How many of you have thought about a great service or product you can provide for your clients? Then you acted on it for it to crash and burn.

Or how many of you have gotten into Too Many Ideas Syndrome where it hinders or paralyzes you to the point that you’re feeling all over the place or that you’re appearing scattered to your audience (and yourself!)?

As creatives, we come up with way too many business ideas too often and it’s hard to decide which one you should do right away. So how do you chose? How do you decide which one you should invest your time and energy in right now and which ones to leave for a later date?

Here are three ways to decide which one you can or cannot do right away and to validate what you should work on right now versus which one you should place on hold so you can be more focused, productive, and present with what you’re up to in life (and business).

Create a Parking Lot

I was listening to the Sweetlife Entrepreneur Podcast with April Beach and she said she has a “Parking Lot” of ideas that she writes down all her ideas that she wants to do. It lists all her many ideas into one place so she can easily access it and see which new idea she wants to take for a spin (so to speak) now and which ones she wants to leave on the lot.

I decided to do this for my own business inside of my bullet journal. I have listed some ideas I want to do and it has given me pause on which idea I want to implement now or later.

But how do you decide which idea to take for a spin or not? 

The answer lies simply in just choosing an idea and going with it. Don’t be afraid of failure either! I decided to implement a blogging retreat where I only had one sign up! You can read about my experience on this article.

I am also implementing a one day blogging retreat that I wanted to host in August. I realized that too many people are trying to squeeze in one last camping trip in August so their thoughts are not on blogging right now, it’s on vacation. I am going to try to host another retreat in September and see if my attendance and interest will be higher then.

Market Research

Another way to validate which idea you should go with is to market research an idea and see what the response is on social media.

I realized that my past clients tend to stop blogging after our coaching agreement has ended. They start off strong and brilliant but then let time and business get the best of them and pewter out. 

I thought, “What is one thing I can provide to bridge this gap?” It seemed accountability and time structure for writing their blog was missing. I thought about putting together a subscription base mastermind where the whole idea is to sit down and write your blog with the aspect of a mastermind when you’re stuck. 

I ran this across multiple Facebook Groups as well as my own personal page and got good feedback. So I am going to debut this mastermind in mid-August and see what happens. 

Once you have created your parking lot, take one idea and run that idea past Facebook Groups and your own social media. See what the response is and if it doesn’t get good feedback, then leave it on your lot. If it gets good feedback, then take it for a spin and see what happens!

Market research can validate your idea and if it’s an idea to implement now or later.

Create Your Calendar

I am a big fan of creating a marketing and content calendar! Why? Because it gives you a realistic idea of what you can and cannot do within a certain time frame.

If you want to get out of Too Many Idea Syndrome, then why not take all the ideas on your parking lot and see if you can’t squeeze it all into a yearly calendar. What does it look like? Does it appear scattered? Will you have enough time to effectively promote all of your promotions?

This one is important: you want to make sure you are giving each and every one of your promotional activities enough time to create interest and excitement. If you want to host a workshop and think giving it a two-week promotional time frame is enough, you may be wrong.

You also want to include in your calendar times where you’re not promoting anything so you can give your email list a break! I am doing that right now with my list, and it doesn’t mean I am not promoting. I’m promoting, but I am utilizing affiliates to help me promote so I’m not always selling to my list. 

What I would suggest is that you want to only market 1-2 things a Quarter. If you market more than that, you’re going to lose yourself and your audience. 

What’s Next?

1. Create your Parking Lot of Ideas

2. Take one idea and market research it using social media

3. Depending on the interest you get, put the marketing in your calendar so you can give it a proper marketing plan. If it doesn’t get a lot of interest, then put it on your lot again, and pick a different idea and put it out there.

So what are you going to do? Show me your parking lots below in the comments or on Facebook! I want to see what you’re up to and how I can best support you in where you’re at (aka getting out of Too Many Idea Syndrome!).