Out of the several questions I get every week from my readers, clients, and other folks who reach out to “pick my brain” the most common one looks something like this – “Devesh, I have so many wonderful ideas, I can be programmer, I’m very good at golf, and I can possibly be a chef because my girlfreind likes it when I cook, my cousin is making a lot of money on affiliate marketing and said he can teach me how to, I can start another groupon with those $200 clone sites. Oh my god! So many ideas, so little time and I just don’t know which will be most successful or make me the most money. What should I do? How do I find and focus on that one winning idea?”

I have done countless hours of coaching and consulting with my clients to help them identify that one idea. I have written dozens of emails back and have had hours & hours of conversation (sometimes even argument) around this topic with many entrepreneurs (aka aspiring entrepreneurs). I have asked them to make an informed and educated decision by simple elimination method – make a list of these ideas along with associated pros, cons, investment required, level of passion, skills, & profitability (on a scale of 1-5), and start striking out the worst ideas to shortlist the top 5 or top 3 to make the decision easier and eventually help you to get to that #1. For some it has worked out perfectly, for some not so perfectly, and rest few as usual they got distracted because they suffered “let me follow the shiny ball syndrome” beyond cure.

To bring a lot more practical advice and solution to this topic, I decided to interview an entrepreneur who was in so much so same situation as these aspiring entrepreneurs with several ideas and potential possibilities and has made it out of that mess by finding and focusing on a single idea. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you – Patrick Conley.

I met Patrick via Kelly Azevedo who is a good friend and a Systems Engineer (in other words, she helps people with product launches and business automation). Kelly has a very systematic mindset (well, she is a Systems Engineer after-all!) and while we were chatting about her best advice for people who want to find and focus on one idea, she mentioned Patrick has been there done that and he can probably tell us his first hand experience and how he dealt with this problem. I interviewed Patrick a couple weeks ago and here is the full scoop:

PC: I work as a “Marketing Automation” coach.  Essentially I help small business owners automate and optimize a lot of their marketing and sales processes.  There’s a really common pain point I’ve noticed with entrepreneurs who are evolving past the initial stages of starting a business.  They have so many manual processes in their day-to-day work that they seem stuck working “in” their business instead of getting to work “on” their business.

I help my clients develop and implement a strategy to automate and systematize a lot of their daily grind activities so that they can focus on the bigger picture.  We use some pretty amazing software called Infusionsoft that takes care of a lot of the marketing and sales processes automatically.

PC: I started the ‘entrepreneurial journey’ about 3-4 years ago.  At this point I was working as an intern at an engineering company (soon to graduate with a degree in mechanical engineering), but already realizing that a 9-to-5 job wasn’t exactly the ideal picture of a lifestyle I wanted.  It bugged me to feel like I was just punching a time clock and not building my own business assets.  I worked in some pretty cool industries and had some fantastic experiences but I was always itching to start my own business.

I joined a course from Ramit Sethi (where I met some truly awesome people) that was the first stepping stone to actually realizing that it’s possible to work for yourself in some capacity.  Ramit really pushed freelancing as the stepping stone into self employment, which I think is wise.

PC: I was (and still am!) pretty similar to a lot of budding entrepreneurs who get caught up in the shiny red object syndrome — where you get 1000 ideas a day but never stick with any of them.  My mastermind friends at the time often laughed at me because I was so scattered.  I was into weight loss coaching, web design, modeling, engineering, hockey, golf, and a handful of other things.  I kept coming up with half-baked ideas but never really got to the idea validation stage.

DD: So now when you look back, what do you think was wrong with those ideas or you?

PC: I think it’s really important to have some passion and excitement for your business, but it’s equally important to focus your business on solving real world problems that other people are facing.  When I look back at my ideas, they were mostly things that I was interested in personally, but more from a hobby angle than actually solving a pressing issue that someone else was having.  A pretty crucial facet of a business is the ability to generate income … and that’s a lot easier to accomplish when you provide a service that people actually want to buy!

DD: Which one did you end up running with?

PC: I stumbled into the world of Infusionsoft and online marketing via recommendation from one of my mastermind group friends. It really piqued my interest as an engineer because I tend to think very systematically and I could express those talents in the form of business mapping flow charts, decision trees and automation rules.

PC: The biggest reason that I ran with Infusionsoft consulting was that it’s a service that’s truly needed in the marketplace (It used to be casually referred to as “Confusionsoft” because it required such a tech-nerd to figure it out!) and it leveraged quite a few of my natural and developed talents.

It’s also a space where I felt I could make a big impact quickly — it’s been really rewarding to work with distraught business owners, help them make sense of the software and start generating a positive ROI and plans for huge growth.

PC: There’s always up’s and down’s with every decision.  It would probably be a lot “easier” for me to just take another engineering gig somewhere because I wouldn’t have to deal with billing, invoicing, accounting, writing contracts, and a lot of the other frustrations I’ve worked through.  However, I have noticed an enormous amount of personal growth through the process, and I know that it’s important stuff that I could always take back to the corporate world if that seemed like the right choice.

With that said, I’m really excited about where my business is going and I see a lot of great things happening in the future!  I absolutely love the positivity and sense of possibility that surrounds entrepreneurs.  It’s an amazing energy state that I hadn’t really seen in my traditional employment.

PC: I think the most important part is finding something that is truly useful to other people, and that service or product has to be targeted at an audience that’s willing and able to pay you.  We’ve all heard that you need to satisfy a deep pain or pleasure to be successful, but it’s easy to undervalue how important that advice really is!

On top of that, look around for opportunities that allow you to leverage some of your current skills.  You’d be amazed how many seemingly unrelated skill sets can combine to make a really powerful synergistic effect when you find the right gig.

Finally, it’s absolutely crucial to connect with other people who have similar goals in starting a business. Entrepreneurs seem to have an amazing tendency to want to help each other.  Reach out to others and ideally join some sort of a mastermind group. It’ll keep you focused and help you sort out a lot of issues. Sometimes you’re just too close to your own problems and can’t see things that are obvious to others.

PC: It’s been an amazing ride so far.  I’ve started to see some real growth lately which is very exciting.  I get more than occasionally tempted to jump into other ideas, but as I experience more success in what I’m doing currently, it seems to ground me and focus my attention back into my goals and business growth.

Having some accountability partners to push you can’t be emphasized enough.  I’ll be the first to admit that I wouldn’t be where I am today if it weren’t for some of the incredible people I’ve connected with along the ways.  You just can’t do it all yourself — it’s not possible or practical.  Find people who you share a vision with and help push each other along!

1. Freelancing is one of the best options to break out of the 9-5 jail.
[Download the FREE report ‘8 Escapes from 9to5 Jail‘ for more ideas & routes out of the rat race!]

2. Passion and excitement is good but what you really need to identify is a real world problem that someone is facing and is ready to pay for a solution to that problem.

3. This one’s my favourite – Patrick recommends having accountability partners and peers and at one point says “Sometimes you’re just too close to your own problems and can’t see things that are obvious to others” and the analogy I have used for years, with my clients, is ‘you can’t see your self swim, swing, play, speak, negotiate, etc while others can see you do those thing and easily spot your problem areas. When it comes to our business we are so immersed in our ideas, daily transactions, and what has to be done to pay this month’s bills that we miss the most obvious problems and opportunities. You must have heard people ask you to speak in front of the mirror or record yourself on camera to improve your speaking or interviewing skills, it’s the same technique except the mentor or accountability partner is your mirror. So having a mentor, coach, and/or accountability partners becomes essential for success’.

Are you suffering which-idea-should-I-run-with problem? Have you successfully dealt with the problem of identifying and focusing on one idea out of many possibilities? What was your favourite part of the interview? Please share your thoughts via comments below.