It was 2011, and I was on stage at Fast Companyâs Innovation Uncensored event. I sat in the chair where Gary Vaynerchuk was supposed to be. Gary was the guest for this particular panel but his flight got delayed so the folks at Fast Company asked me if Iâd be willing to slide up and fill his spot. You can imagine the audienceâs disappointment, right?
On the spot, the moderator asked me what my definition of innovation was, and without giving it too much of a thought, I responded:
âMake awesome where awesome is not.â
I only remember this so vividly because itâs the same definition my wife still uses to this day (and repeats back to me in an effort to point out my occasional overuse of the word âawesome.â)
Now hereâs why I think this definition matters, and especially why it might matter to you if youâve had an idea brewing in your head for a while now but have yet to turn it into a reality…
Whether you have an idea that feels like itâs been done 100 times or whether you have an idea that feels so far-fetched it could only work on Elon Muskâs Mars, YOU are more than capable of innovation.
Let me explain.
Chances are, if you have an idea and you havenât turned it into a reality yet, it fits into one of these two categories:
Category 1: You like this idea, but it feels like itâs never been done before, and that scares the shit out of you.
This is the category that most of my own projects have fallen under over the years. Whether it was getting paid to wear t-shirts for a living with my company IWearYourShirt back in 2009 (I donned t-shirts with logos and made YouTube videos before âYouTuberâ was a widely accepted occupation); or selling my last name twice (auctioned off my last name for $45,500 to become Jason Headsetsdotcom in 2013 and again for $50,000 to become Jason Surfrapp in 2014); or making $75,000 on my first book, Creativity For Sale, by selling sponsorships at the bottom of every page (before I had written a single word of the book); for a while there, I had the market cornered on âbusiness ideas that will make people laugh in your face.â
With every single one of these ideas, I asked my friends or family or close business peers what they thought, and with every single one, the majority of those people doubted I could make any money at all.
Thatâs the trouble with Category 1 ideas…
What hasnât been done before (aka âwhere awesome is notâ) is made up of equal parts endless possibility and raging disbelief.
But then, of course, you have Category 2.
Category 2: You like this idea, but it feels like itâs been done already, and that scares the shit out of you too!
Letâs take a second to talk about ideas âthat have been done already,â shall we?
In 1996, two smart guys started working on a project together out of their garage. While this project was unique to them, and they were going to put their own twist on it, there were many other companies who had already created businesses in their specific niche – twelve of them in fact, a handful of which had become extremely popular and profitable.
But these two guys believed in themselves and saw an opportunity to do things differently. They knew they could add their own unique twist on an existing idea.
Maybe you already know that the guys Iâm talking about are Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders of Google. But maybe you didnât know that 12* other companies had already created search engines (many of them doing extremely well) before the idea for Google came to be.
Innovation Can And Will Scare You
In both idea-categories I mentioned, you have a tremendous opportunity to make awesome where awesome is not in this world.
Your opportunity for innovation gets taken away by never doing anything at all.
Innovation doesnât just have to mean that you invent the technology that revolutionizes communication. It can also mean that you simply make something that didnât exist before.
It could be that you find a way to monetize platforms that already exist like I did (in spite of those that donât believe it can be done.) It could be that your version of âmaking awesomeâ isnât necessarily in the what you make but in the how you make it, like Larry and Sergey figured out a way to do search in a way it hadnât been done.
Whatever kind of idea you have though, the only way that your opportunity for innovation gets taken away is by never doing anything at all. By standing still. By letting that fear get the better of you.
Whether youâre starting a business and doing something thatâs never been done before, or youâre twisting an existing idea into your own, the beginning will most likely be the hardest part.
3 Steps To Getting Your Innovative Idea Off The Ground
Here are the three things that have made the biggest difference for me in getting my ideas off the ground.
#1 Believing in yourself wonât bring you any guaranteed success, but it will help you get further along than most.
You could be building the next Instagram. You could be creating an online course. You could be writing your own book. You could be trying to get paid to wear t-shirts for a living.
No matter what youâre creating, if you donât believe in yourself and your idea first, youâll never reach any level of success.
Thankfully for me, this is a trait that I was born with. For as long as I can remember, even as a little kid sitting in a bedroom dreaming up ideas for comic book characters, I always looked at the world differently. There were times in my childhood when it became clear that doing things differently wasnât the way to get ahead, especially in school. I was starting to pick up the fact that maybe being âsmartâ was a better way to navigate than being âdifferent.â Boy am I glad I didnât let those voices get to me because as it turns out, being smart isnât the only thing that counts. Scoring well on tests isnât the only thing that counts.
As long as you carry an unwavering belief in yourself and trust your gut when navigating those deep, dark, and uncertain waters of creating something unique or something that hasnât been created before then you also have the power to help people see your vision of the world and what could be.
#2 You donât get what you donât ask for.
Every idea Iâve ever had has had one thing in common: I wanted to get XYZ thing, more than I feared what it took to get it.
Thatâs what sets people who make ideas happen apart from people who donât, and thatâs the very first reason any of my ideas go from thoughts swirling around in my head to viable businesses that create value and generate revenue.
Your original idea is nothing until you make the first version of it and then ask people to download it, buy it, or subscribe to it.
Until you make an ask, your idea is nothing more than a cartoon bird floating around in your mind. (And unfortunately, you canât pay for lattes or your rent with cartoon birds in your mind.)
Ironically, being willing to make the ask is also what can help you overcome the self-doubt. The fear of the unknown is crippling: Will people hate my idea? Will they laugh at me?
Once you realize hearing ânoâ isnât as bad as you thought (and it never is), you gain the ability to keep asking until you hear a âyes.â And let me tell you, all you need is one âyesâ to stoke the flames of your own belief.
Your friends. Your customers. Your clients. Your shareholders. Theyâre not going to show up on your doorstep and throw yeses at you because you read this article or any other article on entrepreneurship, business, etc. But they will show up if you believe in yourself and you ask them to show up. It may not happen the first time. You may have to ask more times than youâre comfortable asking. You may have to modify your ask and change up who youâre asking, but if you want to achieve your dream more than you fear the reality to takes to get you there, your ask(s) will be rewarded.
#3 With patience, your bucket of appreciation will fill up.
Everyone wants happy customers with glowing testimonials to put on their websites or the back of their books right out of the gate, but it takes time to gain an appreciation for your ideas.
Thatâs probably why a lot of people never act on their ideas in the first place – not necessarily the fear that their idea will be met with rejection but the fear that people wonât even care at all.
Imagine that the gaping void of validation that you crave for your idea is in the shape of a bucket. A bucket of appreciation. The mistake most people make is forgetting to look at their buckets of appreciation in relation to where they are on their journey.
The day I launched IWearYourShirt, 12 people showed up to the website (and Iâm pretty sure 5 of those were my Grama.) If I had been expecting a response that would fill a Grand Canyon-sized bucket of appreciation, I probably would have given up and shut the whole thing down that very day. I had the ability to see that I was just at the very beginning of the life of my idea, and those 12 people were enough to feel appreciated in a bucket the size of which matched the age of my idea.
Google didnât start out as one of the most profitable companies in the world. They started out with a $100,000 check from their first investor (and a slightly upgraded garage). Sure, you may or may not be chasing $100,000 at the beginning stages of your idea like Google, but the point is that if you donât appreciate your business or idea at every stage in its existence, youâre quickly going to overwhelm yourself with unrealistic expectations. Your bucket of appreciation will end up feeling too large, and any praise you do get will barely cover the bottom.
It’s important to dream big but also to match your expectations with your reality.
Instead, itâs important to match your expectations with your reality. Dream the big dream of creating the next Google if thatâs your aim, but put your expectations in check with what your current circumstances are.
With patience, not only will you find the right people to fill up that bucket of appreciation that youâre so desperate for, but youâll find that the size of your bucket will grow in proportion to the hard work youâre willing to put into your idea.
These are the ways that Iâve been able to make my own awesome, in my own way, for over a decade now as an entrepreneur, and Iâm far from being done.
Here’s The Truth About Innovation And Sharing Your Ideas
I wrote this article because I hope you turn your current or next idea into a reality. I hope the cartoon bird version of it flies out of your mind and morphs into a first (actual) version that someone can pay for.
I hope that you stop looking at competition in whatever market youâre in as a hurdle, and instead, see it as proof that people are willing to pay for some version of your idea and as an opportunity to innovate in your own unique way. I hope you believe in yourself and channel that belief into the work it takes to receive the appreciation youâll get if you make the asks (and then repeat that process over and over again).
Iâve been blown away by the appreciation of my ideas over the years, and I want the exact same thing for you.
I said it as an offhanded comment in 2011 and Iâll say it again:
All that innovation requires you to do is make awesome where awesome is not.
Let the making begin.
