5 Questions to ask yourself BEFORE implementing a new idea [Ep. 199]

Michelle (: 00:01

Hello, hello, I hope you're having a fabulous day. Okay, let's dive right into today's episode, which is all about five questions I feel like you should be asking yourself before you dive in and just start implementing a new idea. Okay, and the reason for this is because new ideas are constantly.

flowing to us, right? As entrepreneurs, we have extremely creative brains, we're scrolling social media, we're seeing what other people are doing, we're getting inspired, we're constantly being inspired if you're doing a lot of reading. You know, you could have a lot of new ideas, clients are coming to you with new ideas, other consultants and coaches and all of these things, like people are constantly giving us new ideas and new feedback and hey, have you thought of this? Or hey, you should do this, right? Like...

We hear this all the time, like, oh, I think you should offer this, or I think you should do this. And I'm not saying I'm not guilty of it as a coach, right? As a coach, I often see when there are things or opportunities that come up, right? And so if there is an opportunity that comes up, I wanna make sure that we can capitalize on it if it's a good fit. But there's also a lot of power in practicing the pause. Before.

you just start implementing. All right, so I'm gonna give you the five questions and then I'm gonna go through each one of them. All right, so if you've got a pen and paper, you know I'm always talking about taking action. If you have to come back to this, I actually have a framework and a work, this is part of my framework and so if you have a new idea, this is something that when I'm helping somebody, when I talk about ideas, this could be a workshop idea, could be a new.

service offering idea, you know, even if you're thinking about attending the workshop on the one-to-one profit accelerator, these questions are going to come up, right? Like we are going to be talking about them in the workshop. They're part of everything that I do because I think it is so important to ask yourself these questions before you just start implementing something to make sure that it fits in line with your business plan, that makes sure it fits in line with your goals, make sure it fits in line with what you want to execute on.

Michelle (: 02:18

just making sure that you're not just being reactive, right? Okay, so these five questions keep you in a state of like proactivity, making sure you're not just like jumping the gun and just diving right in, which I have been very, very guilty of. I am very guilty of just doing very impulsive things, okay? And so I actually created this framework and a worksheet for myself so that I could walk myself through this process as well, because trust me when I tell you, I can be extremely

Impulsive. Okay, so here's your five questions and then we're gonna dive into them. All right. So number one, what is the goal? What is the goal with this new idea? Okay number two, how does it make you money? Number three, how does it solve a problem for your ideal client? number four, how will you execute it and Number five, how are you going to package it? All right, so

And then if you want to, one of the other questions, if you don't like those or they're not making sense to you, one of the other ways you could word this is, how does this serve you and your client? So often we think about the client only, right? We think about, or one or the other. We're either thinking about how it's a great thing for us, and then we may not be thinking about the client, or we're thinking about how it's a great thing for the client, and we may not be thinking about how it really serves us in our.

Okay, so number one, what is the goal? Let me give you an example. Anytime a client comes to me and says, hey, Nichelle, I'm thinking about doing a master class. Let's just use this as an example. I'm thinking about running a master class on five ways to use ClickUp in your business. Okay, great, right? So I have a client who is a ClickUp expert. She does done for you ClickUp build outs and all of that. And so she might say to me like, hey, I'm thinking about running a master class.

All right, great. What's the goal? What is the goal? Why are we running the masterclass? Is the masterclass a goal? Is it gonna be a paid masterclass? So we're gonna get into those type questions. You see how they, my brain immediately moves into the questions, right? But like, why? If you can't come up with that, I want you to keep saying like, why? That seven layers deep, I don't know if you've ever heard.

Michelle (: 04:40

of that, but that's a Dean Graciosi thing where you just keep asking why seven times until you really get to the full answer. So like, what is the goal? Why do you want to do this? Maybe you want to reword that instead of what is the goal, but like, why do you want to run this masterclass? Because I want to create new visibility. Okay, why? Well, because I need new clients. Okay, why? Like what's the next step for them? Right? Like what is this? How are you going to set it up? All right. So number two, how does this make you money?

Not everything needs to be about money, but it needs to eventually lead to something, right? So maybe it's not money, but it could be time. It could be freeing up your time, which if you free up your time, that equals money. But for the most part, anytime we're thinking about implementing a new idea, it's like, how is this gonna make you money, right? So, hey, I'm thinking about running a master class, okay? Paid or not paid? Free, all right, well, what's the next step? Is it just because you're trying to create visibility? Is it because you wanna give back?

Is it because you're hoping that they're gonna convert to one-to-one? Is it because you're sick of answering the same question over and over and it would just be easier for you to run a master class, right? So once you understand why you wanna do it, then it's how does it make you money? And money, like I said, could just be freeing up your time or it could be something that you send out, right? Like, okay, well, I'm gonna create this master class and then I'm gonna sell the replay. Or if it's a question that you answer all the time, it could make you money because it could save you.

from having to answer the same question over and over, right? Like you record the master class, you record it very quickly. The next time somebody has this question, you say, hey, I actually get asked this question all the time. I've got a short little mini master class on this or mini video on this. It's 10 bucks, go buy it, right? Whatever it is or 20 bucks. I'm not getting into the pricing right now, but you see my point, right? So how is this idea gonna make you money? All right, number three, how does it solve a problem? Like what...

Problem is this solving for your client, for your ideal client. How is this master class going to solve their problem? How is this new offer going to solve their problem? How is starting a podcast going to solve a problem for somebody, right? Like even this podcast, before I even, this is a new idea, right? Think I'm gonna rebrand the podcast. Here's what I wanna talk about. What am I gonna try to do? Why am I gonna try to do it? Again.

Michelle (: 07:03

My goal is that I want to be able to give you action tips. If you listen to this, the problem that it's going to solve, I have multiple topics, and my goal is, if I give you action tips that you can implement immediately, it solves your problem of how to price your services or how to implement a new idea. So even that type of thing, and how does the podcast make me money? Well, I'm...

It could lead to workshop signups, it could lead to one-on-one, it could lead to coffee chats, which coffee chats could lead to one-on-one clients or coffee club members, right? There's always this progressive step and the money doesn't always need to come from the idea itself, but it could be like, what's the three layers or seven layers deep, right? What's the progressive step that's going to eventually bring in revenue or time or new clients or...

new visibility, something, right? Like, what are you gonna gain from this? So maybe revenue is not the right question. Maybe the question is just, what is your business gonna gain from this? Right, like what's the goal, and then what are you gonna gain? And then how does it solve a problem, right? Because if it's not solving a problem, I don't care if it's the best idea since sliced bread. If your client doesn't want it and it's not solving their problem, then it makes no sense, right? Like, I could run a master class on how to meal prep. How does this solve a problem?

My ideal client, it solves a lot of problems from a meal prepping standpoint, but it's not what I'm teaching. It has nothing to do with what I'm already currently doing, right? So how does it solve a problem? And then number four, how are you gonna execute it? Meaning, what do you need? What tools do you need? How are you gonna actually put this in action, right? Okay, I wanna run a master class. Okay, how? You're gonna just show up live on Zoom?

You're gonna do it through Facebook, like Facebook event, and then with a Zoom link, do you need people to register for it? Is it just as long as they click going, they're gonna get the link? Do you need to have an email automation behind it? Do you have a wait list? Like, what do you need to do to execute this? What are all the steps, right? From the most simplistic step possible. So again.

Michelle (: 09:21

The podcast, there's a lot of things to execute, but let's go back to the example, even of the upcoming workshop that I'm doing, the one-on-one workshop. One of the steps even was like getting graphics, right? Updating my Facebook and LinkedIn banners. Okay, what am I gonna do? I'm gonna teach this live on Zoom. Okay, great, but I also need, it's a paid workshop. So I've gotta set it up so that they can pay, so people can pay for it. I've gotta have a wait list, right? All these different things, like how are you going to execute it? For me,

I'm executing it on Zoom, but there's all of these other things that I'm pulling into play. All right. And then how will you package it? Package it is one way of saying it. What are you gonna price it at? Is another way of saying it, like is it in addition to something? So it would be, again, how are you getting paid for this, right? Like what does it look like? When we're talking about the workshop coming up and we're talking about implementing this rapid fire.

business model or the one-to-one, you know, the unlimited support model, like how, what are you going to do? How are you going to package it? Is it in addition to one call? Do they get one zoom call a month for strategy and then unlimited support the other months or throughout the other month? Is it that they're going to get one week, right? Is it packaged in with, um, on, on its own, right? Is it an upsell again, like the masterclass, like what is the overall packaging around it?

for the client, meaning how are you going to sell it? Like what's the selling? How are you going to package it? How are you going to price it? How are you going to sell it? Those are the five questions. So again, what is your goal? Continuing to ask yourself why. Number one, how is it going to make you money? Or how is this going to benefit your company? You, your company. How is, what is this going to, what are you going to gain from this? How does it solve your problem?

And why do they need it, right? Like if you want to take it a step further, like why do your clients need it? Okay, great, it might solve a problem for them. Why do they need it, right? Or why do they want it is probably a more important question because we all have clients, we all know our clients need a lot of things, but just because they need it doesn't mean they want it. And if they don't want it, for the most part, they're not gonna pay for it, right? So again, why do your clients want this?

Michelle (: 11:45

How is this solving a problem for them? Why should they even care? Why do they want it, right? How are you gonna execute it? What does it look like? What tools do you need? What tools do you need to execute this properly? Do you need team members? Do you need technology? What do you need to do to actually execute this idea? And the reason I say this is because it's one thing to say, I wanna create this master class. All right, great. It's another thing to say.

Yeah, but I want it to be paid and then I want to have a waitlist and then I want to sell extra bonuses to the waitlist and I want to have coupon codes and I want to have affiliates, right? There's a lot of things involved in that execution and it may or may not fit into what you're currently doing because remember, every time you launch something new, you have to sell it, you have to promote it, you have to create visibility around it and so it doesn't just automatically sell itself. So the reason I say looking at how you will execute it is like...

Do you already have these tools in place? Do you have to hire somebody? Are they even available? Do you need copy? Do you need a web designer? Do you need a landing page? Right, like whatever it is. And because I say, there's ways you can do things easier, right? Like you could run a masterclass as simple as literally hopping on Zoom, putting a name to it, putting it up on Facebook events and getting people there. Again, does that fit in with what you're currently doing? You've got to look at your time. Like again, what are you committed to? Do you have the time to do this?

When I was looking at the one-to-one workshop, I am this like shotgun approach. Anytime I try to create a workshop, it's usually off the cuff, like pick a date, pick a title, start promoting it, right? And then I realized like with this workshop, I wanted this to be like a fully immersive experience. Like I wanted it, I didn't want it to have an upsell to it. I wanted to just teach everything in this workshop and sell the workshop. I didn't want to have to.

do a master class that leads to another program, that leads to this, that leads to, like, I just didn't want that. And so, when I originally picked the date, I picked a date, like, in the beginning of August, but we were gonna be on vacation in July for 10 days, and then coming back, I wasn't gonna have time to work on it, you were looking at 4th of July, we had company, like, again, the reason I say is, how are you gonna execute this is because it gives you the opportunity to look at, like,

Michelle (: 14:12

Do I have time right now to implement this new idea? It does this even make sense? Because if you take a shotgun approach, you might get shotgun results, but you could probably get better results if you just wait a little bit. So yes, I've pushed off the workshop until September, because I just had to, and yes, I'm impatient, and I could have already done it by now, but I also know it's going to be executed so much better.

and I've got some packaging and pricing and the waitlist and all these things. Like, right? So again, that's why I say, like, ask yourself these questions. And when I say package it, so how will you package it? How are you going to price it? How are you going to sell it? That's the ultimate question. How are you going to sell it? What does it look like? What's your marketing look like? Is it people? Is this something new? Do you need a new audience? Are you going to reach out to the past people you already know?

Is it gonna be an add-on? Where's the pricing fit in? And so, a couple other key points that I really want you to keep in mind is just because someone is asking you for it does not mean you have to provide it. Every client, for the most part, has their own version or their own opinions on what you should do with your business.

But every client's needs and wants and desires are different. So just because somebody is asking you to do something does not at all mean you have to say yes. Again, back to question two is, what am I going to gain from this? Right? If you're going to gain headaches and frustration and you're going to be annoyed or you're going to end up having to implement and

add on team members and it's gonna add a lot of stress to your plate, you can very nicely say thank you so much for the suggestion at this time I'm not ready to implement that. Right? I get this question all the time from one-on-one clients. So many times they come to me and say, hey Michelle, I had a client and they were telling me that one of the things that they think I should do is blah, right? Well, why? Why are we doing this?

Michelle (: 16:33

You know, even when it comes to raising your pricing, I have a client whose CFO is forever telling them to raise their price. Okay, why? Who's gonna pay it? Do you have an audience, Witty? What's the goal? Are you gonna add more? You're just gonna raise the price? You're gonna add more to the service, right? So again, people are forever giving us ideas. But this is why I say it's so important to really sit down and practice the pause and ask yourself these five questions, because...

This actually is gonna save you from going down a rabbit hole that you don't need to go down, right? A lot of times new ideas are simply just distractions. That's why I always tell all of my Biz Planning clients to have a thoughts and ideas list, right? Like put it on your thoughts and ideas list and revisit that thoughts and idea list every single month and then decide when the right time is to pull this idea off the list and actually start to execute it, all right? And go through and ask yourself these questions.

the pause. You do not need to be implementing every single idea. And in fact, I'm going to do a whole nother podcast episode about this because it is hindering your sales. For a lot of you, you are not making sales because you are implementing every freaking new idea that comes to you without truly having any strategy behind it. Right? So yeah, it might be annoying. You might be like, oh, you're killing my freaking

You're killing my motivation. Like I came to you, I was all excited. This is why I always call it the real truth about business because people tell me like, oh, you just burst my bubble. My goal is not to burst your bubble, right? I am not at all trying to burst your bubble and burst your excitement when somebody comes and they're all excited about a new idea and I start asking them these questions. I'm not intending to burst their bubble. I'm not intending to kill their momentum. I'm not intending to kill their excitement. What I'm trying to do is avoid disappointment down the line.

What I'm trying to do is avoid getting distracted by something that is not relevant to the goals that you are trying to achieve right now. Right? Like always make sure you come back to like, what is the goal? Why are we doing this? Right? Does this fall in line with what I'm currently trying to achieve? You know, go back to my episode about taking your income. You know, you could say, Oh, I want to teach this masterclass and it's $49. Well, if you've been promoting,

Michelle (: 18:58

a one-to-one service that's over $500 to $1,000, right? And you still have spots left to fill and you're not booked up. And now all of a sudden you're gonna switch and start promoting a $49 masterclass. Guess what? You're gonna take your income. Do you have, you know, and where's your income at? Do you have the safety net to catch you? To do that, to build up new exposure, to create new awareness, right? Again, do you wanna create new visibility? Just because you sell something at low ticket doesn't mean somebody's gonna upgrade to a high ticket.

Right, and so it's not meant, these questions are not meant to take the wind out of your sails by any means. This is just the real, again, the real truth. This is what you need to do as a business owner is proactively look at, is this a good idea right now? If you can't answer all five of those questions and have good, solid answers, then my advice to you is put it on your thoughts and ideas list and revisit it another month, right?

Get it out there. I'm not saying it's not a brilliant idea. I'm saying it might not be the right time to implement this idea. Look at your overall strategy. How does this fall in line with your overall business strategy? If you don't have one, if you can't answer that question, then hint, wink, you need a business strategy, you need a plan, and we might be doing business planning here in a couple months, so keep an eye out for that. But, you know, again,

In all honesty, how does this fit in with your current plan? That's the goal, right? That's always the question, is how does this fit in with the current plan? And if you can answer all five of those questions and it still fits in with your current plan and you're ready and you can take action on it, go take action. That's what's most important, all right? But I really also wanna make sure that this is serving both you and the client.

It's not like it's just serving one or the other. How does this serve you and how does it serve your client? So that's something else to think about. And then what is the next step? Is there a next step if you implement this? Thinking about that. Because a lot of times, again, impulsive ideas, impulsive ideas look at like, I wanna run this master class or I wanna start doing a bunch of podcasting. I had somebody,

Michelle (: 21:22

This happened to a couple of people. We've been talking about this a lot in the mastermind. It's like, I do all this podcast guesting, but I don't feel like it's getting me anywhere. Right, because what's the next step? What's the goal with this? I actually just did this myself. I set myself up on PodMatch, and I had a consultation call with somebody who's very familiar with PodMatch, and he said to me, what's the goal? Why do you wanna be on podcast? My answer to him is because I wanna gain, I wanna try to drive traffic to my podcast.

Because if I can get on other people's podcasts and share my expertise with their audience and then drive traffic to this podcast, it helps my listenership. And then if they're listening to my podcast, obviously you know I'm always sharing about my offers, any workshops. So again, you can see the trajectory of why am I doing this? Why am I going to invest time, not only time and money into this, this is a new idea too. Like, okay, let's go on a podcast guesting tour. Why, if you're gonna invest time and money into it, what's the goal?

then what's the next step? And so that's where you've got to always be looking at that and ask yourself these questions. And maybe you don't know what the next step is because you're waiting to see, I'm not saying there always is a next step, but you got to at least be looking at that. Got to be at least asking your question. You know, with the workshop coming up that I'm doing, there is no next step. I'm not upsell, there's no next step. The next step is to sell at Evergreen, but from the client perspective, there's no next step.

Right? So thinking of it from that perspective is making sure that it's serving you, it's serving your client, making sure this is not going to derail you from what you're currently working on, making sure that it's not going to just be an investment of your time and money and energy with no ROI. Right? That's the goal. What's the, you want to make sure that you're getting a return on your investment, time, money, energy, right? Could just be that you want to do it for fun. And that's a good enough answer too.

I just want to do it. I love it. I love hosting master classes. I love having conversations. People say that to me all the time. Why do you do so many coffee chats? There's always a goal, but I just love it. And that's okay too. So like there's ways that you can implement things just for fun. I'm not saying you can't, right? You can absolutely just implement new ideas strictly for fun, but understand what the ROI of fun is. It's an energy exchange, whatever it is. That's the goal in asking these questions, okay? So...

Michelle (: 23:49

Get ready to take action, write down these questions, create a template. I highly recommend it. I have a template, but I highly recommend you create your own template with the questions in the way that it makes sense. Right. So you have your thoughts and ideas list, and then you have these questions somewhere. So the next time a new idea comes to you, put it on your thoughts and ideas list. If you feel like you really need to dive into it that minute, grab this other worksheet with these five questions, six questions. Maybe I've added more questions. Whatever questions were.

you felt relevant to you and your business and how your brain processes information, right? And then go through it. Before you take any further implementation action on this idea, this is what you need to be focused on, is at least get the answers to these questions. If you can answer all these questions and you feel like, okay, yep, I'm still excited, I still have a goal, I know exactly what I need to do, then you start putting your action plan in place for how to implement it and strategize and put.

Put it in play, execute it, right? If you can't answer those five questions and feel really good about it, put it on your thought, leave it on your thoughts and ideas list and revisit it again, okay? This is going to keep you distracted. I have a client, I'm telling you, she does this to me all the time. And I am forever saying to her, we are not implementing this right now. We are not going down this road right now. I'm gonna make sure that we keep it so that we don't forget about it. I'm gonna add it to our list.

but we quite, we can't physically execute any of this right now. We have no capacity to do it. We don't have the staff. We don't have the team. We don't have anything to do this. So yes, this is a great idea. This is not something we're implementing right now. And that's okay too. Be okay with saying, hey, I appreciate your idea. I'll put it on my list, but I'm not executing it right now. All right. So you know what to do. Go take action.

And if you get stuck on any of these questions, you have a new idea and you get stuck, you know where to find me. Send me a message, I'll help you work through it. All right, we'll talk to you soon.