Have you ever had a great idea, but after pondering it for a
little while, you are not quite sure if it will fly or not? It happens to me
all of the time. I get all excited about some business or plan and then once I
think about it for a day or two, I lose my momentum. Instead of letting great
ideas fall by the wayside, why not bounce ideas off of another person and see
what they think about it?
Brainstorming sessions are valuable in business. If you have
someone you can trust with your secret business ideas, ask to have lunch,
dinner or even coffee with them. Let them hear your idea and come up with ways
it might work, or reasons why it won’t. Either way, you should take advantage
of this significant resource.
The name Social Squids, came from such a meeting. My friend
and I got together for coffee and I told her that I needed to come up with a
name. She’s an illustrator, very talented and creative in her own right.
The starting point was the fact that I like animals, so we
decided the name would have something animal-related in it. We brainstormed
great name ideas, terrible ones, silly ones and eventually one of us – I’m not
even sure which one of us it was – came up with Social Squids.
I kept doing this thing with my hands, wiggling my fingers
and moving my arms outward. I was thinking about how social media reaches out
into cyberspace. Not only did we come up with the name, we came up with the tag
line too – We have far-reaching tentacles.
Paying someone for their opinion has its value, but
brainstorming with one, two or a small group of people, will help you find
problems, solutions, more in-depth ideas or sometimes cheer you on for your amazing
business proposition.
So, find more brains. Bounce ideas off of your friends in
the business community. Sometimes these ideas might seem impossible, but give
it a try anyway. It can be an incredibly valuable tool for your business. Just
be careful you share your ideas with people you trust and who are not going to
take your idea and use it for their own.
