If you’ve been to a great events lately, you know the feeling: a flood of ideas, a notebook full of insights, and the motivation to rethink everything. But once you get home, the momentum fades, and the day-to-day rush takes over. By the following week, most of that inspiration is still sitting in your notes instead of showing up in your business.

After weeks on the road in October—at MAICON, FRAK, and Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses Summit—I’ve been thinking about that gap between inspiration and action. For me, these events were filled with forward-thinking ideas sparking me to think about AI, innovation, and improving in my work. Yet the real differentiator in business isn't who has the best ideas—it is who can act on them.

Here’s what I’ve been thinking about to successfully bridge the gap between idea and act:

• Start with one idea, not ten. Choose the single concepts with the highest near-term business value and commit to piloting it before year-end.
• Define a clear outcome. Instead of “explore AI,” set a target like “automate one repetitive internal task this quarter.”
• Assign ownership and time. Momentum requires structure—one accountable owner and a set timeline to test, learn, and adapt.
• Debrief and evolve. The first iteration doesn’t need to be perfect. The learning cycle is the work.

Whether it’s an AI use case, a systems improvement, or a marketing process upgrade, the principle is the same: insights only matter if they change behavior.

As 2025 winds down, now is the perfect time to act on something you’ve been meaning to try. Don’t let your conference notes collect dust—pick one idea and make it real before the calendar flips to 2026.

If you’d like a simple framework for mapping ideas into next steps, I’m happy to share a handy “Idea-to-Action” CustomGPT bot I created which help you put ideas into action! Just reply to this email and say "Action" or "GPT" and I'll send it your way.

You BizTech Pal,

—Joshua

Disclaimer: I use AI to help write emails like these. I review & edit all AI-assisted work I publish.