Starter Story - Dan has a disease

2 min read

Today, I woke up, and chose violence.

This is the story of my good friend Dan.

Dan suffers from a disease called rejection avoidance.

I want you to avoid contracting this disease, because it can be deadly.

So I’m sending this email right now as a public service announcement.

Don’t be like Dan.

––

Ok a little background on Dan.

He started his business ~6 months ago.

And he reached out to me to get some feedback.

I started digging into his website. It was lookin’ pretty good!

So I asked him:

Dan, how’s the business going?

Zero traffic
Zero feedback
Zero customers

That couldn’t be right…

What’s going on here?

Well Pat, I’ve been mostly focused on SEO.
I’ve written 10 blog posts on various topics.
And I’ve hired a few people to start making TikToks.
Now I’m just waiting for my first email signup.

Hoping it will come in the next week.

Oh man, I’ve heard this before…

So I asked him a simple question:

Dan, have you shared this with anyone you actually know?

Have you posted this on your personal network, have you reached out to your dream customers, have you shared this on Reddit?

No. Nope. Nada.

Of course not…

––

I’ve seen this a million times.

New entrepreneurs want to do everything except the one most important thing:

Getting real feedback from the real world.

They’ll spend $5K on another course.
They’ll waste hours learning some SEO framework.
They’ll code 99 new features.

ALL TO AVOID TALKING TO HUMANS.

I literally don’t understand…

So I sacked up and told Dan the truth:

Dan… I HAVE to tell you this: you are focusing on all the wrong things.

YOU ARE AFRAID TO FAIL.

The only way you will ever know if this is going to work…

Is if you actually get your a** out there, and talk to real people.

Show it to your family, message friends on LinkedIn, do… ANYTHING.

I shared a few of my favorite case studies with him:

• Some friends who validated their idea in 3 hours
• A guy who got his first customer through his mom
• A girl who had paying customers WITHOUT a landing page

That last thing you need right now is… a strategy.

You NEED to talk to people.

It’s so simple to get your idea out there and validate it.

You could do it in 3 minutes!!!

But you’ve spent 6 months working on unimportant things rather than what’s actually important…

The right thing is often the scary thing.

So you put it off.

If you can’t face rejection, I promise you won’t be successful.

While you’ve been toying with your SEO strategy...

Hundreds of people have been launching similar businesses and making money within days.

All because… they’re not afraid to face a little rejection.

––

I kinda went a bit hard on Dan.

And he didn’t take it too well - but it’s what he needed to hear.

I will report back on what happens.

––

Inside Starter Story we have 4000+ examples of people just like you who built successful businesses BECAUSE they faced a little rejection.

They share all the insights you will ever need to get your business off the ground.

You’ll study how they got their FIRST customer.

And you’ll figure out how to land yours.

It’s time to start working on the right things.

Join Starter Story today.

^^ (don’t click that link if you’re not willing to face a little rejection)

– Pat

Starter Story - Advertise with us - Share your story - About us

Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here for our newsletter.

Starter Story - 4920 W Cypress St Ste 104 - #5143 - Tampa, FL 33607

Click here if you want to stop receiving emails from us.

Starter Story - Dan has a disease

Older messages

It’s been 1,563 days since my last drink

He made $5K without a landing page

How bad do you really want this?

"Petition to ban Starter Story"

"I just wired you $26,352"

You Might Also Like

Expect-AI-tions — The Bootstrapped Founder 369

The quantum talent squeeze

Inside Meta’s dehumanizing new speech policies for trans people

🗞 What's New: A casual tweet from Marc Lou turned into a huge meetup

⏳ 72 HOURS LEFT — Accelerate your ecommerce destiny!

SaaSHub Weekly - Jan 9

[SaaS Club] Rescuing & Rebuilding an Enterprise SaaS

Monk Mode

Growth Newsletter #232

Behind the founder: Drew Houston (Dropbox)