I always knew that Big Ideas were powerful. But I realized yesterday, I have much to learn about its TRUE power.

You see, I was having lunch with two entrepreneur friends. We were talking about how gurus always have their own famous concepts or Big Ideas.

Like how T Harv Eker has his Big Ideas about the Financial Blueprint and his famous “Give me 5 minutes and I can predict your financial future for the rest of your life.” And how Robert Kiyosaki has his Cashflow Quandrant (the E,S,B,I diagram).

Then one of my friends asked, “Do you know who Noah St. John is?”

“Nope.” I said nonchalantly.

“This guy is THE up and coming guru in personal development. He has a lot of concepts that are pretty common. But he has one that is really good. It’s about Afformations.”

My mind lit up. “Oh, Afformations! I’ve heard about it before! So that’s the guy you are talking about.”

Then it hit me.

I remembered his Big Idea BETTER than the person himself!

The experience I had was so amazing to me, when I reached home, I opened my Gmail and searched for “Afformations.” I vaguely remembered I had read about afformations in an email.

One result came out. I opened that email.

Turns out that Noah St. John had guest posted on the March 14, 2009 issue of Early to Rise (my favorite email newsletter by Michael Masterson.) And he had only guest posted once.

Amazing.

He had only ONE contact with me.

Yet his Big Idea stayed in my mind ever since.

And it stuck in my mind even BETTER than the person!

As I reflected on what happened, I realized that it’s really similar to my experience with how I got to know of prominent bloggers and internet marketers. Often…

I remembered his Big Idea BEFORE I remembered the person.

I didn’t realize it then, since there was never a time where I forgot about someone before a friend asked me about that someone and me replying that I remembered his Big Idea but not him.

Let’s look at a list of whom I remembered their Big Ideas before their names.

Big Idea: Copyblogger

Name: Brian Clark.

Big Idea: Problogger

Name: Darren Rowse.
(You may not realize this, but back then in 2003, there was no such thing as a professional blogger. Problogger is the FIRST blog to introduce the concept of problogging, and so it became Darren’s Big Idea. He did not realize it then, but he knows it now.)

Big Idea: Diagram on the cover of Internet Business Manisfesto

Name: Rich Schefren (Internet Business Strategist who is called Guru to the gurus. Yaro Starak calls him his mentor.)

Big Idea: Butterfly Marketing (or Viral Marketing)

Name: Mike Filsaime

Big Idea: Mass Control

Name: Frank Kern (also known as the surfer dude)

Big Idea: Product Launch Formula

Name: Jeff Walker

Big Idea: Marketing With You

Name: Alex Jeffreys

Big Idea: “Attraction is not a choice”

Name: David DeAngelo (pen name of Eben Pagan, guru who dominated the dating niche)

Do you know of these people? If so, did you know of their Big Ideas before you knew them?

These people may have their Big Ideas packaged in different ways. Maybe it was  their blog name, or their flagship product, or their trademark diagram, or their trademark saying.

But whatever form their Big Idea came as, their Big Idea stuck in my mind FIRST, before I associated their Big Idea with the guru and remembered their names.

Why does this happen?

Why does a Big Idea work so powerfully that it can precede you to getting yourself known?

Let’s go back to my experience about Noah St. John and his Big Idea

As a person who is also into self-help kind of stuff, I do know of quite a few gurus. Many times, their ideas are similar to one another. But every famous guru always have one or two ideas that stand out.

Noah St. John’s Afformations idea stood out.

His idea is basically, instead of saying affirmations, you ask affirming questions. And he calls it Afformations. It’s simple, but revolutionary.

When I first read about his Afformations idea, it immediately created a NEW CATEGORY in my mind.

He instantly became “The Afformations Guru” to me.

With only ONE contact with his Big Idea…

He had gained and secured a POSITION in my mind.

Noah St. John, the name, bears no meaning to me at first. To me, he would have been lost in my memory among the sea of other personal development guru wannabes.

But his Big Idea carved a position in my mind and left its mark forever, opening the door for Noah, the person, to be remembered.

It’s really the same experience I had with all the gurus I know, including prominent bloggers and internet marketers that I’ve listed above.

And if it worked on you and me, it could well mean it worked on almost everyone else.

Their Big Idea, no matter the form in which it was presented, created a new category which positioned them as THE expert of that category in our minds.

They made a deep impression in our minds with their Big Idea first before we attached the person to the Big Idea. In short,

Their Big Ideas Made Them Famous

Or, their Big Idea stood out from the other ideas in the crowd, which in turn caused the persons with the idea stand out.

That’s how this blog, Big Idea Blogger, stood out. It has captured the attention of more established bloggers, like Saiful Rizal, Celestine Chua and Thomas Sinfield. One of them even wanted to interview me.

To think this blog only started 3 months ago with only 14 posts to date (excluding this one).

It was not really because I had great content. It was because I had my Big Idea – which is of course about “the Big Idea”, that every blogger should have their own Big Idea to stand out in their niche.

So do you have a Big Idea? If you don’t, you should start looking out for one. It’s going to elevate you in your market really quickly.