Best of : How to have great ideas

Struggling to find that perfect business idea? You might be overlooking a remarkably simple solution. In this insightful episode, I share my battle-tested approach to generating winning ideas that has powered multiple successful ventures.

The breakthrough moment came when I realized we're all constantly having ideas—most of them forgettable, some potentially transformative—but without a system to capture them, they vanish into thin air. My journey began with nothing more sophisticated than a Moleskine notebook where I recorded every business concept, website opportunity, and content inspiration that crossed my mind. Each received its own page with a brief headline, supporting details, and date. The front pages became an organized index of possibilities.

Though hundreds of ideas accumulated, most weren't viable due to skill, resource, or time constraints. But within this collection, patterns emerged. Certain concepts kept drawing me back, demanding further development. These became the foundation for my current websites and income streams—including KeywordsPeopleUse, which now serves thousands of daily users. The very podcast you're listening to began as a simple notation, an idea preserved rather than forgotten.

This approach has evolved with my business. Now we use Trello boards where team members collaborate, comment, and help identify the most promising concepts. But the fundamental principle remains unchanged: record everything without immediate judgment.

Ready to unlock your own breakthrough ideas? Start recording every thought today—using whatever system works for you—and watch as the truly valuable concepts naturally rise to the surface. Subscribe to the podcast for more practical SEO and business strategies, and visit KeywordsPeopleUse.com to try our tools free today.

SEO Is Not That Hard is hosted by Edd Dawson and brought to you by KeywordsPeopleUse.com

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"Werq" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Chapters

• 0:00 Episode Introduction
• 2:19 Process of Having Great Ideas
• 4:52 Recording Ideas in Trello
• 6:28 Success Stories and Call to Action
• 7:32 Episode Closing and Contact Info

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:52

Hi, ed Dawson here, and, as I'm a bit busy at the moment and need a break, welcome to another one of my best of SEO is not that hard podcasts. These are the episodes from the back catalog that I think have the greatest hits and ones that are still relevant and provide great value for you. So, without further ado, let's get into the episode. Hello and welcome to. Seo is not that hard. I'm your host, ed Dawson, the founder of keywordswordsPeopleUsecom. These solutions follow the questions people ask online. In today's episode, I'm going to share my tried and tested process of coming up with great ideas.

Speaker 1: 1:27

A common theme I hear from people regularly when looking at where to get started in business with websites with SEO started in business with websites with seo is ideas where to start, what to do, what ideas to work on, how to have good ideas, and this is something that, yeah, I struggled with myself back in the day, but I overcame that by realizing there's only one way to have good ideas, and that's to have lots of bad ideas too. It's only by having lots of bad ideas that, eventually, the good ones will come to the surface. The fact is, you'll be having ideas all the time, but you probably just forget most of them. That's basically what happens with me, basically what happens with me. So the process I developed was I started recording every single idea I ever had when it came to business, when it came to websites, when it came to content, when it came to kind of any idea related to the work I was trying to do. I recorded the idea and I did this quite simply. To start with, I just got myself a little Moleskine notebook to start with. I just got myself a little moleskin notebook and every new idea I just wrote on a new page a brief headline, what the idea is. If there's any, any detail I got might only be a few lines of notes, that's explaining the idea put a date on it and then I wrote at the front of the notebook the first few pages I saved and just put some lines in so that every idea I just wrote down the headline of the idea and the page that it was on. Now this meant I started to build up over time a big list of ideas you know talking hundreds of ideas and some of them, most of them would be rubbish. They'd be rubbish because I didn't have the skills, I didn't have the money or I didn't have the time. But within that big cluster of ideas, there were a few little gems started to appear, and as I would go over the book again and read it and read the headlines, go and read the ideas, some of them would start to sort of come up again and again, and those ideas were the ones I would work on and I would build out more. And I can now look at that book and look at the websites and the income streams I've got now and they came from those ideas if I hadn't written those ideas down.

Speaker 1: 3:55

Ideas are fleeting. If you don't write them down, they tend to go. So what you need to do is literally just start writing all your ideas down. You don't need to act on them. Often, just the act of writing them down removes them from your brain and you forget about them. The bad ones just go away, but the good ones you can come back to, you can see them in there and you can revisit them, and that's how you start to surface the good ideas.

Speaker 1: 4:20

Now I've taken this process one step further. Nowadays with, for example, keywords people use, I'm constantly having ideas about new things. We can implement new ideas for content, and so what I do is I will record each of those ideas in Trello. So we use Trello. I think it was people used to manage our processes and ideas and the workload that we're working on in new developments. So I just have a column in Trello with ideas and any new ideas that come up related to keywords people use. I'll stick in there and they're there for anyone on the team to comment on, to say they're a good idea, a bad idea.

Speaker 1: 5:00

I always say these are just ideas, don't get hung up on them. This is stuff that we might want to think about. If you put those ideas out there, then the good ones will start to rise to the surface and the bad ideas tend to get shut down or disappear. But if we don't write them down, if we don't record them, then those ideas are fleeting and they get lost. So this is the real core thing about having how to have great ideas is just to record all your ideas. We're all having ideas all the time and if you don't record them, then you're gonna you're gonna lose them and those, those, those real golden nuggets, can get lost. So what you've got to do is dead simple just write them down. You don't have to use a notebook, like I did. You don't have to use Trello, you can use whatever system works for you, but just record them all, write them down.

Speaker 1: 5:46

This podcast came from an idea. Let's do a podcast, wrote it down, thought about it, came back to to it, eventually decided let's give it a go, let's give it a shot. And here we are now and you know we've got people listening, I'm getting feedback. It's brilliant and I'm really glad I did it. But if I'd never written the idea down, I might never have acted upon it. And then again, keywords people use. That was another idea that just got written in the book and it was one that I eventually came back to and we built out. So it's dead, dead simple to have good ideas, just have loads and loads of bad ones. So start doing it, start recording your ideas. You'll be amazed. Over time you will start to build up such a list of ideas. You'll find the good ones and then you'll take them forward and you'll have great success with them.

Speaker 1: 6:40

Thanks for listening. I really appreciate it. Please subscribe and share. It really helps. Seo is Not that Hard is brought to you by KeywordsPeopleUsecom. These solutions find in the questions people ask online. See why thousands of people use us every day. Try it today for free at KeywordsPeopleUpeopleusecom. If you want to get in touch or have any questions, I'd love to hear from you. I'm at channel 5 on twitter. You can email me at podcast at keywordspeopleusecom. Bye for now and see you in the next episode of seo is not that hard.