Stop Waiting, Start Doing
In 2013 when I stop being “the t-shirt guy” and started my journey to create and sell products (online courses, podcasts, books) and services (software products, consulting, etc), I had ZERO clue what I was going.
I didn’t have any writing skills.
I didn’t know who my audience was or should be.
I didn’t know what “thing” I should create first.
I watched all the webinars, read all the articles, and figured someone would finally give me that ONE precious tactic that would make everything easy for me.
You know what came next, right?
I found no such tactic. Instead, I found myself with too much information and no clear direction or path to follow. I felt like I was standing at a fork in the road, yet instead of the fork having two directions, it had about 200.
I know you feel this way. I’m not asking you to raise your hand and admit it. But I want you to know that you just have to start. You have to be willing to make a choice right now and move forward. Pick one of the 200 available paths and own that path until it proves itself worthless.
The first path I chose was to create an online course about getting sponsorships. I had experience getting sponsorships and knew it was something I could share my knowledge of.
Would anyone care?
Would they buy a course from someone who’d never taught anything before?
Could I actually teach getting sponsorships (I wasn’t an “expert”)?
I just went for it. I put everything else aside and went down that path. What’s the worst that could happen?
I stopped reading articles. I stopped attending webinars. I put my head down in creation mode and built the smallest, best version, of an online course that I could. When I was “done” (which you never really are), I picked an arbitrary price for the course. The price changed about 20 times in the coming months. Maybe one person noticed.
My first “launch” was not a launch at all, it was sending the course to people for free to get feedback. I took the criticism and made a few tweaks and changes.
Then I promoted the first real launch. I shared a pre-launch page with an email signup on FB, Twitter, and to my email list of 400 people. That probably brought in 20 email signups. I decided that wasn’t enough so I manually emailed 50 people on my email list and invited them personally. About half signed up. I did a live webinar with my apple headphones as the mic. I had difficulties running the slides. I could barely keep up with the chat. My sales pitch itself was probably terrible. In fact, I know it was terrible.
BUT… I made 7 sales. Around $3,500.
Sure, I couldn’t retire young, but people bought! And better yet, I got to connect with people and share information I’d learned and that they could apply in their lives/businesses. That was empowering.
This is the stage I know many of you are in if you’re reading this. It’s okay if you don’t want to admit it. You’re never going to move forward if you don’t just start. If you don’t just pick one of the 200 paths and start creating, promoting, and doing the actual work. You have enough knowledge. You have enough examples and tactics at your disposal. You just need to move forward and understand things won’t go as planned and you may create a few stinkers before you create a winner.
Stop waiting. Start doing.
