I heard an expression recently that I’ve been thinking about.
The expression is about anxiety. This isn’t an exact quote, but it went something like this …
“When you don’t know which choice to make, that’s when you feel anxiety.”
That’s what I have been feeling lately. I am trying to build out this new media wing for Stodzy, and there are so many possibilities in front of me that it’s overwhelming. I don’t mean possibilities in a good way, but more in a confusing way. There are so many different ways I could potentially do the thing I’m trying to do. So which direction do I go?
The only option is to pick one and see what happens. So that’s what I am doing.
I’m trying to do something really big and important in the behavioral healthcare space. No one has ever done anything like this before. There aren’t a lot of creators who write about addiction treatment, or billing software, or creating alumni programs, or insurance policies.
Why not? There are hundreds of thousands of people who work in this space. Who says I can’t create media in this indsutry?
But it’s hard. I’m second guessing myself a lot. I’m carving a new path and trying something that has bever been done before.
What happens is that I get an idea, and then I execute. And then after I execute, I realize that what I created isn’t quite right, so then I make an adjustment. And then after the adjustment, I find another thing that isn’t quite right, so I adjust again.
I keep getting closer and closer, but I’m not quite there yet.
I’ll give you an example.
I’ve been working on this course for more than a month. The idea is to give away a free course and use it as a way to build my email list and generate leads. Simple enough right? I’ve built my entire email list for TimStodz.com by giving away free stuff.
But when I finally published the course, I discovered a problem.
Signing up or a course isn’t the same as signing up for an eBook. To sign up for a course, you have to create an account. This may not sound like a big deal, but it’s a process that has about 4 steps.
The goal is to make it as easy as possible for the users. I don’t want to have the course behind a membership wall, I want to have it public facing and then only tell people where they can find the course once they sign up for my email list.
For example, every month I do an eBook giveaway for my blog. You can see on this page, that all you have to do to get the eBook is to enter your email address. There’s just one step. Enter your email address and get the eBook.
It should be this simple for receiving the course as well, but if you check out the landing page for the course and tried to sign up, you would notice that it’s a process that requires 4 steps, instead of one.
This may not sound like a big deal, but on the internet, these extra steps will reduce my conversation rate probably by 70%.
I spent the last two weeks building the membership site for the course. Now that it’s done, I realize I have to start all over again. I have to build it from scratch, exactly the way I need it.
It feels like I am going backwards, but I’m not. I never would get to the next step without first getting through this step.
Success is nothing more than failure multiplied.
My only choice is to keep going and keep iterating. I will get there. I know I will. This is what I have to do if I truly want to do something big.