Everything Takes Twice As Long And Costs Twice As Much As You Think It Will [Building In Public #10]
Success is mostly a numbers game. In most cases, you simply need more repetitions.
Good morning. Happy Monday.
This is the tenth edition of my weekly “Building In Public” series. Each Monday I share with you my wins, losses, and lessons from the previous week.
These lessons are what I’ve learned on my journey to grow my personal holdings company to $10,000,000 a year.
LFG. 🔥
This issue is free for everyone, but if want behind the scenes access on creating multiple income streams, I hope you’ll consider becoming a paid member by subscribing below.
Everything Takes Twice As Long And Costs Twice As Much As You Think It Will
Today’s essay will feel like a success story. However, it’s mostly a story about failure.
I want you to truly understand how much failure, frustration, doubt, second guessing, and mistakes go into building something that other people want to pay for.
Pay attention.
Copyblogger Academy Is Having It’s Best Month Yet
We’ll do over $50,000 in revenue this month. This will be our highest revenue and highest profit month ever.
The Academy has very high profit margins, (as do most digital membership sites), and so the steady growth Charles and I have created feels extremely gratifying.
Charles has been working relentlessly to make our Academy the absolute best membership platform in the world. I can confidently say that The Copyblogger Academy provides the most value (in relation to the cost) to any membership platform out there. It’s actually insane how many courses, resources, events, and support we give away within The Academy and how little we charge for it.
Find me something better, I bet you can’t.
Anyway, we’re halfway through the month and have almost hit $50,000.
The Endless Failures
As I look back on it, it’s so clear how reckless it was to buy this company. All I was buying was a website. There were no products, no revenue, and no business model. Copyblogger was simply a blog with a lot of traffic.
I made every mistake possible. I …
created a membership site on Memberpress, but it didn’t function properly.
I switched to Mighty Networks, but that didn’t work.
Switched to Circle.so, where we still are and in my opinion is the best online membership platform.
Created courses that no one wanted.
Created an upsell process that didn’t make sense
Basically everything I could have done wrong, I did do wrong.
But I kept learning, I kept iterating, and I kept executing. There were days when I felt so embarrassed, because I would do a big product launch, but then I would have to refund the sales I made because because the tech stack didn’t work properly and the customer experience was so bad.
Really, there were times when I felt so frustrated that I would cry. It’s been really difficult.
My Superpower Is To Keep Going
If there is one skill I believe I have that separates me from others, it’s my relentless persistence.
I think the key is to obsess over the process and not obsess over the results. The results (whether it be the sales, keyword rankings, email signups, whatever) is just data. You keep analyzing the data and then act on what the best next course of action is.
I accept that most things don’t work, and that success is a process of endless failures. Once I fully embraced that idea, it suddenly took the pressure off because I realized that almost everything I do would fail, at least in terms of meeting any expectations I set.
But if I simply kept going, it’s a statistical certainly that some things would work, if for no other reason than a law of averages.
So keep going. Accept that everything will cost twice as much as you think and take twice as long as you want.
But once you get over that mental blockage, nothing can stop you.
What I’ve Been Watching
I’ve always enjoyed listening to Star Talk. One of my favorite parts of Star Talk is watching how much Chuck Nice (Neil deGrasse Tyson’s co host) has learned over the years. Hearing him so elegantly explain the Higgs Field, and how it gives mass to particles was hysterical but also made me feel proud of him.
Years ago, when they first started Star Talk, he would mostly drop fart jokes.
Way to go Chuck. Keep looking up.
Also, I highly encourage you to watch this video. Brian Greene is a theorist, and it’s looking more and more like his math behind string theory doesn’t check out, but he’s a legitimate scientist with an open mind and an ego that is in tact enough to allow him to put his theories out there.
What I’ve Been Reading
I’m flying through books right now. Currently I’m loving The Three Body Problem, written by Liu Cixin. It’s phenomenal.
Like many of you, I watched the series on Netflix and decided to read the book. As usual, the book is even better.
10 out of 10.
In Conclusion
I’ve been feeling pretty down on myself recently.
There’s a lot going on in my world. There are so many changes happening, many of them I haven’t been able to talk about, but I’m looking forward to openly sharing some of the big changes in my life when the appropriate time presents itself.
This entire year has been one giant journey of growth and transformation. I feel like I’m becoming a stronger and more focused version of myself. But in order for me to get to this new enlightened state, I’ve had to shed a lot of layers that I’ve used to protect myself.
I’m feeling more vulnerable and more exposed than ever before.
I realize this sounds cryptic, but believe me, it’s been real and raw in The Stoddart household.
My business coach tells me that I need to give myself grace, and I agree. My default state is to be hard on myself, so I’m learning what it means to be gentle with myself and to accept that I’m just a person.
I want to share a note and extend myself to anyone who feels like they are going through it right now. If you’re hurting, it probably means you need to allow yourself to hurt. This too shall pass. I promise.
Love you guys. Talk to you next week.
Tim
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Tim, whatever is going on, there’s a tomorrow where things will be less bad and a tomorrow after that of the same. I know its obnoxious sometimes to have a stranger remind you of this (not that you need reminding), but as you said, one day does not make a life, much less one week or one year. I am thinking and praying for you.