I’m just back from California, where I spoke at a sales training event to promote How to Sell When Nobodys Buying, where I wrote a chapter on selling more using social media. My presentation was very well received, with extremely high praise from the attendees. It was a fantastic experience. I then spent the rest of the weekend at Joel Bauer’s Passion2Profit event, which focused on speaker training, as well as branding and positioning in a crowded marketplace. I’ll get some pictures and videos up for you soon.

The topic I want to write about today, just before I jet off to Chicago for a 3 day Mastermind, is the idea of rate of implementation. There was a ton of great information at the events from this weekend- but none of it will do me, or my business, any good, if I don’t take time to implement it.

How quickly do you implement? It’s easy to be constantly in search of new information and ideas- after all, getting information is fun and easy. The hard part comes when we have to turn knowledge into action, or words into results. This is where many people have a challenge, and they don’t do all they can- or all they should- to move their business forward.

I’ve been guilty of this myself- even now, I’m a little bit jetlagged, my mind is a bit distracted (ready to head off to Chicago, I think) and I find myself scanning down my to-do list, trying to find work to do- just to work- not because these items are the most meaningful or important.

In fact, I have, at times today, found myself avoiding tasks which felt too big or like I just didn’t have time for. The irony is, though, that the “big things” I “don’t have time for” are much more meaningful to my business than the small things I can do easily.

So the thing to remember is that you don’t really know something until you implement it. You can’t really learn something until you do it. If you made a commitment to implement new ideas within 48 hours of hearing them, how different would your business be?