Most business owners are dreamers. This generally translates to more ideas rolling around in their head, than they have time to implement.

Like anything else in business, having a process for recording, filtering, and acting on all those ideas is key to seeing them come to fruition.

Step 1. Get them out of your head.

Recording your ideas means you need a way to capture and store them. Whether you embrace the old school ways of writing them down in a notebook or whip out an electronic device with a nifty software program is not important. What’s important is getting them recorded so you don’t forget them and can take the next step in prioritizing according to how they meet your objectives.

Step 2. Determine what ideas are worthwhile.

What might have seemed like a great idea at 2am, might not be that innovative in the light day. Sometimes the timing is not right, and you need to save that idea for another time. Or perhaps the initial idea wasn’t right, but by thinking about it, you’ve come up with another related idea.

That’s the thing about ideas, isn’t it? They can be endless, and they can change. Which is what can make them feel overwhelming and hard to settle on for implementation.

Here are some practical questions to ask to help you determine if your business ideas are worth investing your time to pursue.

• No one else is doing it…
• Someone else is doing it… but not like you’re going to do it…
• It solves a problem…
• You can afford to implement it… (or get funding)
• It fills a need or a niche…
• People who don’t know you like the idea…
• It’s easy to explain and understand…
• It’s something you’re passionate about…