Stop Waiting Until You Feel Ready

(Transcript edited for clarity.)

Hi, I'm Wes. Welcome to Stop Waiting Until You Feel Ready.

I know this might sound a little wild, but I promise you, if you get one thing out of this today, it can change your entire life, particularly in the areas of business, goal setting, and the important things you want to accomplish with your life.

So first, it's stop waiting until you feel ready.

Here's really what this is all going to boil down to. I'm going to back it up with some examples from my life and how I've used it and how it's helped me.

But here's the main message I want you to leave today with: Take action.

All of this boils down to taking action.

Keep that in mind as we go through this.

Most people don't fail because they start too soon. They fail because they wait too long.

When I was writing out my notes for this, that really hit me deep because so many times in my life, I've gotten into the habit of not starting.

I need more information. I need to learn more.

Instead of getting started and learning and adjusting along the way, it took me forever to get started.

If I had simply started when I had enough information and then learned and adjusted along the way, I would have reached my goals much faster.

I've learned over time.

I'm much better at this now than I used to be, but I still occasionally get into the, "Oh my, I've got to gather more information."

Confidence usually comes after taking action, not before it.

Why do I mention confidence? Why is confidence so important?

What I've found is that as I start taking action and start learning things, I build momentum. All of that is tied into confidence.

A lot of times before we start something, our first thought, whether we actually say it out loud or dwell on it, is, "Can I actually do this?"

So I set a goal. I want to accomplish this. Can I really do this?

A safety mechanism, at least for me sometimes, is, "Well, if I gather enough information about this, it's going to give me more confidence that I can do this."

But what I've found is there's a definite line about how much information I need, and then I call it diminishing returns.

Gathering more information reaches diminishing returns.

There's only so much information I can get before I actually take action, and then I gather more information as I learn.

I've got a lot more on this. Don't give up on me.

Number one: Take action.

Number two: Once you start taking action, evaluate and adjust.

Gather information until you've got enough to start. Then take action. Then evaluate and adjust, because that's also gathering information.

I spent years believing I needed to gather more information, but my biggest breakthroughs started happening when I learned to stop gathering and start taking action.

This is not an either-or.

You can continue to gather information, even outside information, after you've already started.

The point I'm trying to get through, and what I want you to focus on, is that there's a time to get started.

Start.

Take a small step.

Here's an example.

Years and years ago, probably about 20 years now, I wrote a book in a specific niche industry.

At the time, I thought, "I need to build a website because the book is going to help get my name out there in this small industry. People might start looking for me or what I'm talking about, and I can use the website to make some money."

What I found was affiliate websites, which basically meant I was selling other people's related products on my website, and you get paid to do that.

We'll talk about that some other time. The affiliate industry is an entire video, or series of videos, which I'll probably cover in the future.

That's not the important part.

The important part about getting started is this: I wrote the book. It was published through a small publishing company, and I said, "I need a website."

I didn't really know anything about building a website.

I had built one website at that time, and it was when I was getting my MBA.

I had to create a website as part of that program, and this was way back.

This was when it literally took 12 to 24 hours for a page, after you hit publish, to show up online.

Now it's instant. You hit publish, refresh your browser, and the page is there.

So this was way, way back.

That's all I knew about making a website.

There were ways you could gather information. You could go to old forums at the time and things like that.

There were even a few books about building websites, but there wasn't a ton of information available.

This is the example that really taught me I needed to start taking action, because here's what I did.

I took what little I knew and put up a website.

Then I'd work on putting up another page on the website.

This was not quick. It wasn't like later, when I could write a page and have it live within a couple hours or less.

I did lots of stuff wrong on that first affiliate website, but I learned as I was doing.

I finally met other people who were doing the same things, people who had more success at it and had been doing it longer than me.

I learned from them.

Instead of gathering information forever and then starting, I started and then gathered information.

I learned from what I did right and what I did wrong.

By the time I built my third or fourth affiliate website, it was a hundred times better than the first one I built.

The point was that I never would have learned all the things I needed to learn if I hadn't taken action.

Ready is often an illusion.

Think about that.

I'm going to say it again: Ready is often an illusion.

Often we get stuck in, "I've got to have more information. I'm not ready yet."

Sometimes it is important to gather enough information, but there's always a point where it's more important to take action instead of worrying about being more ready.

Progress creates confidence.

By the time I built my third or fourth affiliate website, I was confident.

I knew more. I knew what I needed to do. I knew what I shouldn't do.

Then I had more confidence.

I was more confident that it would work and that I would continue to learn.

The confidence was no longer in whether I could do it.

The confidence was that if I kept taking action, I would continue to learn and improve.

In other words, I started learning by doing.

Learn by doing.

A small imperfection, if you're taking action, is often much better than no action at all.

You don't have to feel ready. You just have to take action.

That's my challenge to you today.

Whatever it is that you've been working on, thinking about, or know you need to do or need to get started on, take action.

You don't have to take a huge action to get started.

Just get started.

Figure out whatever it is you want to accomplish and pick out one thing you can do today.

Let me give you an example back to building affiliate sites.

This was way back when a direct-match domain was valuable in the search engines.

For example, if the keywords you wanted to target were in your domain name, your URL, like www.whateveryourbusinessis.com, that could help you considerably.

If your website was about selling used Camaros, then if you could get sellingusedcamaros.com, that would help you considerably.

Or a variation of that, sellingoldcamaros.com, sellingoldusedcamaros.com, whatever.

I never had a website like that, but that's a good example.

Taking action might simply be going and getting the domain name that was available, sellingoldusedcamaros.com.

That's getting started.

Then tomorrow, you might take a second action: Figure out how to get hosting set up so you can have a website.

The third day, you've got the domain and you've got the hosting set up. Now let's figure out how to actually put something up on there.

At the time, I was using something called, I think, Microsoft FrontPage, which I'm sure is not around anymore.

It was basically a what-you-see-is-what-you-get editor.

That's how I learned because I never did learn how to write HTML. I'm not a coder, but I use things like that.

Probably the closest thing to that today that a lot of people use is WordPress. That's a what-you-see-is-what-you-get web editor.

That doesn't matter. That's just fitting with the example.

So that would be the third day.

Then the fourth day, you've got your domain, you've got your hosting, and you've got your editing software to actually make pages go up there.

On the fourth day, you write your homepage.

That's an example of taking action.

No single one of those things is a huge action, but you're taking action and you're getting started.

Let's say you don't know how to buy a domain name.

The first day you're taking action, you're going to find a domain name registrar, and then you're going to figure out how to get the domain name.

You're learning as you're going.

That's what taking action is.

So in closing, you don't have to feel ready.

You just have to begin taking action immediately.

Remember, confidence often comes from taking action, not before taking action.

I'm Wes. Thanks for being with me.

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What's Next?

·        Choose one goal or project you've been delaying because you don't feel ready.

·        Decide what information you genuinely need before you can safely start.

·        Identify the smallest useful action you can take today.

·        Take that action before gathering more information.

·        Use what happens as new information.

·        Evaluate, adjust, and take the next step.

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