That thing you’ve been wanting to do—that thing you’ve been working towards—that thing you’ve been watching other people and wondering, “can I do it?”

You can do it.

I remember when I first got the idea that I wanted to make money online.

(Yes, it was about me at the time. These days, I realize that the joy comes from helping people much more so than from earning money.)

It was 2017 and I was listening to lots of podcasts featuring people who were making hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions of dollars, online. They sold information products.

They taught others how to pass an architecture exam or how to make bread at home or how to study more efficiently.

Without fail, they all said, “my first attempts failed miserably”.

That was my experience too. My first attempt at running an online business was to write a guide about Amsterdam’s neighborhoods: which one would best suit you?

I sold exactly one copy.

To a competitor.

I guess the guy must have googled whether anyone else was entering his market. He probably paid me the $15 or whatever it was, spent 30 seconds looking through my PDF, and went, “Ha! Nothing to worry about.”

My next attempt involved helping yoga studios improve their email marketing.

This seemed like an easy business to get into. Yoga teachers are not exactly known for their tech skills and there was so much low-hanging automation fruit.

I wrote some blog posts, did a few projects, got on a couple podcasts with business advice for yoga studio owners. But I quit for some reason; I still don’t exactly know why. Something about it felt off.

Looking back, I think that if I’d stuck with it, I could have been a pretty successful yoga business consultant by now.

But I quit. And I felt pretty dispirited at that point.

I’d been learning about “online business”—what today we call the creator economy—for years. I should have been making plenty of money already.

Meanwhile, I was steadily spending down all the money I had saved in my first career as a litigation consultant. My savings account was rapidly depleting; I didn’t have much time left.

It wasn’t until I started blogging regularly and I eventually wrote a blog post on OmniFocus that everything changed.

I spent a lot of time writing up this blog post. I explained, in detail, how I set up OmniFocus and how I used it to be more organized and productive. Nobody was reading any of my blog posts, but this once started to attract traffic. Google was sending people my way, because it realized that people found this post very helpful.

One day, someone read the how-to-set-up-OmniFocus post and left a comment:

“Hey, this is fantastic information. You should charge for this.”

Light bulb! 💡

With my savings approaching zero, I figured I had nothing to lose. So I spent a week recording the first iteration of my OmniFocus course.

I contacted the people at the Omni Group: could I write a guest post on their website teaching people how to do a weekly review in OmniFocus, in return for a link back to my course sales page?

They said yes.

That, in combination with uploading a few course lessons for free on YouTube, is how I got my first customers.

These days, I offer seven courses to become more productive and I have a healthy YouTube channel, too.

It took a while, but I realized I could do it: I, too, could run a successful (online) business, even though it really didn’t seem like it initially.

I thought of my start and my self-doubt because a friend of mine is walking a similar path. She has a YouTube channel that’s more popular than mine, actually, but she’s creating her first paid course and she’s worried whether anyone will buy it.

People will. She’s very good at teaching in her field. People love her YouTube videos and have been clamoring for her to create an in-depth course.

But I understand her doubts. I had them too.

Until you do something, it’s hard to believe that you can do it.

But you can. You just need to keep trying. And failing. And trying. And failing. And learning. Until one day, you succeed.

Now, the thing you want—it probably isn’t to make money online.

But there’s something you want. Something you’ve been working towards. Something that’s had you wondering, “can I do this?”

The answer is yes.

You can do it.

It might take a little bit of time. And you shouldn’t delude yourself; listen to people’s feedback.

But when you listen to people, when you incorporate their feedback, and when you use your creativity, you will do it.

I believe in you. Now it’s time for you to believe in yourself, too.

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