Three Steps to Ultimate Internet Fame & Fortune

Do you often wonder what it takes to become an internet millionaire? Have you been longing for the secrets to fame and fortune on-line? Ever want to unlock the ancient secrets to a life filled with material possessions?

Me too…

Where To Start?

I’ve spent the past year understanding and mastering the ways of the first two steps in the Three Steps to Ultimate Internet Fame & Fortune. And I know enough about the third step in the process to write about it. These thoughts have been swimming around in my head for some time now, as an intrapreneur, and I needed to get them out. So here goes:

ideate The first step in any new business is to ideate yourself a business idea. I think that the easiest way to accomplish this part of the process is to find a problem that needs to be solved and go about figuring how to solve it with a way that could make money. The premise is that if you have a problem, odds are that other people have the same problem and are looking for a solution right along side of you. Bonus points if you validate your idea with them. So step one is to come up with the idea that you can build and sell to people who have the same problem as you.

execute The second step in this process is to actually build the solution. Whether you’re building widgets or wrist watches, execution is mandatory because you can’t sell nothing to people. Unless you make a show about nothing and sell ads to people, but I digress. Execution can happen in many different ways, but my new favorite methodology is the Agile Development Method, which works really well for software and web projects, wherein incremental steps are accomplished on a weekly or bi-monthly time frame with new functionality constantly getting cranked out. So step two is to geterdone because any way you slice it, execution is important.

market That being said, I’m beginning to think that marketing a finished, or beta, product is the most important step in the process… and the one step that I have not proven myself at to my satisfaction. Let’s face it, ideating and executing on ideas is only marginally great. Yea you got that new whiz bang thingamajig from concept to production line to store shelves, but what happens when nobody buys it because they don’t know about it? I’ll tell you what happens, you lose. You’re out all the time and money you spent working on ideation and execution and you can’t get either back. It’s taken a while, but I now understand how important step three is in the process. The most…

What All Three Steps Have In Common

The one thing that ideating, executing, and marketing have in common is the pitch. You’re pitching your idea from the time you think of it until the last consumer purchase. Your pitch may sound different to the different audiences involved in the three steps, but you’re pitching nonetheless.

When you’re ideating, you’re pitching people to come along with you on your idea journey and hopefully pick up some of the slack. Some will believe in it or believe in you and join you for the ride. Others won’t. While executing, you’re pitching people to do the things that they said they would do. While marketing, you’re pitching the people who may want to pay money for whatever it is you’re selling, but you’re also finding them too. Odds are they won’t find you by themselves.

What Do You Think?

Did I hit the high points, or is something glaringly left off the list? Could it be that simple? Let me know in the comments below.