how to start something new (like an online fitness business)

Summary

starting something new feels like you need clarity first. you don’t. clarity comes from doing. you cannot think your way to a niche, a brand, or a business. you have to ship the messy version and let the world tell you what it actually is.

the niching debate misses the point. niching is the output of repeated engagement, not the input. you start broad, you talk to people, you watch which messages land, you narrow.

what I’d tell a new fitness business owner (or anyone starting from scratch):

1. create before you’re clear. post the rough thing. write the email. record the video. clarity emerges from output, never from planning.
2. help people one at a time. every conversation is data. every reply teaches you what your audience actually cares about.
3. change your mind. the messy launch is the asset. if you pivot three times in the first year, you’re doing it right.
4. don’t believe in set-and-forget. no online business runs itself. the people selling you that one are selling you the dream, not the reality.

the juggling analogy: you cannot start juggling by reading about juggling. you have to drop the balls. that’s the whole game.

Transcript

struggling with clarity? do this instead

Today, let’s talk about gaining clarity when you’re looking to do something new, whether that’s launch a new product, start a podcast, start an online venture to your business, or just go down a new path altogether, completely something new. How do you gain clarity in going through that process? So the reason I want to talk about this today is because, you know, I’ve been preaching the value of having a newsletter.

I have a newsletter. You can sign up for this newsletter in the description of this episode. But here’s the deal. One thing that I think is really important with the newsletter is starting to get an idea or feel for who your audience is. People think that if you niche down, you kind of select your audience, but that’s not really true.

You select your messaging. And when you select your messaging, your audience kind of forms. And this is something I know just having done this for such a long period of time, over a decade running online businesses. And so what I’ve been doing is putting out messaging into the world under kind of this personal brand of mine for the last several years, or last year more seriously, should I say.

the myth of niching vs. messaging

And I’m gaining clarity through doing. That’s what I’m doing. And so I put out my message, and then when people reply to my newsletter, they ask a question. They have a problem. And then it gives me insight to like, who’s in this community? Who is a part of this? And I’ve been getting a lot of great responses and questions lately, and I want to start tackling some of those on the podcast.

I have to kind of categorize these things as opposed to like, hey, John asked this very specific question. I’m going to answer it today, because a lot of these things can be categorized. And the category I have for this one specifically is people are asking me, they want to do something new. And for what your reason behind it doesn’t really matter.

Some people have an existing business, and they maybe want to launch a new branch, or a new product, or just something auxiliary, parallel to their existing business. Some people are really successful in whatever business they’re already running. Maybe they have a really high-paying job somewhere, and they’re looking to start something on the side, or launch an online business, or get more into a personal brand, something like that.

They want to kind of gain that clarity and move forward. And that’s kind of the question is like, how do you gain clarity and then launch this thing? Because I’ve been doing this more or less publicly, and it’s been a messy process for the last year. It’s not, and I don’t want it to be all squared away and act like I know exactly what I should be putting out, because I’m trying to get as much feedback from everybody.

And so I’ve kind of boiled it down to answer this question. If you’re looking to start something new, how do you gain clarity on what that is and what it looks like? And the first thing I have to urge everyone to do who’s sending me these kind of messages is you just need to start. Okay, you just need to start.

why you must create before you’re clear

Whatever that is for you, it starts with content, right? You need to start creating content. I highly recommend the daily practice of writing being a thing. Start writing 100 words a day, 200 words a day, 500, 1,000, whatever it is that you can handle. Just start. Start doing that. Turn that content into whatever you can on Instagram, YouTube, wherever you want to publish that content.

Have a newsletter. Start getting people in there. But just start. And you can change and evolve over time, but you need to start, because there is no let me gain perfect clarity on my idea, my product, how I’m going to send people from one product to the other, and then you like plan that for six months, then you start.

That’s not a good idea. You just need to start. So anyone who’s looking to do something new, be stressed out, be unorganized, be messy, and just start the thing that you’re looking to do. I cannot urge you enough to do that very thing. Just start. I know that’s the Nike just do it thing, but with all the questions I’m getting, I realize a lot of people are waiting for things to be perfect, and that’s never going to be the case.

And hopefully you see that in what might seem organized, but it’s completely unorganized behind the scenes with what I’m doing with my personal brand and launching new products right now. Which brings me to my second thing, is be okay with it being messy, or are you changing your mind? I have been attempting to launch an email marketing course for months.

Some of you are aware of that, and we’re launching it at the time of this video publishing. It’s launching this week. We’re in the middle of the launch as this video is being published. And I’ve gone back and forth on that, not because I don’t have the time to launch it or whatever, is I wasn’t finished getting feedback from people on what I wanted, so I kept going, I’m going to launch it next month or next week, and we’re finally there.

But the scope of the information need to be tailored to the audience and messaging that I’ve been putting out. And that has made the process very messy, messier than I would want of changing dates and changing times and all that kind of stuff. And it’s been messy, but you just have to be okay with that.

my messy email course launch story

And I’ve rebranded, I’ve launched new websites and all this stuff over the course of time really in testing new ideas to see what people resonate with, and it’s been messy and slightly unorganized. But to be honest, what I know from having done online business for a long time is no one really cares or pays that much attention to what you’re doing.

They do to some degree. If people are tuned into the podcast, they know what you’re doing, they know. Some of you know what I’m talking about, I’ve been trying to do this forever. Maybe you’ve seen me do different things with a website or whatever. But most of the time, 90% of the people watching this, listening right now, they have no idea about the mess I’m talking about, what it feels like really messy behind the scenes.

It’s because I’ve been changing my mind on where I want the personal brand to flow into, the type of content I want to put out, do I want to go really business heavy or self-development or everything, or just talk about anything and everything that I want to because it’s me as a person and I’m interested in a lot of different things.

So just be okay with it being messy if you’re going to do something new. And the last thing that is probably the most important thing that you need to do is you need to genuinely help people. Now, this is something I’ve been doing behind the scenes in the newsletter. And people reply and I’m actually like, hey, how can I help this person?

Either by just giving a thorough response or does this warrant me creating some sort of new resource that will not only be beneficial for them but for other people? But actually helping people with something very specific. People will message me on Instagram and I think sometimes the expectation is that I’m going to sell them something and most of the time, I don’t have anything to sell under this brand, under my personal brand right now.

helping people is the fastest path to clarity

Like I said, we’re launching something this week. But I’m just like, how can I help you? You ask a question like, well, how can I help? And I’ll point them to a resource, I’ll send them to the newsletter if I think that’ll help. And then I’m just kind of done with the conversation. I’m not following them up, I’m not DMing them trying to get them on a sales call or any of that stuff.

I’m just genuinely trying to help people and get feedback. And not everyone has a lot of time to do that. I understand if you are starting something new, it probably needs to earn money quite quickly. But at the same time, going slower and being messy and changing your mind is going to be the better process.

Because what I’ve learned is I don’t gain clarity by just sitting around and thinking about what the next best step is, right? Everyone has a great plan until they get punched in the mouth like the famous Mike Tyson quote or like the military example is no good plan survives first contact from the enemy, something along those lines.

You can have the best plan that you ever, ever could want, but ultimately, once it comes down to you doing it, things are going to change. The market’s going to shift. Maybe people aren’t interested in the product you think you wanted to sell, so you need to sell something new. Or maybe it just needs to be packaged differently.

Maybe you don’t actually want to talk about the content you think you want to talk about as much as you do. So you’re just having to pivot and you’re only going to find those things out through doing. So this is, I’m creating this video, this podcast episode right now, actually to send to people in the future and to answer the question.

Like I said, that’s been kind of categorized from dozens of response from the newsletter of people kind of in this bucket. But that’s what I’m doing right now. I’m trying to help somebody from feedback that I’ve gotten directly of like, I want to do this thing. What should I do? You just need to start.

the juggling analogy: why you need to start

You will gain clarity as you get going. Like if I wanted to learn how to juggle, I’m not going to plan out my juggling schedule and then read a couple books on juggling and then watch a YouTube video on juggling. And then after all of that, six months of doing that, be like, you know what? I think I will now grab the juggling balls and start to try and juggle.

You need to be doing all those things at the same time. So in reverse, what I would do if I was trying to learn to juggle is I would grab three balls. I would go try and juggle, realize where I suck. Then I would start to get the resources and tools and coaches and everything I needed in place after I find out like, oh, I suck at this part of juggling.

Now to move away from the juggling example, if you’re starting something new, a new revenue stream, a new business, you want to start more in personal branding, you want to start a newsletter, just start it. Just start it. Let it be messy. Don’t have a solid plan. Tell people that. Tell people, hey, this is going to be a little bit messy.

I’m not 100% sure what I’m doing, but I want to do it. That can be your content. That can be your newsletter. And then you just need to get started and you are going to gain all that clarity that you’re hoping for through the effort, through the sacrifice, through the learning and through every step of pain that that truly is as everything kind of sucks and it’s messy and you don’t enjoy it, but you’ll gain a lot of clarity.

You’ll be so much further along in three months as opposed to taking another course and hiring another coach because courses and coaches are awesome, but they’re only awesome when you’re actually doing the thing. If you’re doing the thing, if you’re trying email marketing and you’re not good at it and then you buy my email marketing course, yeah, maybe I can help you shortcut.

But if you’re not doing it at all and you just are like, well, maybe this will be a good venture, it could be helpful from an educational standpoint, but you’re not coming from a place of experience. It’s when experience meets experience. When iron sharpens iron. I have a lot of experience in something.

You’re starting to and I’m trying to shortcut your path. You’re trying to shortcut your journey here. That’s where these things become powerful. So don’t sit around and try and gain clarity through planning and thinking while those things are important. I really feel like they’re only important if you’re actually out there doing the thing.

And so like I said, I’m doing all this right now. I’m doing most of it publicly and you’ve seen it. I’m launching products. I’m doing new things. I’m trying out new forms of content and all these different things. We’re tracking all the results and some of them good, some of them bad, and I’ll go over more of those things and in future episodes.

But if you are looking to start something, even if you’re already really successful, just start be okay with the mess and actually help people and get their feedback, create resources for them. And now you’re starting to build something, build something that’s going to test, stand the test of time and that people really want to be a part of because there is no like hands off online business where you never talk to your customers and you just sell things and you sit on the beach.

Like I don’t know who started that idea or that crap. But the reality is if you want a business, you need customers. And the only way to get customers is to get them to interact with you, actually help them find out where they have pain points, solve the problems for them, most of them for free and then occasionally charge.

there’s no “set and forget” online business

That’s the business model. That’s the business model for online business. It’s the only one I know. I don’t know of any other business model where I’m just sitting around selling things and I go do nothing and the business scales. If I’m not continually in every business that I’m part of trying to help people and solve their pain, I’m not of use anymore.

They’re not going to be customers any longer. So that’s ultimately what you have to do. So if you are struggling with clarity, just get going and try harder.