A client came to me last month with fifteen different lead magnet ideas for her personal training business - and not a single plan to launch any of them. That gap is what this episode is about: how to create an action plan that turns an idea into something live in your business.
I walk through the exact process I use with clients to get an idea out of their head and into a working part of their business. We cover how to validate a business idea before you spend a single hour building it, and how to write an action plan by reverse engineering your end goal back to one first step.
If you've had an idea sitting untouched for six months or longer, you don't need a full-blown strategy. You just need to take step one.
Timestamps:
3:39 - Business idea validation: is your idea actually aligned?
5:05 - How to validate a business idea (real client example)
6:50 - How to create an action plan: reverse engineering the steps
8:05 - Your first move, not step ten
10:56 - How to turn ideas into action that moves the needle
In This Episode You'll Learn:
Why most business ideas never become a real action plan
How to validate a business idea before you invest a single hour in it
How to set goals and create an action plan by working backwards from the outcome
What business idea validation looks like with a real client (fifteen ideas, one plan)
How to turn ideas into action without drowning in the whole list at once
Grab your next step: I teach the full walkthrough for free inside my Freedom Business Bootcamp - a 60-minute training that takes your idea and turns it into a strategic action plan and a sellable offer. Enroll Now: https://onlinebusinessschool.itssophiebiggerstaff.com/registration-page
Working For Me is for high-achieving dreamers on a journey to build a business, and a life, that actually works for them.
Whether you're still stuck in a corporate 9-5, wondering how you can navigate the transition from employee to entrepreneur, or you've already quit your job to start and your business is feeling anything but free - this podcast helps you find a better work life balance by building an online business that's set up to achieve your goals.
Hosted by Sophie Biggerstaff, Anti-Hustle Business Mentor and Writer/Host of Working For Me - each episode explores real strategy and honest conversation about doing what you love and building a business that's genuinely working for you, not one you work for!
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Success isn't just a fantasy - but you do need to write your own version of it - this podcast helps you do exactly that.
If I was your business coach and you came to me with hundreds of ideas, but no real plan or strategy on how to execute them, this is what I would tell you. Welcome back to the walk with Me podcast. I'm today doing another episode of if I Was Your Business Coach and sharing what I would tell you if you had loads of ideas, but no way to actually take action on them, because this is what happens in so many of the strategy sessions that I do with clients.
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Sophie
I have people come to me with loads of ideas and they're all floating around up here, but they haven't landed them. They haven't grounded their ideas into a realistic action plan to take action on, to bring those ideas into reality. Because yes, it's amazing having loads of ideas for your business, for a business, whichever stage you're at. But if they stay up here in the in the ethos, they're never actually going to come down into reality and land on earth.
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Sophie
And we obviously can't make money from something that is floating in the atmosphere. We want to make money from something that is genuinely working for us in this 3D world. So in case you haven't met yet, my name is Sophie Bickerstaff. I'm an online business coach, and I've been working in the online business world for the past six years.
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Sophie
I have tried pretty much every online business model there is to think about, and I have figured out what works for me. Along the way, I went through multiple burn outs and pushed myself out of alignment with what I actually wanted for my life, which is why I'm so passionate about teaching people how to build a business that genuinely works for them and doesn't feel like a job that they work for.
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Sophie
Because ultimately, what's the point in this building a business that we don't love showing up for every single day? Now, one of the things that clients come to me for all the time in one of my strategy sessions is that they have all of these ideas, but they don't know how to channel it into a strategy plan to actually take action on, to move the needle in that business, in which case they're usually working on like busywork, things that aren't actually moving the needle because they're too scared to actually execute any of the ideas that are out here.
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Sophie
And the problem with that is when you focus on the busywork and you don't focus on actually taking the actions that can move the needle of all these amazing ideas that you've got, your business is actually going to go nowhere. It's not going to make the money that you want, and you're going to constantly be disappointed by the results.
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Sophie
The same thing usually happens when someone has a business idea, but they don't have a plan to actually execute the business. Again, they focus on everything else that they could be doing rather than actually starting. And I see this all the time with clients that come through in my Freedom Business boot camp, which is a 60 minute training where I teach you how to actually take those ideas, grant them and bring them into reality, and actually build a strategic action plan to turn your ideas into a sellable offer.
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Sophie
Figure out who you're selling it to, and then start building the business. If you want access to that, I'll put the link in the show notes. But essentially, people come to me with all of these ideas, and I help them translate their ideas and turn them into reality. Now, obviously, this podcast is all about working for you and making a business that actually, genuinely does work for you.
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Sophie
So when someone comes to me with all of these ideas, the first thing that I want to identify is, is this idea actually going to work for the business model that they want to run? Because nine times out of ten, I can tell you that people have these ideas, but they are ideas that have come from other people.
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Sophie
They're not actually their ideas. These ideas are not come internally in alignment with what they actually want. So the first thing that I would always do is sense check whether these ideas are actually in alignment with where they want their business to go, where they want their life to go, where they have this business vision because there's no point in taking action on an idea that actually is out of alignment with you.
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Sophie
All that's going to do is force you to face roadblocks, robots, roadblocks along the way and get really frustrated in the execution because it's a little bit like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole when you are trying to take action on an idea that isn't actually in alignment with you. So the first step is sense check.
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Sophie
Is this idea in alignment with what you actually want and the vision you've got for your business? If it is, then we need to reverse engineer that idea and create you an action plan that's going to help you bring it to life. And the way that I would do that is look at your idea firstly, in the bigger picture of your business, where does this idea fit in?
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Sophie
So to give you an example, I had a client come to me quite recently. We did a strategy session together. She's been running a personal training business for the past couple of years, but she had all of these ideas for lead magnets, which are offers that are going to attract people into her business. To help her build an email list for example, or an audience, so that she can then market her higher ticket office to.
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Sophie
And she had about 15 ideas for these lead magnets. So we filtered through and said, okay, which one is actually in alignment with the vision? Because some of these were completely out of alignment with where she actually wanted her business to go. They weren't even on the same subject of the clients that she wanted to attract into her business.
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Sophie
So we filtered out those ideas. Then we looked at, okay, if you bring this idea to life, where does it sit in your marketing and sales funnel? Because that's great. You've got this idea for this thing that you want to create, but does it actually lead somebody on a journey to buy from you over here? Because we can create over here.
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Sophie
But unless it has a bridge that actually brings it to life in a way that is actually going to then sell the thing that you want to sell, there's actually no point in then creating this lead magnet. You wasted your time. You might as well just spend more time pushing this in a different way. So we had to look at the overall architecture of her business to make sure that this lead magnet had a purpose.
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Sophie
We already know it serves her future vision, but does it actually have a purpose in the sales and marketing funnel that she currently has, or do we need to change that? Then from there, if we've agreed that it does fit into that architecture, we then need to put plans in place to execute this. So we would look at all of the things that we would need to do to bring this lead magnet to life.
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Sophie
So create it, set up a funnel for it, find out a way for people to actually get to it and find it. And then how are we going to bridge the lead magnet to something that you're actually selling over here? And we would do this backwards. We would say, okay, if this thing was already live, what would it be connected to?
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Sophie
In what way? With someone that says, how much does it cost? How is somebody finding it? So we would literally work backwards from the point of where we actually want someone to go with this lead magnet and swap out every single step that we would need to take to bring this thing to life and do it justice. Once we've got that, we need to just look at the first step, because if we start looking at all of the ten steps that we've created for us to actually bring this to life, it's going to feel very overwhelming.
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Sophie
And we don't want you to be overwhelmed because you've spent so much time just thinking about these ideas and not taking action. We now want you to actually execute on these ideas. So we need to just look at the first step. We need to look at set A rather than set today because we start looking at a set today you're going to feel very overwhelmed.
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Sophie
So the first thing is like okay what's the first thing. That is the most important thing for me to actually do to bring this idea to life. And we focus on that until that is ticked off, then we move to step B, set C that day, and so on. So that slowly but surely we can start bringing this to life.
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Sophie
And I would also suggest when people come to me with, with all of these ideas that they're not currently taking action on, that you set yourself a time limit of how long you're going to work on this per day or per week, because you don't want to just overwhelm yourself by going all in on this one thing, and then completely forget about everything else that you've got going on in your business, in your life.
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Sophie
Set yourself time limits of when you're actually going to work on this, and make sure that you actually do sit down and take action in those times. And then slowly you are going to start seeing this thing come to life. Now I help people take their ideas and tournament realities every single day. A lot of the time, people come into my foundations, group coaching and self-paced course when they're starting an online business because they've got all of these ideas and they haven't been able to turn them into reality.
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Sophie
Now, my program is specifically designed so that you have a step by step action plan. Exactly what we've just spoken about, to bring those ideas to life and actually have a fully fledged business at the end of the program. And I'm that guiding you every single step of the way, so that you don't even have to think about the actions that you need to take.
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Sophie
So if you are at an online business and you've had this idea for ages now, so a lot of the people that come into my program have had their ideas for 6 to 12 months and not done anything about it. They come in and they start taking action pretty much straight away, and they've got a fully fledged business in the next six months.
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Sophie
If that sounds like something that you're interested in, I'll put the link in the show notes so you can check out my foundation's program and see if it would be a good fit for you, especially if you've got an idea that is really needing to take action. I'm now going back to ideas. If you'd had loads of different ideas that you want to take action on, you also need to look at which ideas are going to actually move the needle for you.
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Sophie
Is this something that is a priority right now, or is this just something that would be a nice to have? Because ideally, everything that you'll take an action on, everything that you're prioritizing in your business should be something that is going to bring you closer to the goal that you have. Like I said at the beginning, we need to identify fast if that idea is in alignment, but also is actually going to get us closer to where we want to be and in what time frame, because we really just want to focus on the ideas that are going to move the needle.
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Sophie
First of all, before we start, focus on the ideas that could be to be a nice to have. So if you have loads of ideas right now to start a business, to grow your business, to restructure your business wherever you're at, first of all, you're going to look at which ideas are actually in alignment with the vision that you've got and where you want your business to be.
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Sophie
Then you're going to look at if this idea is actually going to move the needle for you, is I want to do or need to do, and then we're going to reverse engineer the idea and say all of the steps that you would need to take to bring this idea to life and how it is going to take somebody on a journey to get them to do what you actually want them to do.
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Sophie
And then, of course, you're actually going to take action. And this is the most important part, because like I said at the beginning, it is great having all of these ideas. But unless they're landed and rooted in something, you never actually take an action on them. They're actually a waste. And so many people waste amazing ideas every single day because they never can get themselves to start because they don't have that action plan to follow.
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Sophie
And I understand it right. Like I definitely need action plans to follow. I'm very strategic person. That is why I'm so good at helping other people bring their ideas into reality. So if you need some support bringing your business idea into reality, make sure you can check out my program foundations. And if you liked this episode of what more content around building a business that works for you, not a job that you work for.
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Sophie
Make sure you like and subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform and I will see you in the next one.
