- Cultish Creative
- Posts
- Marc Ecko On Why A Good Idea Isn't Enough
Think of your best idea.
Got it?
Good.
Think of how you want it to succeed.
Think of all it’s potential.
Now,
Read this Mark Ecko quote (and get his book, Unlabel, while you’re at it):
“A good idea isn’t enough. Everybody’s got good ideas. You need to show that in the past, I took X, and did Y. Now, with X+3, I’ll do Y+3+3. That burden is on you.”
Stack what you want to do next, on what you’ve done before.
It doesn’t even matter if what you’ve done before is totally unrelated.
If you want to explain to other people how and why it will work, focus them on the old X to Y, and transition them to the opportunity in your new X to Y.
We’ve all done something before.
Lean into it.
It’s (really) OK!
So you worked in corporate America but now you sell art? What did you accomplish in corporate America, and how can you relate that to your current business ambitions? Somebody might want to back you or be a patron.
So your restaurant blew up and now you’re a coach? What went well, and what went wrong that you should have known, and how are you applying those lessons to help those you serve to avoid that same fate? People actually want to know about the failures, sometimes more than the successes.
So you work in finance but network with all sorts of weirdos? Why is finance the last great liberal arts lounge act, and how are you going to showcase all the oddly connected weirdos you’ve met over the past almost 20 years to a non-finance audience who doesn’t even know how interesting these people are, let alone the ways they can help them out? There’s a loneliness epidemic out there, show people how connected they really are if they just start trying (it just might change the world).
Read it one more time:
“A good idea isn’t enough. Everybody’s got good ideas. You need to show that in the past, I took X, and did Y. Now, with X+3, I’ll do Y+3+3. That burden is on you.”
Go forth and multiply those experiences.