A few days back, I had a “Eureka!” moment. It was nothing great like Newton’s apple drop, but it was significant to me. I had the idea of building a simple product that provides value, from the ground up, using old school online tools and centring a topic that I was fairly familiar with.
I thought of the idea of building a personal finance guide with a suite of essential financial trackers, that would be launched at the dawn of the new year.
Everything seemed to align well for me. I was familiar with the domain of personal finance. I have built and use my own custom financial trackers. I have had experience building, launching, marketing, selling and operating online digital products before. The timing seemed perfect as New year resolution season was about to hit the globe. Eureka!
The only thing left was ‘to do‘, but…
All the required ingredients were there. I just had to do it.
Instead of being the usual me saying “Yeah, let’s do this thing!”, I found myself pondering for just a tad longer than usual. I decided to get out of the house and took a walk.
I was scared.
My mind spiralled into a whirlpool of negative ‘what ifs’.
What if I failed? What if it is not received well? What if I do not sell to even one customer? What if the product is broken and people look down on me? What if, what if, what if....?
But the more I asked myself of these what ifs, the more I realised that I was not answering the ‘what if’ questions. I was just sinking into a dark hole of self-doubt. So, I stopped the sinking, and started answering.
What if I failed to deliver? > It will be one of many failures! Everyone fails. Suck it up. What if it is not received well? > Then learn what was bad about it. Build, measure, learn. Fail fast, learn fast. What if I do not sell to even one customer? > Then I would have learned how to quickly build and launch a product within just 2.5 weeks！ That in itself is a great experience. What if the product is broken and people look down on me? > Then fix it and try again. There is value in pure honest effort. And it don't matter what others think of me. What matters is what I think of myself.
The more I answered my own fears, the more I dispelled it. The more I realised that there is not much to fear and to lose. Rather, I realised that there is much potential to gain.
What if I succeed to deliver on time? What if it is well received by people? What if I manage to sell it to many customers? What if the product turns out well and I instead inspire others to challenge themselves too? > That would be AWESOME.
So now the only thing left is ‘to do‘.
And do I shall.
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Like for real. I am building the personal finance product.
Follow me on Twitter to see my journey towards launching thepersonalfinancechallenge.com
Im off on an Adventure!
Ruiz