LISTEN TO THE EPISODE
In "Ideating" episode, Chris talks about the process by which ideas move from inception to execution. Ideas are a great starting point, but without proper planning and curation, they will never come to fruition. Not all ideas are great, as Chris points out in this episode. Some are unrealistic or do not align with your daily activities. Chris is a proponent of documenting and refining ideas in order to ensure that they align you’re your vision. He uses the Snyder Showdown Podcast as an example to drive this point home. This show originally started as an idea that Chris had which he wrote down and refined before deciding to partner with a podcast production company. By taking the time to find the right match, flesh out his idea and apply action, Chris was able to start a successful new show. Chris stresses the importance of putting forth effort in order to give life to ideas. If you are willing to put in the time and effort necessary, then your idea can morph into something brilliant.
In another related episode, "Grit, Determination, Resilience", he also talks about the the necessary mindset behind being an entrepreneur. And how balancing the extreme highs and lows that come with it.
Host Chris Snyder is a passionate entrepreneur and digital marketer. He’s the President and partner at Juhll.com, a full-service digital marketing agency specialized in strategic digital paid media to acquire online customers. He’s also the founder, operator and investor in Banks.com, the go-to site for all things financial on the web.
This episode is sponsored by Juhll. They are a full service digital marketing consultancy that has over 20 years of experience helping your business grow sales online. They've helped most of their clients grow more than 50% year over year by helping them meet their digital marketing goals.
Juhll Digital Agency works with companies who are doing $50 million in top line revenue that have a marketing budget of $2 million. They build your company from the ground up and they also help you in creating a strategy that will work best for your team.
You can email Chris Snyder, President of Juhll Digital Agency, at chris@juhll.com, or contact their team today and find out which of their services will work best for your success story.
“Getting back to these ideas, they’re only good if you can figure out a method to put them into action.” (03:40)
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“If you have ideas and you’re excited about them, it’s even more exciting to see them through and prove that this idea is worth even having to begin with.” (07:56)
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“Do you put leather straps on your feet and hay on the bottom or do you create Nike?” (15:36)
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“If everyone just had ideas and you’re just wandering around with no way to activate them, it just doesn’t make sense.You’re not gonna win.” (18:34)
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“What I’ve seen with teams is there are some people that always have strong ideas. And sometimes those people aren’t the best executors.” (25:11)
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“There’s a process that you have to go through to get your ideas in the right spot and actually create some value out of them.” (29:46)
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“If you’re not willing to put the effort into it, your idea is shit. And you must not care enough about it.Period.” (32:55)
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Chris Snyder: I mean, you don't go out and sell a half a million dollar engagement, asking someone if they want to talk to you on a prospect email. That's generally not how you get hold of a CEO, of a couple hundred million dollar company that has a $20 million ad budget and has all these analytics and mar tech problems to solve. Like, pinging over email is ... Look, I'm not saying it won't work but, your odds go down tremendously.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Snyder Showdown, an original Jewel Agency Production. This is the show for unvarnished conversations about what's really happening in the world of digital advertising. With stories from the trenches about what's working and what's not. With your host, President of Jewel Agency and owner of banks.com, Chris Snyder.
Chris Snyder: I think the last episode before I got cut off, we were talking about this, right? If memory serves me correctly, I was just getting ready to start talking about how to go through the process of getting started with something like this?
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Chris Snyder: So, maybe what we could do is have a little session today about ideas or hypothesis or ways that folks put ideas into action and do the ... Like, go through a bit of a little planning process and make sure that we're accountable towards like, what we're trying to get out of this. So, that might be a good one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just to preface that because I think, we may have said this while we weren't recording, but this is specifically in reference to some of the ideas we've talked about for setting up the podcast with banks.com.
Chris Snyder: And I think, once we get that more flushed out, I think we can certainly do a session on that. I would say, generically the way I operate here at Jewel, in the way I operate with clients and the way our team operates with clients and ideas are, you know when someone has an idea they usually kinda, come to you and they say, "Oh! It was like Bingo, I've got this great idea, right?" I have like a zillion of them.
Speaker 2: It's always in the shower.
Chris Snyder: No, yeah, right? When you don't have a piece of paper or a cell phone. But ideas are interesting and their awesome. But they're only awesome and interesting if you can capture them and you can organize them and you can prioritize them and you can fucking remember them. That's the only time when ideas are awesome. And then, ideas are even more awesome if you can learn how to quickly execute on them and measure the results so you now understand that you're back into your funnel of planning, prioritization, your hypothesis and all that stuff.
I think what we can talk about is, okay Harry's got an idea for banks.com, we're not going to get into the exact idea right now. There's a lot of times our agency clients have ideas about things that they feel like would work in the marketplace. Could be how to position a product, it could be how to write copy on a landing page. Could be some images representing something that they were ... Try to illicit some response, right? And again, getting back to these ideas, they're only good if you can figure out a method to put them into action. I don't have some kind of documented framework today about, oh this is step one and this is step two. Here's what I'm going to say, just bear with me here as I talk myself through this.
When I have an idea, what I started doing a long time ago, since everybody carries a phone around with them. I opened up Asana, because I have Asana on my phone, and I basically just have like an ideas task list and anytime I listen to a podcast or anytime I'm doing something and an idea strikes me, I write it down. And by the way, I don't write stuff down in notebooks because, it's really hard to sift through notebooks. Back in the day when I was like a traveling enterprise sales dude, I had these little black notebooks, they were cute. I wrote everything down, you could barely read the chicken scratch. Give yourself carpal tunnel and then, you gotta go back, review those notes, type the email and send it. So, if you're listening to this podcast, you really need to figure out an effective way of documenting your ideas.
Carry a little black notebook if you want, that's fine. But, it's just as easy to download Asana or Trello or JIRA or you know, ToDoist. I don't know if you've heard of those guys. There's so many apps out there, or just take a note. Take a note.
Speaker 2: One that I've been using recently is Workflowy.
Chris Snyder: Yeah, I haven't heard of those guys.
Speaker 2: So Workflowy, the beauty of it, it's workflowy.com. It's super easy because there's no ... You can't format. So it's just a ... It's like an outline system. So you have your one line and then you tab it in, and you can insert ... That's it. You can bold text-
Chris Snyder: That's it?
Speaker 2: -That's it. I don't even think you can italicize. So, the great thing is, it's literally just like what Text Pad used to be. Like, in the PC days, I'd always have text.com open.
Chris Snyder: Yup.
Speaker 2: I was like, "That's my default." On the Mac now, it's a little weird because now they've add formatting. I literally just want a pure text, you know, bucket.
Chris Snyder: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And so Workflowy is nice because you can segment in, create outlines, and you can have personal to-do. But the app is great. So, every ... As long as you've got a place to put it in while you're on your phone, while you're on your PC, then you're covered. And I know those tools you've mentioned do that. But for me, Workflowy has pretty interesting because, it's that offline brain just like ... As soon as it's there I want to get it out of there as quick as possible.
Chris Snyder: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Because when stuff sits in my head, that's when it gets lost.
Chris Snyder: Yeah. So, document your idea. And again, I'm not on some Internet website talking about a framework for how you get through these ideas. I'm just talking about how I do it. So I put it ... I document it, and then the important part about the next step is going back and really reviewing all these ideas that you have, and making sure that these ideas fit within realms of what you do on a daily basis because then, it allows you to activate these ideas more efficiently.
If I had an idea to build like, the world's dopiest swimming pool in my garage because I don't have a backyard, that would be really hard to activate just because I don't know anything about swimming pools. Yeah, maybe it's ... Maybe this is an amazing, creative idea we're going to do underground and under that there's going to be fish and turtles like, okay great guy. Do you know how hard it would be to activate that idea? Great idea but you can't activate it. So, on a list of things that I think you should do, I think you should do, not you have to do. I think you should figure out what ideas you have that correspond more closely to what you do in your daily life, right?
Speaker 2: Yeah, makes sense because, you think about it in terms of like, the skillset that you have and the question sounds like it would be, do I have to engage subject matter expert outside ... Besides myself, to get this thing done? And then that's ... So it sounds like it sort of leads to what you're alluding too.
Chris Snyder: Yeah, I just want it to be easy and I want it to be efficient. And I'm not saying that because, I want to take the lazy or easy way out. I'm saying that because, if you have ideas and your excited about them, it's even more exciting to see them through and prove that this idea is worth even having to begin with. And you're not going to do that unless you activate the idea. And you're not going to activate the idea if you have to go through all the struggle to even figure out how to activate it. So, what's the point of any of it? It just seems like ... I mean, you could just sit in a corner all day and noodle and dream about things you're never going to activate. I just don't think that's very productive.
So anyway, you've got to figure out what corresponds to your daily life and get some of these ideas in motion, that way you can have some of the success. And then once you get your framework down, I think it would be easier for you to start busting out of the confines of what maybe you believe corresponds nicely and is efficient, it'll allow you to bust out of that a little bit, maybe take some more chances on some of these ideas.
For example, this podcast, right? This podcast was an idea that I got from listening to another podcast while I was running on the beach. And I stopped running on the beach, I pulled out my Asana, and I typed in this podcast and I put your name in there with the full cast name and then my idea disappeared for like, a month. And then I was like, oh since I write everything down and where I write stuff down it has a search engine, "podcast" was the key word, right? And I went in and I pulled it up and then I sent you an email or I hit your intercoms on your site.
Speaker 2: Intercom, yeah.
Chris Snyder: Yeah. So look, that was an idea I had to start a podcast and I was trying to figure out like, okay what is the best communication mechanism for me at this stage in my business career and in my life and what we do. It's not prospect emails, probably. I mean, you don't go out and sell a half a million dollar engagement, asking someone if they want to talk to you on a prospect email. That's generally not how you get hold of a CEO, of a couple hundred million dollar company that has a $20 million ad budget and has all these analytics and mar tech problems to solve. Like, pinging over email is ... Look, I'm not saying it won't work but, your odds go down tremendously.
Speaker 2: They probably have several filters before any of those emails even see them.
Chris Snyder: Of course they do.
Speaker 2: And I'm sure ... And they have some super like, friends only email that you know, people who they really want them to reach them, that's not even found anywhere on the site.
Chris Snyder: So, that's one thing is, you gotta figure ... So, you gotta figure out how to go and get it and like, activate it after you see it and hear it. And I guess ... Look, your comment about being in the shower before, I don't know how to solve that problem. I guess, just don't think in the shower. Or ...
Speaker 2: No, I found a pad in my previous apartment. It's a laminated pad and the marker is a waterproof marker.
Chris Snyder: Well, I gotta tell you man, a little offtrack, I only spend about four minutes in the shower so, I don't know ... Honestly like, I'm not thinking about anything in there except for like, washing my face.
So, alright. So, now you've had the idea ... And by the way, let's back up one step. One thing I've also learned over the years, I always thought a lot of people always had a lot of great ideas, false. There's actually, not that many great ideas. And if you go around and ask people. "Hey, tell me like maybe your top three greatest ideas ever. Just tell me about it." There are people literally out there wandering around with no ideas. You'd be shocked. You'd be shocked, man. And so for me, a long time ago, I'm talking like maybe 15 years ago. I would have these ideas, I would write them down and since I couldn't afford to fund them or I couldn't ... I just didn't have the time for it or whatever. I would go back and I would put them in an envelope and then I would ... When stuff happened that I knew ... That I knew I had that idea, and then it happened like five years later, it happened like three years later it'd be like, "Holy shit, look I wrote it down. I had this idea."
So it's really important as a human being to be able to understand like, okay I'm thinking that this could happen. I'm thinking it could be a good idea. Look, I'm not quantitative about it, I'm not mathematical about it. But it's interesting for me as a business leader to know that some of the things that I think are good ideas are actually good ideas, and they're in market, and they're working. So that helps me later on my life and in my career, when I say things and I do things and our team starts to activate things I go, "Look, no of course I think maybe that's a good idea, just based on experience it's not my first rodeo, I've been doing this for a while." But it's important to go back and look at some of those ideas that you had and make sure that you're always honing your idea craft. And having ideas, having ideas is important. Being creative is important, especially in this business, and in your business. But if you're just gonna walk in every day and just not have any ideas, that's a bit of a sad spot to be in.
And, I appreciate my team's ability and my ability and my business partner's ability, like my wife like, we come up with a lot of ideas. A lot of ideas. I'm not saying all of them are great but, it's important to keep that muscle working.
Speaker 2: So you have ... You know, we've documented it, have a way to capture it, and then you're doing an internal assessment. And then, to see if this is something that you can activate and thinking outside the box. So once that's done and you're thinking about if it's something that fits. If its, you know, applied some sort of filter to decide if it's a good idea or bad idea. Is there a prioritization in there somewhere?
Chris Snyder: Yeah. So, here's how I'm thinking about it, and of course this podcast started today because you and I are going to work on an idea. And you and I were talking about, how we get started on working on the idea. And so for me, an important part of that idea is all the structure that we talked about before to come to the idea. But once you get to the idea, I think the documentation and the further refinement of the idea in a documented form, is extremely important. Let's give you an example.
I have an idea that I would like to put things on my feet that look Neato, okay? Great. Okay, I did all my stuff. I have all these other ideas, but the things on my feet are Neato, like that's the idea. Okay, if we decide that we're going to do the things on my feet are Neato, what I really want to know next is, okay that sounds like a great idea but upon further refinement, I'd like to understand the problem that you're actually trying to solve. What is the problem we're trying to solve here? Well, things on my feet that are Neato, although I didn't think about it initially, but after further refinement, when I walk outside without things on my feet that look Neato, like I fucking hurt my feet, right? Just a fact. When I jog, I don't jog by the way, fucking hate jogging. Hurts my hips, hurts my back, hurts all my joints. I hate jogging.
But if I was to jog, you certainly wouldn't see me like jogging barefoot. I know there's a thing with that. I don't know, some people do that shit.
Speaker 2: That's another podcast.
Chris Snyder: Yeah, run around like Romans. But here's the thing man like, okay now we're getting somewhere. And then it's like, okay well do you put leather straps on your feet and put hay on the bottom? Or do you create Nike? And now do you start thinking about things on my feet that are not only comfortable enough to jog in, but also look really Neato, which is the point that I started with. I actually just wanted to look Neato, I wasn't thinking about comfort. I wasn't thinking about solving a problem with pain, I wasn't thinking about if rained I needed different thing to wrap around my feet that was equally Neato, or maybe not, right?
So, I think that going through this process of further refinement around the problem that you're actually trying to solve. In the further research around ... And when I say 'research', I'm not talking about hours and hours and hours. What I'm talking about right now, is a one sheet. I'm talking about a one sheet. I'm talking about idea, which also is slash hypothesis. If I do this, then this is the outcome. I think, I think, I don't know, I think. Market problem that we're trying to solve. Doesn't need to be PhD level, we ain't going to Harvard here. Most people didn't, most people won't. Just write it out, just write it out. Look, I think that if we do this, in these particular ways and we solve these particular problems. We think that ... And put some KPIs around it, really think through start to finish. And in my view, and it's one piece of paper. It could be on a printer paper with a pencil or a pen with circles and stick men or stick women or stick people.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Chris Snyder: Like, you can do whatever you want. But please, in my view, and we talk about this all the time in my business. Just [inaudible 00: 17: 23] the fucking thing through it. All the way to the end, because in my view, if you can't think through it all the way to the end, even at the first level. You have no idea what you're getting into. You don't know how to measure it, you don't know what your goals are. You don't know ... Like, you don't know.
So, ideas need to be written down. If you really, really want to do it, you'll spend the time on further refinement. And you'll spend the time on how you're going to measure the success or the failure of this idea. When are you going to stop the idea? At which point, are you going to be like, you know what, honestly? The stuff that I wrote down a month ago, is not working. Oh, and by the way, the stuff that you wrote down a month ago and as you got into your idea, guess what? You're going to learn more stuff. So you're going to write that stuff down too. And you're going to say, "[inaudible 00: 18: 14]! X out on hypothesis number one, it has changed and migrated. X out on the measurements because now we've morphed our hypothesis a little bit. Our ideas changed and morphed. Write it down.
So there's that. That ... For me, that's ideas because if everyone just has ideas, you know, just wandering around with no way to activate them, it just doesn't make sense. You're not going to win. You're just wandering around talking about ideas. And you know what? Honestly man, I talk to clients all day, and I talk to people all day long and they all have ideas. It all just kinda sounds like the Charlie Brown stuff to me anymore, [inaudible 00: 18: 55].
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Chris Snyder: [inaudible 00: 19: 00], Right? And it's just like, dude, I've heard this before. If you really care about your idea, write it down. Think about it a little bit more deeply. Look, it's okay to walk out on the street and be like, "Hey do you think this is a good idea?" Sort of, most people will give you like that initial off the cuff. Like, shoes. Hell yeah, great idea. Great idea. Shoes with glitter on them? Maybe. Shoes that protect you from the rain? Probably, seems pretty practical, right? People will give you that feedback. So, if you're actively out there and you have your notebook or you have your Asana app or you have your thing and you're like, I'm an idea person and you're actively doing market research by asking people if they want Whiskey that has no alcohol in it. By the way, that's an idea. Seriously, that's happening.
Speaker 2: That's O'Douls is a non-alcoholic beer, right?
Chris Snyder: Yeah, there's another ... And it's not just O'Douls. There's another beer company now, I just saw it in one of the trades. They're doing beer without alcohol. I'm like, okay that's great. I can't stand ... Like, I don't like that idea. I just don't like the idea.
Speaker 2: Well, you're not the ideal target market.
Chris Snyder: Yeah, exactly. But again, you gotta figure out if you're going to have that idea to create nonalcoholic Whiskey, you really need to think through, because most people that are gonna drink Whiskey, are doing it for a reason. And it ain't always the case.
Speaker 2: Or they can't anymore and they miss the flavor of it. And if you get the flavor right, you know?
Chris Snyder: Exactly.
Speaker 2: They kinda like reminisce and just ... You know, so there's an interesting stigma, social stigma, like when people are drinking. People feeling this need to have something in their hand. And they're just like, can't stand around. So you know, they can join their friends at the bar and order the Whiskey equivalent of an O'Douls.
Chris Snyder: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think if someone perfects it and gets the flavor right, I can't imagine why they ...
Chris Snyder: You're talking about a sliver of a sliver of a multi-
Speaker 2: Super niche.
Chris Snyder: -Multi-bazillion dollar marketplace. But I think the point is, is that what you and I are talking about right now is, what your ideal customer profile is, or what that persona is of that person. You just started to describe it. So for me, any idea that we have, we have to understand who the idea is directed at, right? Sometimes the idea is not directed at people, sometimes the idea is directed at things. If your idea is to keep coffee super hot throughout the day, then what kinds of ideas are already out there that exists to keep coffee super hot throughout the day, right? It's just ... Ideas are more than just kinda blathering on about it. You gotta figure out how to activate it. That's my whole point to this.
Speaker 2: Yeah it's interesting because it puts people on notice that this is ... There's no such thing as like, random ideas are coming to you and saying, "We should do this" and then walk away. You know like, what am I supposed to do with that? And the fact that you have all this stuff outlined, it's going to make you think twice about just, opening your mouth and saying. "I've got something that's going to distract you for the next 15 minutes." I love the fact that you not only talk about success measures, but it's almost like failure measures too. It's nice to say, "this will be successful if we get to 1,000 widgets", whatever it is. But, when do we pull the plug? Is it three months of 100 widgets? And so, I like that because you're also saying, "We need to figure out when this is like ... We're going to cut the chord on this."
Chris Snyder: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Otherwise, we're just waiting for the success metric and not realizing that it's bleeding and it's like a rowboat with a bunch of holes in it.
Chris Snyder: Yeah. I think ... You know, the important part about this is too is, if you have as many ideas as you know, I think you have and I think other people have, you're probably excited to do other things too. So, you gotta figure out what you're proving ground is and your term and your time is. Like, if you're a super patient person, you might want to give an idea a real long time. I'm not a super patient person. And it's not because I don't want to be, it's because the business that I'm in, like my clients aren't patient. So, if someone brings me an idea, it's important for me to challenge them on ... Not to be a jerk, but just to challenge them on, if you really believe this is a good idea, write it up. Put some table stakes in the ground, put it up against all the other ideas that we have on the spreadsheet and there's 40 of them. And why don't you defend like, all of this team's effort and energy on your idea? On your idea. And if you're not wiling to do that, I don't give a shit about your idea.
I don't care because you're not even willing to write it up. It's fucking ... It's an hour of your time to write up the idea. Do you know how much fucking time this team is going to have to spend executing that idea? Like, 100 hours. So if you don't want to spend the one hour to write it up, or the two hours, or the questions with some of your friends on the market research, what do I care? What do I care? I'm not going to do the work for you. Like, it's not my idea. You know what I mean? So, I've ... I'm pretty passionate about folks writing stuff up, you know? And again, not PhD stuff, I don't want to see that either.
Speaker 2: No. It's your vision of like, what prompted the idea to your point. What are the ... What's the market problem you're trying to solve? And have you thought about what this looks like and how ... What type of impact it's going to have your team's resources? You know, so now that they know what the questions are, you can easily summarize that into like, a ... Just an executive summary of the project. And, if you feel confident about it, it's sort of like, the Gladiator mentality. You throw your idea in the ring, and the idea that everyone buys in and has the best return for the company wins.
Chris Snyder: And look, it's not ... I mean, humans are a social group. So there's going to be very few occasions where you're gonna have your own idea and work on it in a vacuum. There are very few times like that. Generally, you know, what I've seen with teams is there are some people that always have strong ideas. And sometimes, those people aren't the best executors.
Getting back to the beginning of this call, which is important to note. I suggested that some people don't have ideas. They just don't have that many ideas, and the ideas they have just really aren't that good. You've met these people before. But guess what? They're probably more interested in using your idea and executing on it and helping you with it. So, it's all about matching, it's all about figuring out what people are best at and figuring out what drives them. I get driven and passionate about looking at problems and creating ideas to solve those problems. Some people, when they go to the dry cleaner, they just drop off their clothes and they leave, right? I look at the bags, I look at the cash registers. I wonder why I have to pull out my credit card. I'm like, I come here every week. I don't understand.
Speaker 2: That's interesting. Yeah because-
Chris Snyder: You know?
Speaker 2: -You're looking at it from a business owner's perspective, you know?
Chris Snyder: Everything.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Chris Snyder: I look at everything that way. Even to a point where I'm looking at a bunch of clothes in my closet, and I'm putting two and two together at the dry cleaner and I go, "Okay. Look, I don't wear a lot of nice clothes. I wear like $65.00 shirts, whatever. These aren't Nordstrom $275.00 ... I don't give a shit about that stuff." But you know what? Some of these shirts man, I only wear like once a year. So, I go to the dry cleaners and I'm like, every time I go in there now, I think about this. I'm like, I'm kinda of tired of all these shirts sitting in my closet, going unused. What were to happen if I were too just give them to the dry cleaner, create a program for dry cleaners and people, where you just go and pick up ... You know, you get on the website, you look at all these mildly used shirts. You know your size, the dry cleaner knows your size. You get measured, you go to the dry cleaner and you have a revolving wardrobe.
Speaker 2: That's your closet.
Chris Snyder: What the fuck? Dude, you're going to the dry cleaner anyway, once a week. Just go pick out a whole new wardrobe once a week. Why do you need to go buy new shirts that are going to hang in your closet for a year, no one's going to wear them? What a waste, right? Go buy the $65.00 shirt one time, contribute it and then wear like, 20 other shirts. You spent $65.00, instead of buying 20 shirts you bought one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a subscription model.
Chris Snyder: Yeah. I know I'm getting off track a little bit, but that's only example of one of the many ideas I have that I think, you know ... And it's also timing, your ideas are timing. I mean, what happened to some of these social networks for Facebook? I mean, what happened to Friendster? What happened ... I mean, there's so many of these things that just didn't work.
Speaker 2: Friendster is the one that always get mentioned in these like, podcast stories about just like, bad timing because, they were like the wonder child.
Chris Snyder: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And it was in Master of Scale I think, they talked to the Friendster folks, and they were just like, MySpace Friendster. When you think about that they had ... They were Facebook before Facebook, it's just timing then because now ... I mean, Facebook is one of the biggest companies in the world, it's crazy.
Chris Snyder: Yeah. MySpace, right? What happened to those guys, right? You gotta look at timing, you gotta write all your ideas down because you never know when the timing's going to be right and then you're going to forget because, we're not robots. We're not computers. I think it's great ... I try to write down everything. So for product management product development, I use a piece of software called aha.io. Aha takes you through the product, which is the overview, the notes, the strategy which is more into the opportunity, the vision, the mission. You can get really gnarly with this stuff. But then there's a section for ideas. And the ideas section really just ... You just click a button it says, "Add idea" and then boom, it goes into a back log like a ticket and there is some scoring mechanisms, you know this is ... These ideas need review. Future consideration, you know this idea already exists. Oh wait, we really like this, so this idea moves into planning and eventually makes into a product feature, which eventually makes it into a release, which eventually ships, right?
So there's a process that you have to go through to get your ideas in the right spot, and actually create some value out of them. That's ideas, I don't know how that happened.
Speaker 2: No that's interesting because, that's a new tool I'd never heard of and when I look at it visually, it actually looks like Pivotal Tracker, I don't know if you've used that from a software development?
Chris Snyder: I have.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Chris Snyder: Old school.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Chris Snyder: That is old school. They still exist?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Pivotal is still around.
Chris Snyder: Oh my God! I'm a JIRA guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah the visual is interesting of how to like ... Anything that's visual because, people learn differently. People are kinesthetic, like you know ... Or they need to like, work with something with their hands or they're visual, they need to see something. Or some people need to like, write it down. And so, a lot of these workflow tools, they sort of ... Like, when I see it that's how my mind thinks in workflows like that, that you can visualize.
Chris Snyder: So, it's interesting I mean, and documenting this stuff is no different then product management with JIRA. I just want to understand, hey how many ideas are we generating? And how do we measure ourselves on ideas? You can measure yourself on ideas, you certainly can. You can measure yourself on anything if you really want too. There's different KPIs, if you're going to make sales calls and you're an enterprise salesperson and you're going to do a million dollar deal, you don't just wake up and say, "Well, I didn't close the million dollar deal today, so I failed." That's not ... I mean, there's-
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Chris Snyder: -That's just not accurate. Making a phone call is a KPI. How many do you need to make, right? Saying your script the right way is a KPI. There's a whole bunch of ways to measure yourself-
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Chris Snyder: -And a lot of different categories. They're not always just, binary like, oh. Make a phone call, get revenue. Have an idea, get paid. Create a unicorn.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Chris Snyder: It doesn't work that way. You have to go through the journey, and you have to figure out what the checkpoints are. So anyway, that's ideas.
Speaker 2: Nice framework. And it gives ... It lets people think twice about just, randomly coming up with them and I think, the framework you outlined is ... It has them put some skin in the game, and really test it out within the team and see if it's something you want to put your weight behind. Otherwise, you're just wasting everyone's time.
Chris Snyder: If you can't build it, here's what I tell everyone and this is ideas. This is ideas, this is hypothesis. These are products. If you can't build it in PowerPoint, or you can't build it in Lucid Chart, or you can't build it in excel. Or you can't simply take out a blank piece of printer paper and think through the workflow. If you can't do that-
Speaker 2: Or aha.io.
Chris Snyder: -Or aha.io, which actually does have a workflow plugin. If you can't do that, do you really think you're going to hire a pack of engineers and a pack of designers and a pack of copywriters and setup and establish a whole business infrastructure? If you're not even willing to put what is supposed to be this great idea ... You know what? If you're not willing to do that, your idea is shit. That's bottom line. If you're not willing to put the effort into it, your idea is shit, and you must not care enough about it.
Speaker 2: Period.
Chris Snyder: Period. End of the idea's story.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening to Snyder Showdown. Visit snydershowdown.com, to see the full show notes for every episode, which includes a recap as well as any links mentioned in the show. And because it's Chris, we'll definitely have a few awesome quotes that you can share. There, you'll also be able to sign up for our newsletter, so you're notified when new episodes are ready. Tune in next week.
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