I can’t stop thinking about jelly beans now. Not because I actually like them—I don’t. They’re just sugar masquerading as food. But the idea of them, these tiny bursts of possibility, is stuck in my head. The way every single one could be a good idea or a terrible one, and you won’t know which until you bite into it.
Isn’t that kind of what life feels like? This endless jar of jelly beans we keep shaking around, waiting for one to rise to the top and declare itself “the best.” But it never does. They just rattle around, bumping into each other, and suddenly you’re 40 years old and still wondering if you picked the wrong color.
It’s exhausting. This whole obsession with the good idea. Like there’s some magical jelly bean out there, glowing neon green, that will solve all your problems if you just hold it long enough. I’ve spent way too much time chasing that illusion, trying to sort through my brain for the one perfect thought that will fix everything. Spoiler: it doesn’t exist.
There’s no good idea. There’s no bad idea. There’s just the one you pick up, chew on for a while, and decide to stick with.
That’s the thing nobody tells you. It’s not about finding the right idea; it’s about what you do with it once you have it.
I used to think every big success started with genius—like Zuckerberg woke up one morning, fully formed, with Facebook burning a hole in his brain. Turns out, that’s not true. Most ideas are born as messy little blobs, and the people who succeed aren’t the ones who have better blobs. They’re the ones who actually do something with them.
But we don’t like that answer, do we? It’s too boring. Too much work. We want the shortcut, the glowing jelly bean, the easy win. And when we can’t find it, we just sit there, shaking the jar, hoping the answer will rattle out on its own.
Here’s the thing: if you’re still waiting for a sign that your idea is good enough to act on, it’s never coming. The world doesn’t work like that. The universe isn’t going to whisper in your ear, “Yes, this is the one!” You just have to pick something. Start somewhere. Stop shaking the jar and eat a damn jelly bean.
When I sold my last business, I spent months in this weird, liminal space where every idea felt both amazing and stupid. Start a YouTube channel? Dumb. Too crowded. Nobody’s going to care. Build another company? Exhausting. Go back to a regular job? Hilarious. I’m unemployable at this point.
But at some point, I had to move. Sitting in indecision was worse than failing. So, I made a deal with myself: try the thing that felt truest to me. Not the thing that seemed most likely to succeed or the thing that would impress other people. Just the thing I couldn’t stop thinking about, even if it made no sense.
And here’s the funny part: it’s not that the decision was perfect. It wasn’t. I’ve had to change directions so many times since then that I’ve lost count. But none of that matters, because I started. I got data. I learned what worked, what didn’t, and what I actually cared about.
The truth is, we put too much pressure on the idea itself. Good ideas don’t guarantee success any more than bad ideas guarantee failure. Most of the time, the idea isn’t even the point. It’s you. It’s what you want out of it, what you’re willing to put into it, and whether or not you have the guts to follow through when it inevitably gets hard.
You can test. You can refine. You can learn. But none of that happens if you don’t start.
So, stop waiting for the good idea. Grab the jelly bean that feels a little less terrible than the others and take a bite. You might hate it. You might spit it out. But at least you’ll know, and knowing is infinitely better than sitting in a pile of maybe.
If you’re curious where this rant came from, I might’ve been inspired by a video I made about ideas. You can check it out here if you want, but honestly, I think you’ve already got everything you need.
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