Ideas are Cheap and Plentiful

We all have  that one friend in our life who is a dreamer.  In my case it’s June, I call  her my ‘if only’ friend. 

“If only, I had opened that vegetarian  restaurant like  I thought of  years ago, I’d be making tons of money right now,”  she said one year ago.

And later on.

“If only I’d listen to my instinct I would have started an art shop, see how well Tish is doing?” She is referring to another friend who though not as creative as June recently secured a loan to open a small gallery.

My friend June is a real ideas type but her thinking is illogical. As I keep telling her (but lately have learned to shut up),  Having  an idea of a restaurant has nothing to do with actually opening one. What you do is what matters, not what you think or say or dream of.

Doubt me? 

Try peddling your ideas on the street, how much do you think they’ll fetch? See what I mean?  June’s  idea of the veggie restaurant won’t go for much nor  will the art shop, not at least until she  actually starts  working a plan. Of course the constraints  can be humongous but it can make you  work harder, make you see how far you can get with what you have.

My dad, who was a journalist, used  to often tell me: “Go write!"  I was only 12-13  at the time  and despites my groans and protests  I would come back to him with reams of paper about  silly things like how I spent my day or notes about how much I loved my grandmother.

I think in his directive he  was really  telling me that the most important thing in execution  was the beginning, getting started. The second idea was committing to the task and making mistakes (which he would correct) and getting better at things. So if I got pad, pencil and started writing on just about  I would develop a skill that I could later put to use.

 Ideas are cheap and plentiful. The real deal is to begin to execute.