Episode 433: Thinking Time - Turn Your Business Ideas into Reality with the IMPACT Framework

Hey everyone, in this episode what I'm going to talk about is a framework called IMPACT and how you can use that to be able to test and validate some of the ideas you have to be able to grow your small business. My name is Bradley Hamner. We help scale small businesses that are doing between $300,000 and $3 million in annual revenue, and I think this framework is going to be able to help you. We use IMPACT as an acronym for you to take what you may have as an idea but make sure that you flush it out. So let's get right into it. So I in IMPACT as an acronym stands for ideal scenario. You basically want to define the perfect outcome. Let's say that you have an idea that you want to implement into the business. Look, as entrepreneurs, we are always full of ideas. I have 2 ideas before I've had my very first cup of coffee in the morning. I'm sure you're the same way as well. But how do we flush through some of these ideas and actually put together a plan, take it from idea to plan to execution that ultimately helps us to grow our small business. I got asked this in a coaching session recently, and I had all of these elements, but I didn't have a way to make it memorable. So I used a little bit of an AI, took together to, you know, use a way to make it memorable, and ultimately came up with the IMPACT framework. And ultimately, that's what we want. We want the— our ideas to have a positive impact on the business. So number 1, what's your ideal scenario with this? So you have an idea that you want to expand into a second office, you want to go downstairs, That's actually what they were thinking about doing. They were thinking about creating a new program. They were thinking about— somebody else was thinking about having a brand new product that they were going to ship overseas for what they do. Well, what's the ideal scenario? Describe what the perfect outcome is. M, minimally viable, or an MVP, to get some sort of a proof of concept before you make a full commitment. We're going to get into allocation of resources in just a bit, but is there a way that we could Do some sort of an MVP product first before spending a lot of money or time, resources, energy, etc., before jumping all in. Look, there's a time and a place to go all in, but is there a way that we could do an MVP on this— minimally viable product or minimally viable test on this— to see and validate the idea before jumping on in? P, pre-mortem. Now, you may have heard about a post-mortem, but a pre-mortem basically means, look, let's define what the potential failure points are upfront. What are all of the things that could go wrong? Now, this is totally opposite of the very first thing that we did, which was, well, what's the perfect outcome? Define if everything went great, what would be true? This is now the other side of that that says, well, what are all of the bad things? What are the things if this thing were to go to hell in a handbasket, what would have been true? What would make this thing go, this did not work at all. If we identify those on the front side, then we can actually begin to put plans in place to help mitigate that. All right, now let's get into A in our IMPACT framework for testing ideas, idea to planning to execution, to grow our small business. It's allocation of resources—time, money, people, energy, mental energy, and effort. Are we going to allocate resources to this? As I was sharing with the person that asked me this question, Yeah, look, are you going to stop doing some other things to explore this opportunity, or are you just going to do it in addition to what you're already doing? Do you have that much capacity to just take on a new project or initiative? And they said, you know, I never actually thought about what I would actually stop doing to make this possible. That's an allocation of resources. Certainly in some cases it can be an allocation of money. How much are we going to invest in this? Are we going to invest $10,000 and hope to make $100,000? Are we going to invest $100,000 and hopefully make a million? What are we going to actually invest in here financially, but also in our mental effort, energy, etc.? All right, let's get into C in our IMPACT framework for testing ideas to grow our small business. And it's really just the cost model. In other words, it's the economic realities and the business requirements. In other words, this is really just around like, how is this thing going to help grow the business? What's the business model that we have for this new product? I mean, is this going to help? Is this going to be 25% of our revenue? Is this going to replace the entire company? I mean, what is the ultimate business model and economic realities? I think oftentimes we say, yeah, I think I'm just going to do that, but we don't really actually have a plan of what the impact is going to be. And so we spend a lot of time and money only for it to be a $10,000 impact to the business. I mean, if you're doing a million dollars, it's not very much. Well, if it's $10,000 and you only spend a little bit of time with it, fine. But if you spend a a lot of time with this, it only brings in $10,000, $20,000 of revenue. Was that worth your time? Maybe, maybe not. And lastly, team. That's timelines and targets. And so if we do decide to move forward on this, what's the implementation schedule and what are some of the key milestones that we want to hit along the way? Is this something we're doing for, you know, 90 days? Is this something that we're going to do over the course of the next 3 years? What are some of those key milestones? So let me go over the IMPACT framework for you to help grow your small business. I think if you have an idea, something you want to begin to flush out, what would you do? You pull up a Word document, a Google document, a Notion page, something, your Apple Notes on your phone, and say, what is the idea? Maybe it's even a notepad, and you can use the IMPACT framework to begin to flush out your ideas on paper. And I think it's a one-pager, really. I think it's, what's the ideal scenario? What's the perfect outcome for this idea? Number 2, is there a minimally viable product that maybe some way that we could start a waiting list or try to see if there's even a some interest in the thing that we're going to be doing for the business. P, pre-mortem. What are all the things that, you know, potential failure points? What are all the things that can make this thing go south quickly? A, how are we going to allocate resources— time, money, people, mental energy and effort— to make this happen? Cost model. What are the economic realities of this? What's the, the business model here and the impact it's going to have to the business from a revenue and profitability perspective? And then lastly, T, timelines and targets, with the implementation schedule and some of the key milestones along the way. Does this guarantee success? No, I don't think it guarantees success at all, but I have seen for my own— in my own businesses, if I would have slowed down, put it on one piece of paper, taken this model and done exactly that, I would have saved so much time. I would have not wasted so much energy and effort on things that truthfully, if I'd just flushed through my— got it out of my own head, I wouldn't have even wasted my team's time. And then there's so many examples I can think back on of a business owner where I thought, I don't think they've thought through this. And look, it's easy and look back in retrospect to say, you know, they wasted $30,000 on this, you know, on a whim. But it's not just the $30,000, it's all the time and the effort that they spent chasing this thing that ultimately they got— they— it hurt their core business. Now that said, some of these ideas can be transformational for your business. We just want to be able to have a way to flush through some of the bad ideas so that we can get to not just the good ones but also the great ones. Hopefully this has helped you to grow your small business. That's what we love to be able to do, is to be able to help small businesses doing $300,000 to $3 million. We really know that that space. And I think this is a tool that, if you're a business in that space, can be able to help you to grow and scale your small business. All right, everyone, till next episode, lead well and go be great.