Practical Magic Part #1: 4 Steps to Manifesting Your Idea (Step 1&2) - a podcast by Alan Philips

Practical Magic

Keeping our bedrock principles of manifesting in mind, now let’s get into some practical information, starting with a step-by-step look at how to manifest your ideas.

Step #1: Define Your Concept

The first step when manifesting an idea is to marry the emotional and practical elements of your idea into a defined concept. If you’ve worked through the process in Parts 2 and 3, you know your purpose and have a clear, concise statement of that purpose—one that should be entirely emotional. Now you need to connect that emotional purpose with a practical application.

As an example, let’s look back at Ikea. Their purpose is to “create a better everyday life” for many, but their concept is to “support this vision by offering a wide range of well-designed, functional home furnishing products at prices so low that as many people as possible will be able to afford them.” While the two are related, they are quite different. One is a feeling, and the other is an offering.

Purpose Statement = Emotional

Concept Description = Practical

To define your concept, write down two to three simple, clear sentences describing what you are trying to create. The best way to do that is to write down everything in your mind without overthinking or letting the monkey-mind limit or confuse you. You know your purpose; just let the concept that comes from that purpose flow.

Write Concept Description Below

Once you have done this, refine your concept description by considering the following questions:

1. Is this aligned with my purpose statement?

2. If not, how can I align it with my purpose?

3. Is this my highest and best challenge right now?

4. How can I set this up in a way where I can meet my short-term and long-term needs while making it a reality?

Let’s look at an example. Say you wanted to open a fried-chicken restaurant. Well, the first question would be: What makes your fried-chicken shop different from other such shops? We call this your unique value proposition, or UVP. For our purposes, let’s use the following features as the ones creating your chicken shop’s UVP:

1. We only serve chicken fingers.

2. We have 20 homemade sauces.

3. We use organic farm-raised chickens.

4. We only do takeout and delivery, no in-store dining.

5. We employ former foster children for all non-managerial positions.

With this in mind, your concept description would be as follows:

We are opening a casual, quick-service chicken restaurant specializing in organic chicken fingers served with our one-of-a-kind homemade sauces. The restaurant will focus on takeout/pick-up and delivery business. Our service staff will be made up of former foster children, 18-24 years of age, in order to provide them the necessary skills to succeed both personally and professionally and give back to the community.

Further episodes of The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential

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