All of the Steps are Hard
"The first step is the hardest" is a lie
“The first step is the hardest. All you have to do is take the first step and the rest is smooth sailing”.
I’m sure you’ve seen or heard some variation of the above, both online and in real life.
I get the sentiment, but it’s 100% bullshit. All of the steps are hard. Owning a business is a grind that never ends. You can either learn to accept it or you can waste your entire life “researching” (aka procrastinating).
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Why do people lie about how difficult it is?
Most people who say “the first step is the hardest” are saying it with good intentions. They see that you’re wasting your life away in the never ending research phase and they’re trying to light a fire under your ass to get you to take action.
In one sense, it works. Sometimes people hear that and think “wow, this easy task is the hardest part? Fuck it, I’m going to start now.”
But then the problems start.
Once you get past the first step of buying a domain and hosting, you realize that you have to spend a couple of days figuring out how to set up WordPress. This is the moment when your Xbox starts to seem more appealing then ever.
It’s better to be realistic about your expectations up front. Starting a business - any type of business - requires tons of effort and heartache.
You know those stories about startup founders sleeping on a futon for their entire first year in business? It sounds cool and inspiring when you’re hearing it as part of a tale about someone who you know for a fact eventually made it, but for the guy who lived through it, it fucking sucked.
I don’t personally recommend going the futon route - it’s much better to get a high-paying remote job before starting a business - but the hard work part isn’t going to be any different for you.
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You can’t think your way out of grinding
There’s no way around it.
You’re going to have to grind it out. Once you figure out how to get your WordPress site set up, the real work begins.
Now you’re the proud owner of a DR0 site that no one has ever heard of with zero content on it. You have to figure out how to set up content silos, do keyword research, and create content that ranks.
Once you figure out how to do everything, you realize that you’re doing it the hard way. You need to spend time and effort figuring out systems to make everything happen efficiently.
Then, just when you finally get to the point where you feel like you’ve figured out the whole solopreneur thing, your site will be big enough that you have to start hiring people. You need to figure out where to find writers, how to interview them, and how to train them. Then all of a sudden you realize that you have all these people working for you but you don’t have any management skills, so you need to figure that out as well.
And on and on and on.
The point is: you can’t research all of this in advance. There are some types of knowledge that you can only obtain through experience. If you’re an intellectual type of person you probably hate this and think (wish) that it doesn’t apply to you.
It does. No one is exempt.
You can’t think your way out of suffering.
Conclusion
If you spend any amount of time researching beyond figuring out what the next step is, you’re wasting your time. You can’t avoid making mistakes. You can’t avoid the pain of wasting entire days trying to figure out something that sounds like it should be easy.
Some of you have been following me on Twitter for over a year and still haven’t taken any action. You can keep telling yourself that you’ll start a side hustle “some day” if you want, but you and I both know that you’re bullshitting yourself.
It doesn’t hurt me. I’m a cartoon fish on the internet. The only person that you’re hurting is yourself.
Everyone who has ever started a business has to go through the Trough of Sorrow.
You’re no exception.