this article will be a little different than my usual practical guide - in this one i want to cover something that i think is more important than any individual piece of advice that i can give. because without it, you'll never actually stack enough skills to apply anything else i say...
it's the idea of being proactive. by that i mean relentless doing without expecting an immediate success.
it's understanding that even when you fail, the things you learn from those failures will stack & blossom into something that'll feed into your future success.
i'll cover why you should separate yourself from the idea of succeeding for a second, get comfortable trying shit, and let the skills stack until you've built a real intuition for online business.
stop trying to "succeed"
understand that every project you start has two outcomes: either it works, or it teaches you something you'll use in the one that works.
i want you to partly detach the next thing you build from the money question, treat it as a rep instead of an all-in bet. of course you still want to think about the money & obviously try very hard to succeed, but don't let it beat you up emotionally.
the wins you see people celebrate in public were built in private years earlier. almost everyone successful has 20+ failed projects that you don't see. your goal should be speedrunning these failed projects.
you're either acting or you're being acted on
there's a trait i've noticed in nearly everyone who wins in online biz.. they treat life as something they do, not something that happens to them.
you can hear the opposite in how people talk. "i'm not technical enough to build X thing", "i'll start when Y opportunity comes", stuff like that. none of those describe reality, they're simply decisions dressed up as facts. repeating them & engraining them in your conscious mind is what makes them true.
reactive people also need perfect conditions to do anything. NEVER wait for perfect conditions. if you learn how to swim in tough conditions, you'll be an amazing swimmer in easy conditions.
execute ideas the same day you get them
ideas are cheap, everyone gets them. the difference is how fast you go from "someone should build this" to a live domain w/ something on it.
you'd rather ship a mediocre version today than a polished one in three months. speed is a skill like all the others, and it only builds through reps.
so be relentless about the cadence of how you ship. if you get an idea on monday, something should be live by friday. the people who look "lucky" online are usually just running way more experiments than everyone watching them.
there are a MILLION things you need to learn
some of them are stupidly small like how the internet works, how a computer works, how to unzip a rar file, lol.
then there's the layer people at least admit are skill... editing videos, designin, structuring a funnel.
and then the layer of stuff that you think are too big to learn: how social media algorithms work, running ads. how to sell, how to manage a team & a project at the same time, how to vibe-code your own product + host it + rank it on search engines.
none of this can be "known" without hands-on experience. e.g. reading about running ads is not running ads.
the only way to learn all of these things is to do them - whenever an opportunity comes to utilize one of them you should instantly take it.
when something isn't working, pivot & take the skills with you
beingrelentless doesn't mean being stubborn. when a project clearly isn't getting traction, you should pivot - but without any drama or identity crisis i'd hope lol.
before you jump to the next thing, run the exit interview. it's one question: what did this actually teach me?
whatever the answer is doesn't die with the project. skills transfer over to your next projects.
build a skill stack
the beautiful thing about failing in business is that every little fail leaves a skill behind.
maybe your first biz taught you how an industry works from the inside, the second one is where you figured out how to run ads, the third you vibe-coded yourself, and the fourth let you develop a network of like-minded people.
i've learned so much growing up that contributes to my success today, and almost none of it felt like learning at the time. it's only obvious in hindsight - knowledge doesn't just spawn into your brain in one day.
so open a note and write down every project you've ever tried, next to each one, write the skill it left you with, it'll probably be longer than you think.
if you can't teach this to someone starting from zero, don't expect to start from zero yourself
it's damn near IMPOSSIBLE to teach someone who's never done anything online how to use the internet to make money.
there are 100's of soft skills you pick up passively while messing around on the internet, things you wouldn't even think to teach.
so how do you expect to succeed without building up an intuition for things yourself? a feel for what works / what doesn't, for what good design looks like, a sense of how the internet economy actually moves, etc.
you won't, you need to put the reps in RIGHT NOW.
waiting around is costing you...
nothing has killed more potential skill than laying around waiting for the perfect opportunity to do something
because when this "perfect opportunity" finally shows up, you're meeting it w/ 0 baseline skills + 0 intuition. the person who's been messing around online for two years will get to a finished project faster than you because he already knows half of the things you're going to have to research & learn.
put your energy where you have a say
a big part of being proactive is watching where your energy actually goes.
everything you worry about falls into one of two buckets. things you can affect (the skills you're building, what you ship this week, who you network with) and things you can't (algorithm changes, competitors, etc.)
the first bucket grows the more you use it since each rep leaves you a skill, and skills open doors you didn't know existed, so the list of things you can affect keeps getting longer.
sitting in the second bucket does quite the opposite. you end up knowing more about everything that's wrong & still being able to do exactly nothing about any of it.
make tiny promises to yourself & keep them
the fastest way to flip from reactive to proactive is to promise yourself one tiny thing today (post one tweet, finish one lesson on X skill) and actually do it.
every kept promise builds self-trust, and without it you're cooked...
most people try to 10x their life overnight and conclude they're not built for this. don't do that.
CONCLUSION
the playbook is simple:
- pick something you've been lowkey curious about & ship the smallest version of it this week
- treat every build as a rep
- keep one small promise to yourself every day
- spend zero energy on things you can't affect
- when there's no traction, pivot - but log the skills it left you & more importantly, be proud of yourself for building them - build up your self-confidence
- when something actually starts working, lock in on it & maximize the opportunity
think of success as less of hitting a "goal" & instead growing the surface area that awin can land on. every skill you pick up makes that surface bigger, until success stops being something you chase and starts being inevitable due to your immense surface area.
i can promise that if you build this habit eventually you'll hit something that'll stick, hope you enjoyed the short article.
