Big ideas. The easy way I discovered to make them happen.

Monday, April 3, 2006

Small improvements are key. Big ideas are cool.
One of my 16 rules for doing business is to try to improve each and every day in some small way. I believe these small daily improvements are key to the success of any business. But small improvements are not the only way a business gets better. There are also the big ideas!

There have been a lot of big ideas.
I would like to talk about some of the big ideas that were conceived in the past and became realities. Here are just a few:

1. To become a domain name registrar. This was an early idea that worked out especially well. :)
2. To offer private domain registrations. Go Daddy was the first registrar to offer these.
3. To purchase our own root certificate and become a secure (SSL) certificate authority.
4. To create our own domain name after market.
5. To create Wild West Domains so resellers could offer their customers Go Daddy's products at Go Daddy prices (or at whatever prices they want to charge) and to do it under their own name, or their own website without Go Daddy's name getting involved.

The list of ideas goes on and on. The point is that all of these steps were big ideas that came from "aha" moments! And I daresay that each resulted from us just talking about our business and somebody saying "you know what would be kind of cool?" And bingo, the next thing you know, there's another big idea.

How to make big ideas happen.
So here's my tip. Take time - preferably away from your business -- and talk about your business with your employees. Talk about what's right and talk about what's wrong. During your discussions, you should have no particular goal in mind other than open conversation. Remember you're just talking about the business. You're not giving anyone a performance review. You just want to know how they see things, and it's important that you share with them how you see things. That way the information exchange will rise to a good level and flow both ways.

Now suppose you are a struggling entrepreneur -- like I once was -- and you don't have employees. Then maybe you can instead talk with someone who is familiar with your business. This could be a peer or maybe one of your vendors, or your spouse. I think the process of talking about your business is healthy and will help bubble up ideas.

The payoff could be huge!
At worse case, you'll definitely learn a few things about your business. You might also be pleasantly surprised and find yourself face to face with the next big idea.