Idea Muscle - Akira the Don

I realized this way back

First everybody says, «Oh, ideas are a dime a dozen.

Execution is everything.»

And they just assume that at some point they’ll be walking around and lightning

will strike them and they’ll think, «Oh my gosh.

People should share cars and

I’ll make an app in the middle to connect people with cars and I’ll call it

Uber.»

No, ideas don’t really work like that

Nor does execution work the way most people think

People think, I’m gonna take this great idea and now I’m going to do it

The doing it, it can happen in 1,000 different ways

People don’t realize there’s a whole spectrum of execution ranging from really,

really bad so that an idea will fail or really, really good so that even a bad

idea might have a chance for success

For success

Having ideas is like a muscle

Having ideas is like a muscle

Idea muscle, idea muscle, idea muscle, idea muscle

Having ideas is like a muscle

Idea muscle, idea muscle, idea muscle, idea muscle

Try to practice having 10 ideas a day

Idea muscle, idea muscle, idea muscle, idea muscle

It doesn’t have to be a good idea or a bad idea

Idea muscle, idea muscle, idea muscle, idea muscle

But it keeps that idea muscle in practice

If you’re sick and you lie in bed for two weeks, you might actually need

physical therapy to walk again

Your leg muscles atrophy that fast

It’s the same thing with ideas

If you don’t have ideas every day, your idea muscle is not gonna get bigger

It might atrophy and so I try to practice

I’ll come up with a topic and I’ll try to practice having 10 ideas a day around,

each day’ll be a different topic

But I’ll try to have 10 good ideas around that topic

Now they won’t be good ideas because you can’t have 3,650 good ideas a year

But I try to make sure they’re as good as they possibly could be

I’ve been doing this every since I wanted to network, and I’m not a very good

networker

I wanted to ask my heroes, can I buy you a cup of coffee and pick your brain?

So I wrote to 20 people

They didn’t even say no

None of them responded

Why would they respond?

Warren Buffett’s not gonna say, hold everything

Clear up my schedule, Gladys

He’s never gonna even respond to me

He’s gonna think I’m an idiot

So then I started writing down, I started researching everyone’s business and I

started writing down 10 ideas for Warren Buffett’s business

10 ideas for this person’s business

10 ideas for this person’s business

And then I would send those ideas to the people

And I would say, «Hey, you don’t have to respond to this.

I don’t want anything,

but I really admire you and your business, here’s 10 things where I think your

business could improve.»

And then I started getting responses, and it actually changed my life,

some of those responses

And so I started doing it every single day

Without fail since then

Idea muscle, idea muscle, idea muscle, idea muscle

Having ideas is like a muscle

Idea muscle, idea muscle, idea muscle, idea muscle

Try to practice having 10 ideas a day

Idea muscle, idea muscle, idea muscle, idea muscle

It doesn’t have to be a good idea or a bad idea

Idea muscle, idea muscle, idea muscle, idea muscle

But it keeps that idea muscle in practice

Idea muscle

Ideas everyday

Idea muscle

10 ideas a day

Idea muscle

Ideas everyday

Idea muscle

Idea muscle

I mean, I shouldn’t say every single day

Some areas when I kind of dropped my discipline, I stopped doing it and I

immediately felt the consequences

And now I do it every single day

It doesn’t have to be a good idea or a bad idea

But it keeps that idea muscle in practice

And usually by number seven

It’s like a workout

Like, my brain is sweating

I keep counting like, did I hit 10 yet?

And then eight, nine, 10 are the hardest

And it takes me 10% of the time is the first seven and the other 90% of the

time it’s the last three

Then I know it’s a decent list