a home video or a computer program or a real estate opportunity or a get-rich-quick scheme like selling used coffee grounds combined with pulverized orange rinds as an aromatic fertilizer for indoor plants but, alas, they never do anything with the idea and somebody else gets all the credit and makes a fortune off it.

I certainly have such a story. A number of them, in fact. You probably do too.

Here are a couple of famous ones:

James Clerk Maxwell predicted and mathematically formulated the transmission of radio waves. But he was a mathematician, and like a true mathematician, once he figured the thing out, he considered himself finished.

Robert Hooke probably discovered the law of gravity before Newton formulated his law of gravitation, and theories of light and color before Newton’s book on optics. But he never followed through with either discovery.

The first real sewing machine (one with an overhanging arm, a perpendicular action, an eye-pointed needle, and a feed similar to most machines today) was invented and patented in 1790 by Thomas Saint. Unfortunately for Mr. Saint, he never built even one of his machines. Forty years later, Barthelemy Thimonnier independently invented and built a similar machine, and the era of modern sewing machines began.

Here’s a poster my first boss, Bud Boyd, kept on his wall:

“More often than not,” Bud said, “people don’t fail; they stop trying.”

Don’t stop. Stay with it.

Make a copy of Bud’s poster and put it on your wall.

Ten, fifteen, twenty years from now, chances are the things you’ll regret most won’t be the dumb things you did during that time. They’ll be the things you didn’t do—the chance you didn’t take, the opportunity you didn’t seize, the idea you didn’t stay with.

Take it.

Seize it.

Stay with it.

Gíve Yourself Reasons

It took me three years to write this book. It took me so long because I followed none of the rules I just gave you except, marginally, the one about staying with it.

Truth to tell, many months I wrote nothing.

Furthermore, when I did write, I wrote more slowly than a tree grows.

And although it may not look it, for every three sentences I wrote, I threw away two; and every sentence I kept, I rewrote three times and repunctuated four.

But I also gave myself reasons to stay with it, to write and finish it.

The reasons were many: money, recognition, pride, stubbornness, curiosity, fun, the desire to help, the thrill of the reaching sail.

Mostly though, I stayed with it because I knew it would give me a chance to work again with someone I missed working with—the illustrator of this book.

Find reasons that will motivate you to put your idea into action.

One could be as simple as the satisfaction you feel when you finish what you start. Or the pride on your spouse’s face. Or the buzz your finished project will create. Or one of the reasons that propelled me.

Make a list of your reasons. Put the list on the wall next to Bud’s poster where you can see both of them every day.

Then don’t simply look at them every day.

See them every day.