Idea – Plan – Execution

It’s the perennial chicken or the egg paradox. Which is more important? Is it the idea for the business, or is it the execution of the business? Now, I like to say that a million dollar idea is worthless without a million dollars worth of execution. So I tend to fall on the side of saying that execution is the most important part. Now, if you want to build a billion dollar business, the idea is quite important. Right? We talk about, Warren Buffett said, doesn’t matter how hard you row if you’re in the wrong boat and the vehicle, the boat that you’re in is the idea. And so we got to get in the right boat to take us to where it is that we’re trying to go at the speed in which we’re trying to get there. So if you want to build a billion dollar business, idea is quite important. If you want to build a million dollar business or a $10 million business, I don’t think the idea matters nearly as much as the execution.

Now, I was having a conversation with a gentleman the other day, and he had built a $10 million construction business, and he was, you know, saying, hey, I fall inside of saying the idea is always the most important part because you could have a dog shit cleaning company and you could be doing a million dollars a year, but then you’re of revenue, but you have no profit because you’re just, you know, spending out the wazoo on all your ads and all your operations and all that stuff. And my stance on this is there’s actually a third part of the equation that kind of gets lost between idea and execution. So, between idea and execution, there is this thing called the plan. The plan is the bridge between idea and execution. It makes the dream a reality. For instance, the idea could be that I want to go to Oregon and I want to start a new life and get some new land. I’m going to take my family out there. We’re going to start a farm.

We’re going to be organers. Okay? My plan is that I’m gonna take my oxen, I’m gonna take my cart, we are gonna go along the Oregon trail, and we’re gonna go to Oregon. That’s the plan. That’s the strategy, right? That’s the business plan. The execution is, oh, I need to ford this river, so I need to make a raft. Okay, now, the idea is the destination. It’s the goal. I want to build a million dollar dog cleaning business.

I want to build a $10 million software as a service business. I want to build a hundred million dollar real estate portfolio, whatever. That’s the idea. The plan is how you’re going to do that. I’m going to do this by taking this path. I’m going to do this by taking that path. And then the execution is, how do you actually walk that path? Now, if you’ve ever played Oregon trail, in this example, if you don’t build your raft very well, your oxen are going to die trying to ford the river. Right.
And for me, the idea of where we’re trying to go, whether it’s Oregon or it’s California, doesn’t really matter all that much in my estimation, as much as it is your plan and your ability to execute against that plan. And I share this with you because I think sometimes we get so inside of our heads as entrepreneurs that we need to be chasing the biggest, best idea. We spend so much time sitting on the sidelines, overanalyzing every little possible nuance of an idea before we actually try to go and implement it. And it’s really in the implementation, the execution of the plan that we come to realize whether or not the idea was even good in the first place. So the reason this really popped off in my mind was this gentleman on Twitter the other day. He shared how he thought it would be a very good idea to get, like, six buddies together and spend an afternoon just doing an idea brainstorming session to see, like, come up with their, see if they can come up with, like, a million dollar idea. And I was like, that sounds like a terrible use of time. Honestly, like, six guys sitting around for an afternoon, that’s, you could just take an idea, take all that time and energy with all those dudes and actually go and try and sell the thing and try to make a profit on the thing.

And you would get so much further. You get so much more data than you would just sitting around pontificating. And I just see so many people, so many would be entrepreneurs, so many wantrepreneurs, get stuck in the cycle of, like, overthinking the idea as though that’s the thing that’s going to put money in the bank. And the truth is, it’s not. The execution of the plan is what makes the idea a reality. So focus on the right part of that. Just get an idea good enough, create a plan good enough, and then start executing it. And then along the way, you can upgrade, you can pivot, you can improve on the plan, and maybe get a better clarity about, like, where.

Where you want the idea to take you. Cause after all, like, if you’re in Pennsylvania, back in like the 17 hundreds, and you never been to Oregon. You don’t know what Oregon’s like. It’s an idea. It’s a dream. But once you get there, you might decide this was actually the wrong idea. This is not where I want to be at all. And then you can pivot and adjust, right? But only if you actually make the trek from Pennsylvania to Oregon through the execution of the plan can you make the idea a reality.

So focus on the right part of that equation. Focus on the execution. Focus on the plan. Idea. Largely irrelevant in my book, at least on your first business. So that’s gonna do for me. Guys and gals, I hope you got a little mindset, mindset shift on this. If you have a friend, if you have somebody in your life who just talks and talks and talks about these big million dollar ideas, but never actually does anything, send them this podcast and be like, hey, listen, stop talking.

Start doing. Go listen to Anthony. He’ll set you straight. So that’s gonna do it for me, guys. And guys, I appreciate you. We’ll catch you in the next episode.