Stop preparing. Start doing.

The only thing you learn from 'perfect planning' is how to waste another year.

Is this your path to success, or will you waste another year?

Researching, refining, strategizing.

But isn’t that what you did all last year. And the year before that. Maybe even the year before that?

Researching, refining, strategizing. Repeat.

Sometimes I talk to myself. 👆 Today I’m talking to both of us.

Moving at One Speed

It’s no secret. I move at the speed of desperation.

I don’t act on perfect opportunities until I’m right up against a wall. This has led to a notebook full of business ideas that someone else started, some of them slaying it right now (the ipod was my idea back in 2001).

I began my solopreneur journey by shutting down a struggling online marketing and design agency. One I should have closed years earlier.

It took losing clients I didn't even like. A divorce. The paralyzing fear of what comes next.

In 2017, it took all those things to get me to finally do it and start from scratch.

Desperation was my fuel.

Luck = Opportunity + Preparation?

By 2020, I was established. Ready to catch the wave of new work from companies going remote and needing remote contractors—something some of those new clients had never considered before.

Grateful for those desperate days a few years before that put me in the right place at the right time, but what if I hadn't had the benefit of desperation?

It wasn’t as if I was preparing new business as a result of COVID. I was just doing my thing. Let’s pretend I knew it was coming. What would I have done to actually prepare?

Then about two years ago, I registered the domain www.sixfigureprocrastinator.com. I was taking a live course to learn how to run a challenge. I bought into this course to add a new sales funnel option to my B2B toolbelt.

It was for my clients, not for me.

Sure, I've always wanted to teach other solos what I knew, but that's not why I was there.

Once I got into the course, I realized building an actual challenge was part of it. And everyone else in the course was there for themselves.

Falling in Love.

So I created Six-Figure Procrastinator to build a pretend challenge that would help freelancers and solopreneurs stop getting in their own way, systematize their business, and finally make a great living.

But then I started to fall in love with the idea.

But why did I wait for another year and half tinkering with it? Then, wait six months to do something with the domain like hook it up to this Substack? And why did it take me still another six months to become intentional with it?

Wasting Time.

Of course I told myself I was strategizing, refining, researching. Or I was busy with client work. My excuses to avoid admitting imposter syndrome.

What I was really doing is waiting for some outward sign to tell me to keep going.

Where was that sign supposed to come from when I was refining things in my own head? No one could see what I was working on.

No audience, no feedback. Just more preparation.

My “strategy” sessions taught me nothing new. They were just a treadmill of ideas I'd already thought of.

So I started putting it out there, rough edges and all, and surprise: that’s where the feedback came from. The momentum, the clarity—all because I finally took action.

Action = Data.

Take an action your audience can see. That’s where the real growth, real learning, and real change comes from.

So what are you really doing? Are you still researching, refining, strategizing?

The best feeling.

Don't waste time on perfection. Let your audience, clients, students... whoever are your real people… let them show you what’s working. Offer to help them.

They may say no. But then you have some data you can take action with.

I’m here. I’ve got imposter syndrome every day. But I keep hearing that I’m helping some people. So I’ll keep going.

Take that first step, share what you’ve got, and learn as you go.