“Fear weaponizes your imagination against you.” – Jed McKenna
Last week, I downloaded Instagram for the first time in 8 years.
Turns out IG is a key middle-of-funnel conversion mechanism for Hinge leads in Mexico City…
So the upside, I figured, would easily outweigh the downside.
Right?
Wrong.
The moment I opened the app, I was slammed with ads from coaches coaching coaches to coach coaches who coach coaches, all of them saying some version of the same thing:
“You’re screwed.”
Business has never been harder, they say.
It isn’t 2020 anymore, you can’t just press the internet button and make money fly out.
You actually need a system, now, and the only system that works is my system, because every other system is so, like, 2021, and if you don’t install my system in the next 3 hours AI will run away with your business and your wife and leave you eating lonely microwave dinners with nothing but the cat for company, and he never really liked you anyway.
The good news, they say, is you can book a “discovery” (sales) call with my “team” (outsourced sales agency) so we can help you “install” (buy) my system before it’s too late.
If I sound old and cranky, that’s because I am.
But I’m also old enough to know bullsht when I see it, and it’s the same bullsht gurus have been peddling since I started back in 2010.
First it was “SEO is dead!”
Then “blogging is dead!”
Then “your cat is dead! — now you have to eat those microwave dinners alone because you didn’t install my system when you had the chance — just kidding, for a limited time only…”
Every year, it’s the same story.
The characters change, but the bullsh*t stays the same.
After 16 years online, running multi-million dollar education businesses through ~3 generations of changes…
The SEO, blogging & affiliate era (2010 - 2015)
The social media era (2015 - 2021)
The creator era (2021 → today)
(and now, of course, the AI era which I suspect hasn’t truly begun, yet)
…Here’s the honest-to-God truth:
In some ways, online business has never been easier.
My first website cost $5k, took 4 months to build, and had less functionality than a free WordPress template.
The first app I built cost a quarter million dollars to launch, and 5-figures in monthly overhead to maintain.
Not to mention, for the first half of my career, everything sold online was assumed to be a “scam”.
These days, you can sit down with a cup of coffee at breakfast and have a fully-functioning business before lunch.
And, you can do it at near-zero cost.
Of course, that doesn’t mean it’s easy.
(this is business, after all)
The market has never been noisier or more saturated, for example.
But that also means there are more founders, having more success than ever before.
(that’s literally what saturation means)
So please, don’t let the gurus scare you.
Every era has upsides and downsides.
And — big secret:
There are always about as many upsides as downsides.
The platforms may change, but the fundamentals always stay the same:
Put your head down.
Put your blinders on.
Delete Instagram (she’s not worth it).
And get to work.
- T
P.S. In case you missed it:
Here’s 16 years of business advice in 72 minutes.
(no fear-mongering, no Lambos, just high-level, battle-tested strategy that applies to every era of business)
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