Welcome to One Thing Better. Each week, the editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine (that’s me) shares one way to achieve a breakthrough at work — and build a career or company you love.
Nobody is listening to you.
Maybe it’s your team. Your colleagues. Your friends. You have a good idea, and you want them to act on it, but they’re giving you excuses — that they’re too busy, or someone else should do it, or they’re not sure it’ll work.
Now you’re frustrated and thinking: Either these people are lazy, or they’re idiots who can’t recognize a good idea.
But wait. Here’s the real problem: We often confuse disagreement for risk aversion.
If you want to motivate them, a good idea is not enough. You must also show how they will benefit from it — because when you do that, you’ve done more than deliver an idea. You’ve delivered a gift.
Today, I’ll show you how to motivate and rally people around your ideas. And let’s start with a friend of mine who’s having this problem right now…
The idea nobody wants to touch
Recently, I had dinner with a friend — let’s call him John. He’s the head of marketing at a fast-growing startup, and he has an idea for a new initiative that feels smart and exciting.
But when he brought it to his company’s head of sales, he faced resistance. The sales leader kept raising concerns: What if the leads weren’t strong? What if the audience didn’t convert?
John was frustrated. “I can’t tell if he hates it,” John told me, “or if he’s just lazy and doesn’t want to try something new.”
I suggested something else: What if this wasn’t a matter of disagreement at all? What if it was just… risk aversion?
If sales put its weight behind this initiative and it flopped, then sales would be blamed for the failure. So of course the sales leader was hesitant. He wasn’t necessarily saying the idea was bad. He was saying: I do not want to own the downside of this.
That’s a very different problem. And it requires a very different response.
People don’t buy risk. They buy wins.
When we want people to support our idea, we often make this same mistake: We think our job is to persuade them that our idea is good.
But that’s not enough.
If the idea carries personal downside for them, then “good” is not sufficient. They need to believe that this is not just interesting, but winnable. They need to see how it becomes a success for them.
That is a higher standard.
Nobody wakes up in the morning excited to take a risk on your behalf. But people are very excited to step into an opportunity that feels likely to produce revenue, praise, momentum, or status.
So the real challenge is not to explain your idea better. The real challenge is to convert the idea from risk to opportunity. And if they don’t see the opportunity, that’s not their fault. It’s yours.
The framework to use
If you want people to move on an idea, then here’s what you need to do:
1. Identify what they fear. What downside are they trying to avoid? Failure? Embarrassment? Wasted effort? Lost revenue?
2. Identify what they want. What would make this feel like a win for them? Growth? Visibility? Proof of success? A clear path to revenue?
3. Do some proving work yourself. Don’t ask them to imagine success. Bring back signs of it. Early evidence. Outside examples. A playbook. A live lead.
4. Re-present the idea as an opportunity. Now you’re not saying, “Trust me.” You’re saying, “Here’s why this is good for you, and here’s how I already teed it up.”
As soon as you do this, people’s attitudes will change. They won’t fight you. They’ll literally thank you!
How John could use this himself
Now let’s return to John, who can’t persuade his head of sales to embrace a new idea.
I asked John a question: What would the head of sales need to see this as an opportunity?
Let’s remember: This sales guy is measured on sales and revenue. So if John’s idea is going to gain support from sales, it can’t just sound creative or exciting. It must sound like it advances the head of sales’ goals.
That means John must do some proving work first.
He could talk to marketers at other companies ran similar initiatives, and ask what kind of leads they generated. He could survey users to prove interest in his idea. He could even reach out to potential partners, just to gauge interest.
Then he could go back to the sales leader and say something like: “I’m not asking you to take a blind leap here. I’ve already validated audience interest, identified ways to offset the cost, and teed up ways to generate leads.”
That makes the sales leader’s job easier. And I guarantee the conversation will be different.
This works on you, too
Don’t forget: When you have a big idea, you don’t just have to convince other people. You also must convince yourself. And sometimes that’s the hardest pitch of all.
We resist bold ideas for the exact same reason: We experience them as risk! We think about what could go wrong, what we might lose, or how embarrassed we’d feel if it failed.
So instead, let’s start asking: “What’s the opportunity here, and how can I prove it?” When we do that, the energy changes. The idea becomes easier to move toward.
Remember: Most people (yourself included) are not lazy, stupid, or insolent. They’re just risk averse. That’s basic human nature. There’s no use fighting it. Instead, address it head on — because when you lower people’s risk, you increase their interest.
Your idea is good for them. So prove it.
That’s how to do one thing better.
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