All You Need is a Good Idea!: How to Create Marketing Messages that Actually Get Results

Chapter 1. ABOUT THE TITLE

This book is called All You Need Is A Good Idea. It is not titled All You Need Is A Great Idea. While you are waiting for the "world's greatest" idea you will stand frozen in fear, immobilized by anxiety. You will find yourself conscientiously discarding all the ideas you create, judging them as not being good enough, or a little trite, or not quite clever enough. You will never satisfy yourself sufficiently to actually use one of them.

There is a saying that "Perfect is the enemy of good." If you keep prodding, tweaking, and tampering with something good, trying to turn it into something perfect, you will not just miss a lot of important deadlines. It is possible you might never get there at all, in effect turning a good idea into no idea.

Why settle for just "good" ideas, you ask. Shouldn't you always swing for the bleachers, aim for the stars and all that good guidance your teachers and coaches have always motivated you with? Sure you should. But let's get real. If your field were music, would the realization that you would never be as great as Mozart stop you from starting? Not being Shakespeare has not prevented other writers from getting tons of books published, read, and enjoyed. A few were great, many were good, which is the point. Do good, even if you can't do great. It is not compromising. It is simply more realistic.

The practical point is that I don't want you to stand motionless at a creative standstill caused by the worry that your idea isn't ...