‘Start With Doing’ — Letter to an Overwhelmed Self-Starter
Every now and then, I get into an amazing email correspondence.
I try to always add a question to my emails. Even a silly email like the typical ‘thank you for subscribing to our email list’ contains a question, a call-to-action, something that will help me learn more from the people who join me.
Most people ignore the question. A few respond.
Today, I received an email from Tina (Tina Eaton). This is hot off the press. I swiftly asked her if I could mention her name and our exchange, which she agreed.
My question is simple:
You know your business inside out. What is your current biggest struggle?
She replied almost instantly.
Hi, Alex!
I’m a consultant, so my business is just me.
I guess my biggest struggle is knowing where to start with both inbound and outbound marketing to build up my client base.
What struck me with her reply is how familiar I am with what she’s feeling. She mentions inbound and outbound marketing, literally my daily work. Building a client base is also a struggle I understand.
She inspired me to answer straight away, from the heart. This is one take. One draft. Sent. I hope she found value in my answer. I hope you do too.
Hi Tina,
Thank you for reaching out.
I hear your struggle. Starting out is hard, and figuring out where to even start is worse. The number one piece of advice I can give you is… start. Start with anything. Even the smallest bit of step you can take towards achieving what you need to achieve is great progress.
Everything is daunting if you zoom out and look at the big picture. How will you manage an entire inbound strategy with SEO, marketing funnels, demonstrations of your services, sales calls, customer enquiries, customer support, optimising, landing pages, adwords, facebook and twitter marketing, social media presence, PR… Phew. So much to do.
Take the first step. Start with what you know. You know your business so start writing. What should your prospects know about you? Start with that. What should they know about your services? Follow up with that.
Let the work snowball into something. Even if that something is ugly, a draft, a mockup of what you’d like it to become — this is enormous success.
I hope this rant somehow helps. The crux is: do things. The more you do, the more you’ll end up doing.
Good luck!
PS: Thank you for joining our mailing list, I hope you learn a lot from it!
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Start doing.
PS: Find her on Medium Tina Eaton and on her website, http://tinaleaton.com.
