#1716 Turning An Idea Into A Reality - Harps

an idea into a reality. So that is taking a theoretical construct something in your head, an idea, a plan, an intention, a dream, a goal, something that you can create theoretically that you want to take out of your head and turn into a real world something. And when I talk about this for this episode particularly, I'm talking more about something in the commercial space. It might be business, or it could be a brand, or it could be it could be a project, it could be a product.

It could be a book you want to write, It could be a podcast that you want to launch, It could be a program that you want to run, an event, a service that you want to develop. But it's about taking that idea, that that intentional, that desire or that drive and figuring out how do I move that out of my head and into something that the world can see.

Not only I cannect see and not only can the world see it, but they can experience it, interact with it, and maybe even I can make a few bucks from it. So most of you know that I stopped working in inverted commas for somebody else thirty five thirty five years ago, when I was twenty six. That's not a recommendation, that's

not a good thing or a bad thing. But it was a good thing for me, and it was a good thing for me because I realized, while I wanted to work, I wanted to have a career, I wanted to build something for me personally, going and working for somebody else and being part of their vision rather than part of my own vision, or creating something for myself, Building something that I wanted to grow and inhabit and literally take out of my head and push out of

that theoretical nest into the real world. That was what I wanted to do. Not everyone has suited to that, and a lot of the things that I did, a lot of the things that I tried didn't work initially.

There were many many failures, many fuck ups, many problems, many hurdles, many embarrassing moments, many two out of ten results, But for me, that was all part of the learning and growing and developing and building skill and competence and resilience and awareness and understand of what would work and what would not. So I'll share a few of my experiences just to give you, I guess, some real world practical examples. I guess we could start with this show.

As most of you know, this wasn't my first podcast. I had three podcast attempts before this, three different shows, and while they didn't turn into a commercial success any of them, for me, they were great training. They were like putting on my l plates and then eventually my PA plates in the world of podcasting, and it was for me an opportunity to begin to understand how the industry and the science and the art of podcasting worked.

And from those first three I really learned a lot about having conversations with people, having meaningful exchanges, doing a deep dive, being a better interviewer, being a better active listener, understanding my audience, understanding my show in contrast to and context of the other millions of shows in the world, and trying to figure out what was, if anything, my unique selling proposition my usp if not unique, then somewhat different selling proposition. Why would people listen to this? And

trying to figure all of that out? And I think, if we're going to build a business or brand or whatever, a project or a product, or push some new service out into the world, or write a book or build something of which there are already many similar things existing. If we just want to do it as an exercise to do something and create something and turn a theoretical idea into a real world thing, then that is fine.

But if we want it to become a successful version of something that is potentially even commercially viable, then we need to understand the context. We need to do research. We need to understand who else is doing a version of what I want to do, How are they doing it, why are they doing it, what are they doing well? What are they not doing well? Are there any holes or gaps in the market as I see it? So for me doing the U Project, my idea was to step out of radio, which I've done for quite a

long time and basically have now. I remember I started my first show about probably nine years ago. Now the You project about six six and a half years ago. But my first show around nine years ago, and so it was almost like to me, having a podcast was almost like having my own little radio show that I could just pop up on the Internet and people would listen to. And I didn't need to run anything by you know, a program director or you know, any kind

of authority. I could talk about what whoever I wanted to. I could talk for as long or as short as I wanted to. I didn't need to worry about ads because I had none. I didn't need to do station IDs or time checks. I could talk to whoever I wanted, and that gave me a lot of flexibility and freedom. But I also needed to which I wasn't very good at the start. I really needed to understand the listener experience.

So obviously, all of my experience, one hundred percent of my experience of the U Project is from this side, and I've never once been you know, yes, I've listened to my own show, but I've never been truly a listener, you know, in that everything that I listened to of mine, I've already heard it out of my own gob. And so for me to try to get an insight into the experience of the listener, that for me was really important.

I remember when I developed my first gym, or more accurately, personal training facility, the same thing I needed to figure out. I was lucky in that I got in on the ground floor. I literally had literally had zero competition in terms of other personal training facilities. If there were any in Australia, I had never heard of them. There were definitely none in Melbourne or Victoria, not in the late eighties. In I think eighty nine to ninety I set up my first one, So you know, a quarter of a

century ago. Oh no, it's more than that. Fuck thirty five years ago. So old, thirty five years ago. And so I already understood that there was that there was a need, that there was a market because I was already training people, I already had clients. I was already doing this thing for which there was actually no qualification at that point in time. There was no registration, there

was no insurance, there was no personal training industry. So my idea, the construct, the theoretical something in my head was what if I hire a space aka rent a commercial premises, and I turned that into essentially what would be a private gym, so there would be no memberships there would be no classes, there would be no most of what you normally get in a gym. What there

would be would be one on one training. Obviously it developed more than that into different things, but my initial ground zero was appointment based one on one and periodically

two on one training. Eventually it became two and three and four on one and then small groups, and it was in the studio and out of the studio, and it was half hour and forty five minute and sixty minute sessions, and you know, it kind of morphed into a bunch of versions, but it was all essentially appointment based exercise with a fitness professional, that professional being me, and then that developed into me and another train and

then me and another trainer, still no qualifications, still no course. I ended up writing the first course with a friend of mine and getting that certified through I think it was called vic Fit then and so on and the rest is history. But but that you know, for me, that first three four five years between the time when my first client walked into the public gym that I

was managing. When he walked in, we met, and then I started training him in a one on one kind of capacity, and he gave me one hundred bucks a week for three sessions, which was thirty three dollars, give or take. I thought that was fucking incredible, because I think I was making about twelve dollars at the time. Some of you heard this story, I apologize, but the bottom line is that was my starting point. My idea was,

I'm going to do this thing. I rented the space, I bought the equipment, I got counsel approval, I chatted with real estate people and accounting people, finance lawyers and so on and overtime, the thing that was an idea in my head, the thing that in fact I kind of gave birth to for one of a better term in my head four years before become Australia's first personal training facility. I guess the same when I wrote my first book. I know a lot of people have written

a book, but I didn't know where to start. I didn't know anything about publishing. I didn't know anything about branding or marketing. I didn't know anything about distribution. I didn't know how to have a conversation with a publisher or a potential publisher. I didn't know what was attractive to people in terms of what people might pick up in a bookstore, and look, I didn't realize the front cover really mattered. I didn't realize that the words on

the back of the book really mattered. There were so many things that I knew that I had an idea and a message, but that initial, that very very raw, fundamental concept. I've got some knowledge, I've got some stories, I've got some messages that I think might be a tell you to people. That initial thought, I'm going to put it into a book, versus down the track one two years later, where that's now an actual book in bookstores and selling, and we've got distribution and and it's

actually becoming mildly I will say, commercially viable. There's a lot of space between the original, the initial idea, the theoretical something, and then now I can walk into a shop and that thing that was an idea in my head that is now a book on a shelf that people are buying. But that that initial to that final that is many steps. That is many peaks and troughs,

that is many new lessons and so on. And so I could bang on about you know, my first paid gig and opening other you know, other businesses that I've opened and how I got my first, you know, gig in radio. I remember being interviewed on radio and then I had an idea, I want to do radio, and I'm like, I don't even know how do you get into radio? So I got a meeting with a program director called Mark Johnson. Shout out, if anyone knows John

O from what was then SCN is still SCN. I had a meeting with him, which was just I don't know how I got that meeting, but I clumsily told him about my idea, which was to be kind of the exercise science guy on this sporting network. They had a lot of sporting people, but they didn't really have a regular exercise science person to come on. He was a bit dubious. He said, send me a proposal with the first twelve episodes. I literally went home. I wrote it all up. I spent six or seven hours writing

this concept, this proposal. I sent it to him, and within two days I got a response from him, and I got a green light. I had no idea what I was doing. I was so underdone, I was so ill prepared, I was so unskilled, I was so unaware.

But I think for me, part of part of the blessing of ignorance is that I'm so ignorant sometimes I'm so unaware of what I don't know that it's kind of a gift because if I realized how hard it was, if I realized sometimes how ill prepared and ill equipped and underskilled I was, I might never have taken the first step. But it's like, once you dive into the pool, well, now you're wet, you're going to sink or swim, And

so I always did my very best to swim. And so for me, that kind of initial idea, that theoretical something, the dream, the vision, the hope, the desire, the intention, the plan to be able to take that out of my head and breathe life into that, so that would be a real thing in the world that people would intersect with. I've literally been doing that for the last

thirty years. And I'm not saying I'm the high watermark as an example here of what to do or what not to do, but it's how my career has developed. Have an idea, figure out how to turn that idea into something that's more than an idea. So I want to give you kind of a bit of a guide. Some of this will be a no brainer to you. Some of it might be irrelevant, some you will already know. Feel free. For those of you who this idea, this topic is relevant, you might want to take notes and

revisit it. But my first, my first piece of advice is to clarify your idea, your vision, your goal. So get really clear about what it is that you're going to do, create, be, sell, offer and why it matters, Why it matters, Why does the world need this, what's already out there? And what will I add? What problem am I going to solve for the world? Be the what problem am am I solving? Or how does this add value to what is already there? What is already there.

It's like, if you live in Hampton Street or you live in Hampton where I live, and you decide you're going to set up another fitness based business, it better be fucking incredible, because there's already too many. It's there's if you take into account stretching and PT studios and mainstream gyms and group exercise centers and a plethora of other fitness options exercise options, there's probably something like twenty within either direction of my house. Definitely within a kilometer

of my house. There's probably twenty different or fifteen to twenty different fitness type businesses. That's not say there couldn't

be sixteen. That's to say, if you're going to come in with something new, you would want to be really adding value to what is existing, or you would want to be filling a hole that a gap that exists in the market in this area, or solving a problem that isn't currently being solved by what's already here, Which brings me to point number two, which is research, research and validate. I guess, So do some research. Who's your target audience, who's doing a version of what I want

to do. Identify similar ideas or similar businesses or programs or whatever it is that you're creating, and have a look at how they're going, analyze their success or failure.

And also, this is probably a good idea at about this time to bring somebody in that you trust, a peer, a friend who's got some knowledge and skills, an advisor, somebody professional perhaps to give you some I guess, unbiased feedback or input or advice, especially if this is going to be something that you envisage being a significant part of your life moving forward. So research and validate that. Who's out there? What are they doing? Does the world need what I want to bring into it? Is it

already being done? If it's already being done, how can I do it better? How can I do it different? Is there a gap? And so on? Number three is short term goals and objectives. So what is it that you want to achieve in the first let's even say one three, one comma three, comma six months? What do you want to do? What are you what are your kind of outcomes, your practical outcomes? What do you want to see happening? How many bums on seats? How many

people through the door? What's your turnover? What are your cap bies? How do you know what success is for you? Is it only about money? Is it only about people coming through the door? Is it about some other kind of metric that you can use which is pertinent to your business model and your business product or the service or whatever, or the book that you're writing or the program you're developing. So short and then eventually some longer

term goals as well. Around that. AS always created a plan, so break it into manageable steps at a timeline. Accountability, all those things I always talk about and the plan needs to be something that is ultimately doable, not so complicated, not so overwhelming that you get back into a corner where you do not know where to start. My experience is that some people create plans that are so multi dimensional,

so complicated to manage that that's almost the problem. Not their talent, not the potential that's out there in the market, but just that they have an overly complicated strategy to operationalize whatever it is that's in their head and around that. Obviously, set some timelines with deadlines for each kind of particular phase or stage of the thing that you're developing. Right, So the next one is about resources, So gather resources. What do you need? Identify the skills and tools and

materials that you're going to need. It could be financial stuff, so budget for financial needs. Maybe you need to go and get some finance. Maybe maybe not. Perhaps you need some other humans, You need some collaborators and or supporters. You need a network or a team of people around you that have got skills and knowledge and experience that

you don't to support you through this process. If I didn't have the team of people around me that I do with certain skills and knowledge and abilities that I do not have, I would not be I wouldn't even be doing this right now. I wouldn't be doing this right now. So find the people, find the tools, find the resources, find all the things that you practically need so that when you press the trigger, you're good to go.

So my next step is to develop a prototype or draft or create a minimal viable product an MVP or a conceptual model, a conceptual model of what you want to bring into the world. What does that look like, how will that work? Like I said, run that by different people. So you're going to test and refine or execute and iterate. You know, you're going to keep building on the idea. You're going to take things for a little bit of a test drive and see what happens.

But you're going to start small. You're going to start small, but you're going to keep taking action because as long as we do something, as long as we're making a decision and taking some action and creating some momentum, then we're getting data, we're getting feedback, we're getting information which speaks to what we need to do and what we need to stop doing moving forward. So the next stage is execute and iterate, which means launch the idea, launch

the thing. So you've now opened the door, you're taking action. So in the case of typ that would be episode one, or even before that, episode one of the first show ever. So that's launching me into the world of podcasting my first ever show and getting in, getting feedback and getting data from that and realizing, wow, we only had seven people listening to that episode, or I said too much, or I overtalked and under listened, or I can't remember

what my feedback was all these years later. But where we just keep iterating, you know, we repeat the process, the action with the goal of improving it. So in the context of creating something out of nothing or turning an idea into reality, iteration just involves refining the product, the idea of the process based on testing, retesting, feedback,

new insights and outcomes. And each kind of cycle of iteration brings hopefully incremental improvements, helping you get closer to where you want to be with a final product, a final result. And that's exactly what I've done, you know. I like when I started radio, I didn't start in commercial radio. I started in community radio, and I knew no one was listening or virtually no one was listening.

But I also knew that by me stepping into any kind of radio, that would give me skill and time in front of a microphone and confidence and competence to when I would finally, if I would ever finally get a chance to do some kind of commercial radio as a host, which I eventually did, then I already had I actually had probably three or four years sitting behind a microphone doing a community version of that, which still using all the same stuff and developing the same skills

and getting miles on the old clock, so to speak. All Right, so we've got three more. Third last one is promote and expand. So whatever it is that you're doing, figure out how you're going to share that with the world, How you're going to get bums on seats, how you're going to get eyes or ears on your product using social media, using email, mailouts, marketing, or whatever platforms that you're going to use for your audience. For me early days,

of course, it varies depending on what it is. But for a lot of what I did, it was really just about testimonials and people talking about my business or my brand or my podcast. It was about people out there saying I'm training with this guy. He's good or we get great results, or he's funny, or he knows

his stuff well, whatever it is. And then people reaching out to me, not because I had a business card or a website or not because I advertised, because I did not, but my first one hundred clients, in fact, all of my clients over the years, I'll be absolutely honest. I once I got told by somebody that I should advertise, and this is twenty five years ago, and I remember I paid some obscene amounts to put a quarter of a quarter of a page ad in the Yellow Pages.

That's how long ago it was. It was essentially pro the internet. So I spent I don't know why, but the figure twelve thousand dollars just came into my head. I think I spent twelve one thousand dollars. I think it was around the mid nineties. And to my memory, I don't think I ever got one client. I probably did, but I definitely got somewhere between zero and five. I

can't remember one, but there probably was one. So my entire business of harp as the personal training facility, which for a period of time was the biggest business of its kind in the country. That was all through word of mouth, that was all through doing a good job. And of course it's different times now, but we got to the stage where we over the years, employed hundreds and hundreds of trainers, We had thousands of clients. We had three different centers. At one stage we had Hampton

and Brighton and Corefield. We were doing over a thousand sessions a week between the three centers. They're all profitable. It was for a small business, it was a big business, if you know what I mean. And none of that was through media or marketing or advertising. So I am not saying that advertising is bad, of course, especially in twenty twenty four where we've got so much leverage or potential leverage through the Internet and through websites and social

media and Instagram, Facebook and all of those things. But also, I know, depending on the product, depending on the service, depending on the thing it is that you are selling, if you are really fucking good at that thing, you'll get busy. You'll get busy. And I know that's a little bit two thousand and three, that advice, but especially in the server space, I still see it in twenty twenty four. Somebody that's great at what they do. They could be a massage therapist, they could be an architect,

they could be a guy that I know. I'll give a shout out to Chris. Chris builds fences and he's fucking awesome at it. And he's always busy. And he's always busy, not because he's got marketing and branding and a website, and he's always busy because he's great at what he does. So if you were good at what you do, people will sell you. People will sell you. Second last one, monitor and evaluate, So track your progress

against your goals. That's having some kind of assessment along the way, make sure that you're reaching those intended KPIs. And based on your data, based on your outcomes, you're going to adjust your strategies and your protocol as needed to work through the peaks and troughs and to refine, to refine the thing that you're doing to make it the most effective and the most successful. And then the last one is just scale and sustain. Scale and sustain

so to expand reach and functionality based on demand. But also I think with this there is a point I'm going to put a little asterisk next to this. You know, yes, we want to develop a plan for long, long term sustainability and growth. But also I think there's a point with many businesses and many services where it goes from being ideal in lots of ways, where it's producing really good income, it's not killing me, we've got a really good brand, we're busy. There's not a huge amount of

stress and anxiety wrapped around it. And so I'm not saying limit your potential for growth. I'm saying, figure out over time what you think, and you'll only know when you're in the middle of it what you think might be about the right size and capacity for you in terms of that business. For example, when I had three gyms and I had two other businesses, and that were also bricks and mortar businesses, so I have five different lots of rent every week, and I was doing a

million things, and I had other things. I had corporate speaking, I was running other programs, I was consulting, I had started my first degree and exercise science. I was doing way too many things. Business was good if it was only about money and business and turnover and revenue and profit and loss, then it was amazing. But I truly believe that it was not for me the right trajectory.

I think I should have or I could have potentially stopped a little earlier in terms of figuring out what was the best fit for me, in terms of the size of the business, the number of staff, the things that we offered, and I've but again that's just me, that's just me. You might you know, sometimes the business that's got three employees and it's turning over four x is better than the business with one hundred employees that's turning over two hundred x because the juice just ain't

worth the squeeze, if you know what I mean. Because you get to the point where, yes, I'm making a lot more money or we're much busier, but that's not my only determinant of success and or wealth. Again, nothing wrong with you know, I've got friends who are absolute super duper entrepreneurs and they've got more things going on than you can poke a stick at, and then the middle of all of the mayhem and the busyness and the ever expanding empire, they're good. They're good, and for

them that model works. But there are people like me and maybe you, for whom that model won't work. And it's not that it won't necessarily work commercially. Off financially, but perhaps emotionally, psychologically, and even potentially from a health point a physical health point of view, anyway, Some thoughts on turning your idea into reality.