Exactly Where to Start

The Practical Guide to Turn Your BIG Idea into Reality

Phil M. Jones

• Editore: Wiley
• Anno: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781119484684
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Desarrollo personal
• Categoria: Carreras

Get out of your own way and bring your ideas to life!

Exactly Where to Start is a playbook for everyone with a great idea, everyone with a goal in mind, and everyone with a specific destination but no journey. We've been told all our lives that "good things come to those who wait"—but that's a myth. Good things come to those who do. Too often, we get stuck in the "getting ready" stage: research, analysis, brainstorming, and more research; we feel like we need to know everything there is to know about what we want to do before we ever take the first steps. Meanwhile, the people who actually go out and do the thing are taking risks, learning lessons, and making strides toward their goals every single day. Isn't it time you joined them?

This book coaches you through the journey with precise, actionable steps that help you take that all-important first leap and keep the momentum going. Discard the distractions, break through the overwhelm, and get going for real with this real-world blueprint for turning your vision into reality.

• Snap yourself out of "analysis paralysis"
• Stop thinking you need to know everything before you even begin
• Make those big decisions and focus in on your goals

• Chart your journey's path, and get up and get started today

Many of us have fallen into a trap: we no longer believe that "anything is possible", yet we are surrounded by proof that everything is possible! But we are distracted, harried, overwhelmed, and maybe a little intimidated. Our dreams remain forever in limbo, and we may go to our graves before we venture beyond the "planning stage". Don't let that happen—don't you deserve to realize your goals? Exactly Where to Start gives you the kick in the pants and the practical plan you need to stand up, step up, and make it happen.

1
Getting Started

You picked up this book because you have an idea about something that you have been meaning to start on, have been thinking about working on, and you believe is something that will work well. I expect that this idea has lived in you for some time and for one reason or another you have just failed to get started.

You have also, no doubt, met dozens of people on your journey who “nearly” achieved something, had a “great idea,” and failed to bring it to reality for one reason or another. These are the “if only …” people…

• If only I had started working for myself
• If only I had started earlier
• If only I had listened to the early advice
• If only I were brave enough to try

We have all heard the stories, and perhaps you have told a few of these yourself?

I never planned on writing this book. In fact it was certainly not my big idea to make this a reality. It is because of the plethora of requests from people I have met on my journey as an entrepreneur. They have asked me question after question about the precise steps involved in going from an idea to a real-life business. When I shared this fact with my publishers, they quickly responded by suggesting I reply to those questions with this book.

Why me? If you don’t know me, my start is from quite humble beginnings. I am the son of a builder, with nothing more than a high school education, and have never once been delivered a handout, secured external financing, or waited for the perfect moment to make something happen. Since starting my first business at the age of 14, I have both successfully and unsuccessfully created and launched hundreds of commercial ventures and ideas and also gone on to help many clients to do the same. In short, I don’t ask “Why me?” I ask “Why not me?”

There have been many, many books written about making things happen and getting things done, but none quite like this. You are reading a precise blueprint with the EXACT steps and the EXACT processes required to bring your BIG idea to life. This is exactly the journey used repeatedly throughout my experience to create something out of nothing, turn ideas into reality. And they are the steps I still use today to launch every new product, business initiative, and project.

Regular questions that have been fired in my direction have started to have an air of repetitiveness, and the general direction goes something like this:

• Where can I learn how to do it?
• Why has someone else not done it already?
• What is the right order to do things in?
• When is the right time to do it?
• What happens if it goes wrong?
• Who did it for you?
• How do you fit everything in?

While these are posed as questions, they sound more like excuses or statements of regret. This book is your instruction manual to help you give up on excuses and bypass regret to bring you out on the other side.

There is a good chance that you have already become well practiced at finding reasons not to start. Perhaps you have even worked harder on the excuses than you have on the idea itself. Let’s not have it that the catalyst for action that you need is someone else’s success with your idea. Let’s get started right now.

It is possible that you already have the feeling that I may have some understanding of your situation. You see, the truth is that I have stood in your shoes on many occasions and have a strong belief that I know much of what you are thinking. The reason I know this is that I think it, too. I experience the same feelings of being overwhelmed, the anxieties of uncertainty, and the myriad choices that can very easily leave you paralyzed, unable to take action. These are normal feelings. Not doing something about it is the problem.

I have felt these exact same feelings with every major project, program, or company I have launched; even though many have been successful ideas, there still are these feelings—each and every time. I am unable to make them disappear. They are a simply part of the journey … not a red light. That’s why the only way I have managed to facilitate them is to create systems and processes to work around them, overcome the complexities of human emotion, and create non-negotiable checkpoints that have the ability to drag me across the start line and propel me into the game.

Like any BIG idea, writing a book is always a daunting task, this book even more so. This is creating a BIG idea about how to create a BIG idea. The only way to approach this very task was to pull from my years of experience and rely on the exact process that I am writing about to create the book you are currently holding. That took this book writing process from six months down to six weeks!

With my process in place, I half laughed as I looked down at the first blank page to start this book. Because, like you, that first blank page of your next chapter weighs heavy, and stepping into it requires a few moments of courage.

Perhaps what differentiates me from you here is that with years of spectacular successes, ferocious failures, and a lifetime of lessons, you learn to trust the process. Because of this, the process I have used to create this book is the very process the book explains. What you are reading is an example of it, a product of its product, and entrusting this process to complete this piece, ahead of schedule and to a level that I am immensely proud of, is testimony to its application.

If you have read any of my previous work, you will know that my style is very action-focused, with applicable strategies that can be instantly implemented. This read is no different. Accompany your read with the ability to take notes, turn those notes into actions, and you too will know Exactly Where to Start.

Here is a quick secret. There is zero need for you to worry about the exact starting point of your BIG idea; you have already started. Even at this point you are already in motion, and your choice is whether to fuel its success or just go about your regular day and forget about it. The start line is already in your rear-view mirror, and some more good news is that there’s no finish line either.

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Your Action Step

Letter to Self

This is your first commitment to make. If you are moving forward with this idea, then now is your moment to decide to decide. Is this thing happening? Yes or No? Of course, you can decide not to do it; that’s an empowering choice, too. It is OK to choose to give up on something or to let it go; it’s also essential that if you choose to do something, that you commit to that choice. Nobody learned to swim standing poolside, nobody became a rock star without picking up an instrument, and nobody climbed a mountain without taking a first step.

Action and accountability drive results, and this has led me to understand that people take action in only two areas of their lives:

1. The things they enjoy doing
2. The things they are checked on

Being as this is your idea, my guess is that there are not many people checking in on you. Your task involves you setting a precise deadline today for the date in which your first major checkpoint will be reached. When your deadline is set, take a blank sheet of paper and write yourself a letter by hand.

The letter goes like this:

• Dear ...