Real quick, before I get into the meat of the email:

I have a bad habit when it comes to building online businesses.

Lots of people struggle with the same thing.

The bad habit is trying to figure out everything before starting.

It’s wise to have a plan, but when an imagined small hiccup that could happen well into the future stops you from doing anything, you’re planning too much.

If lots of people have done it before, you can do it too. You don’t have to figure out how you’ll overcome every possible obstacle before you even begin.

For example, many people like the idea of the rank and rent model, but never start because they don’t know how to get clients to rent their site. Or they don’t know how to set up call forwarding.

Many people never start a YouTube channel, because they think “it worked for this person, but their videos are better than mine would be…so it probably wouldn’t work for me”. The truth is, they’re right. Their videos won’t be as good as someone who’s already successful on YouTube. Duh!

How many times have you heard people talk about how cringeworthy their first video was? Or their first niche site? Or their first article? Or their first bunch of posts on Twitter/X?

No one started out perfect. Behind every success story is a story of struggle, failures, and wasted time.

Just get started. You’ll waste some time on things that don’t move the needle. You’ll probably fail on your first attempt, maybe even on your first 10 attempts. It will feel like you’re not making progress. Like you’re left in the dust by everyone else.

But you have to keep taking steps forward through the struggles. Eventually, you’ll make it. And you’ll be proud of yourself for pushing through.

Failing and trying again is better than never trying in the first place.

Hope this was helpful. Thanks for reading,

Ian

P.S.

If you really get stuck, most questions can be answered with a Google search. Or a ChatGPT conversation. Or by posting in a relevant Facebook group or subreddit.

If you’ve spent an abnormal amount of time building something without results, don’t feel bad about pivoting to something else! In fact, I think it’s good to pivot sooner rather than later if you no longer enjoy the work or run into obstacles you truly can’t overcome.

Failing at something is not the problem. Not starting is the problem.

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