Part 2 - Make more useless ideas

You know what drives me absolutely bonkers? When someone comes to one of my entrepreneurship workshops and proudly announces "I've got THE idea!"

Like...dude… You haven't even started yet.

I've run these workshops and courses for years now, and it's always the same story. Someone rocks up, clutching their precious idea like Gollum, completely convinced they've cracked it. Their idea is the one. The next big thing.

Hell, sometimes they’ll want me to sign an NDA because the idea is “so good”. Nothing tells me they are an amateur more than this…

And you know what? They're probably wrong. Almost certainly wrong.

Not because their idea is bad (though sometimes, bloody hell, they really are). But because they're already emotionally invested in it. They're wearing idea-tinted glasses, seeing everything through the lens of their "perfect" solution. They are primed to see what’s good about it and to ignore what’s bad about it.

Ultimately the thing about ideas is that they literally come from air. They're worth exactly nothing. Zilch. Nada.

Want proof? Let’s spin up some ideas for tools we could sell to marketing firms

• AI tool that reformats messy client campaign data from Excel into standardised agency reporting templates

• AI system for checking Google Ads headlines against brand compliance guidelines

• AI assistant that converts monthly marketing metrics into "client-friendly" email updates

• AI tool for finding and flagging outdated brand assets across Google Drive folders

• AI system that compares competitor Facebook ad copy against past performance data to predict engagement

I just made those up. Right now. While typing this newsletter. They took me about 27 seconds.

Are they good ideas? Could be. Are they bad ideas? Probably.

But here's the crucial bit - what WE think doesn't matter.

Only the market and our customers can tell us.

Let’s get started

First go wide

The reason we want loads of ideas is dead simple: most of them will be crap. And that's absolutely fine. Actually, it's better than fine - it's exactly what we want.

You see, when you've got just one idea, you're stuck defending it like it's your firstborn. But when you've got 20? 30? 50? It's much easier to be ruthless. To look at each one objectively and go "nah, that's rubbish" without feeling like you're killing your dreams.

It’ll be one of 50 instead of one of one. Much easier to murder.

Over the next few parts of this Playbook, we're going to be proper brutal. Privacy concerns? Bin it. Technical limitations? In the trash. No clear route to market? See ya later.

But to do that effectively, we need ammunition. We need ideas. Loads of them.

And not just any ideas - we need ideas that leverage both AI capabilities AND your industry knowledge. Remember what we talked about last week? Your industry expertise is your superpower. We start here.

Start with Problems

First up, let's use this prompt to extract every single pain point in your industry

You are an expert business analyst specialising in [your industry].

Help me identify every possible pain point, inefficiency, and annoyance in this industry, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant.

Focus on:
- Administrative tasks
- Communication flows
- Data handling
- Decision making processes
- Customer interactions
- Resource allocation
- Quality control
- Compliance and reporting

For each area, list out:
1. What's frustrating
2. Who it frustrates
3. How often it happens
4. Current 'solutions' (even bad ones)

Do NOT filter or judge - list EVERYTHING.

Run this prompt multiple times, changing the focus areas each time. Build up a massive list of problems.

AI Translation

Now we're going to take each problem and brainstorm how AI could help. Here's our second prompt:

You are an AI solutions architect. For each of these industry problems, generate 3-5 potential AI-powered solutions. Include both simple and ambitious solutions. Don't worry about feasibility yet.

Problems: [Paste your problems here]

For each solution, specify:
1. What the AI would do
2. What input it needs
3. What output it provides
4. How it helps

At this point don’t worry about complexity or feasibility. We’re going to use these (and more) as filters as we proceed.

Go Ridiculous

This is where it gets fun. For every sensible solution you've got, generate a completely over-the-top version.

Use a basic prompt like

Give me a 10x version of each of these ideas

What if money and technology weren't limitations? What if you had access to every piece of data in the world?

The reason we do this? Sometimes the ridiculous ideas lead to practical insights. Or they help us spot patterns we wouldn't have noticed otherwise.

Moving forward

By the end of this exercise, you should have at least 50 ideas. Yes, 50. If you don't, keep going. Remember - we're not judging quality yet. That comes later.

Most of these ideas are rubbish right?

Correct! Most of them will be terrible. That's the point. We're not looking for perfect ideas - we're looking for raw material.

In the next Part of this Playbook, we'll start filtering these ideas through various reality checks (privacy, technical feasibility, market access, etc.). A boring but important first pass filter!

Think of it like mining for gold. You don't expect every scoop of dirt to contain nuggets. And if you do you delusional!

But you need to move a lot of dirt to find the gold. Digging is necessary but not sufficient!

Get digging!

PS. If you’ve got this far we’re exploring launching a 30 Day AI Entrepreneurship Accelerator where we:

1. Hone a business idea

2. Build a focused AI tool

3. Test and refine the tool

4. Market and launch

Course, community and live sessions.

Waitlist here: https://promptentrepreneur.beehiiv.com/c/waitlist