The Power Of Making A Decision
I’m going to let you in behind the scenes today. I’m a bit nervous about today’s issue because it’s possible that I have customers that belong the The Copyblogger Academy who read The Blank Page.
If that’s you, understand I don’t mean to be disrespectful and talk about my business to you in a way that feels like I’m rubbing it in your face. But I feel as though this lesson I’ve learned is important and relevant and I hope you see the purpose.
Here’s what happened.
I bought my first piece of equity in Copyblogger Media LLC in 2018. By late 2019, I owned 60% of the company. That purchase meant that I had the decision making power to do whatever I wanted. Legally, I was completely in charge.
However, there was still a bit of tension in decision making. It wasn’t personal tension. My partner, Brian, is and was great. He supported me in every move I made.
Rather there was this invisible hand that kept me second guessing myself because there was another partner involved. It kept me from truly executing on my vision. I didn’t want to let Brian down and I didn’t want to fail.
Growth was difficult.
I have spent my entire entrepreneurial career in lead generation space and agency space. Basically, I’m really good at getting the phone to ring. I’ve done millions of dollars in business by generating phone calls, both to myself (for our client services business) and for our clients. I figured that Copyblogger would be easy. Digital marketing is digital marketing … right?
Wrong. Wrong in basically every way possible.
Growing Copyblogger required new skills. I was completely underqualified.
I needed to learn how to …
create a great product.
sell a product through email.
write great sales pages.
run and manage the customer service / billing / technicalities of selling digital products.
It was hard. I was constantly insecure. I made all the mistakes I could make. No seriously, if there was a mistake that was possible to make, I made it.
After a few years of practice, I started to figure things out, but I still wasn’t seeing the real growth I felt like I should be seeing.
What was I missing? What was the problem? It was extremally frustrating because I was studying every day and practicing these new skills. I was putting in the honest effort. Wtf was the problem?
The problem was that I needed to make a decision.
I bought out Brian. When I did this, I gave myself the permission to execute and fail. I knew what I wanted to do, I knew the product I wanted to create, and I knew how I wanted to implement my vision from a logistics standpoint.
I thought about it for weeks, talked about it with Jules, and then made the choice.
Suddenly, all the roadblocks disappeared and the path forward opened up in front of me. I had no nagging voice in the back of my head keeping me passive because I was afraid of failure and afraid of letting Brian down. The “back and forth” in my mind dissipated.
I said “I’m doing this.” LFG. 🔥
And it worked. Copyblogger is thriving. It happened so quickly. The very second I made the choice, everything started to come together. Now, my sales are through the roof and my customers are happy.
This entire experience has once again, reaffirmed the power of decision. Making a decision is something that is difficult to measure. It’s not like I can quantify it, but we all know the power I’m referring to.
Something happens when you burn the ships.
Something happens when you make the choice to do what you know needs to be done. That gut feeling is real. I don’t know where it comes from or how it works, but it’s proof to me that there are spiritual elements in the Universe that can’t be understood, only accepted.