Life Changes That Guided Me to Build Online Differently

Switching gears after realizing I was the bottleneck

I made some internal changes that gave me a new perspective of building online.

If you’re aware that you need to make changes, yet you’ve held back for whatever reason, this article reminds you of how important it is to prioritize making those changes.

You can’t skip the part where you fine tune some things within you so that you can make your way to a new level. After personally realizing how simple yet fundamental it is to understand this, I can clearly see how my business or personal brand is really just a reflection of who I am.

P.S. I just talked about the power of slowing down in your 20s in my latest article you should check out.

I don’t need to be stimulated all the time

I had a blast in college. But I also worked really, really hard. I was on the pre-med track studying neuroscience and I barely slept.

To successfully pull all-nighters for As in our cutthroat pre-med classes, we adopted some nasty habits like vaping, too much coffee, and other stimulants. It became a normal thing.

I only started vaping in my last year of college, but it was something I was able to quit whenever I wanted. A couple of years after graduating, I picked up the habit again and this time it lasted two years.

Thankfully it’s been 99 days since I’ve quit. I realized that I was trying to pump myself up too much, and this was not allowing me to see what ideas were worth being executed on. It fogged my mind because I was more worried about being productive with cheap dopamine hits instead of tending to the actual insight God was giving me.

For example, every time I’d go to write a couple of sentences for an article, I felt the need to vape. Before going into a store or the gym I’d vape. This habit made me ignore my emotions and thoughts that, even if difficult, would have aligned me to the focused, calm self that I was trying to be.

I had genuinely lost myself with this habit.

There were a lot of times I wanted to gain serious momentum building online, to write more, improve on my skills, network with others, and build meaningfully overall. Since I knew this is what I wanted, I stopped vaping because I knew that the outcomes I wanted were more important than an unhealthy habit.

This was a huge change for me because I had depended on this habit so much, and quitting was difficult. I made this choice because I know that as someone building online, there’s going to be times where I’m faced with challenges that seem bigger than me. But here’s the thing: you have to make sacrifices no matter how hard they are. God is calling you to get uncomfortable because that is the only way you will grow.

Even if vaping isn’t something you struggle with, your thoughts lead you to think you have to feel a certain way before taking action (like I was thinking with vaping). Notice these subtle ways of self-sabotaging. You don’t need to feel hyped, stressed, or anxious to get work done. It’s okay to let that mindset go that you need to sabotage your emotional or mental peace just to get certain results.

Your best work is done when you’re relaxed and trusting that the process is already unfolding how it needs to as long as your intentions are to help others. I know that I don’t want to build something where I must constantly be stressed, or that I have to constantly stimulate myself to feel like I can finally make some progress. I also know that the strongest version of me is not stimulated all the time. He’s relaxed, calm, confident, and intentional about how he builds.

Let go of any vices, whether mental (thoughts) or physical (e.g., stimulants), that are convincing you that progress won’t happen unless you give in to them.

It’s okay to forget about everything else

Not everything deserves your attention all at once.

Months ago, I noticed that while writing an article, I was already stressing about the next task. I’d dwell on it so much that I lost focus, then rushed through the current task just to get to the next one. This was exhausting because I was spreading my energy in so many places, never truly reaching the next level of potential that God was calling me to step into.

If you’re writing an article, just do that.

If you’re networking, just do that.

If you’re brainstorming some ideas, just do that.

Be intentional in this way. Think of it as laying one brick at a time. Over time, you lay the bricks so intentionally that what you build is inevitably strong. You aren’t missing out on helping others just because you’re allowing yourself to be intentional and not spread yourself thin.

In fact, you being an intentional solopreneur allows you to have a greater impact on those you serve. They’ll feel more listened to because you don’t rush conversations in an attempt to move onto another task. They’ll feel deeply by your offers because you didn’t create those offers from a desperate place of wanting to rush things.

An efficient approach is taking things step by step.

There’s nothing better than your special touch

There’s leverage in being real.

There’s so many of the same ideas about building online and it can all sound the same at times. Don’t copy those ideas. Instead add your own twist which you do by just being super honest with the people you connect with or serve.

If your twist is founded on the strong values you have as a person (e.g., honesty, generosity, human connection), and you keep being real about those values, then what you build will inevitably be sustainable.

A fear I had when first building online was that I was going to sound like too much of an outcast or like I had no idea what I was talking about. But that fear isn’t the point. Instead, the point is to be real about that fear and share it. Only then can you attract people that agree with your message. When this happens, this reassures you that being real works. So in the long run you are more likely to be the type of founder or CEO that will keep that same realness down the road.

In realizing the leverage there is in being real, I also came to the conclusion that a core value of mine is simplicity. I believe that some of the most helpful businesses or companies are simple at heart. With the systems, content, offers, or networking I do, I am planning to keep simplicity as a personal touch that I emphasize along the way to those I serve.

I guess this is part of my personal branding in some way.

It can be easy to think that having a complicated schedule or workload is somehow helping you make progress. However all this does is that it downplays the basic yet brilliant ideas that are given to you by God. In other words, simplifying systems allows you to focus on fundamentals that you need to worry about in your business in any given time. It also gives you the mental space to spot any errors before they create a landslide of issues. If there are too many moving parts in what you build, then it’ll be hard to keep track of things in general.

If you want to add your personal touch, think about how you would show up in your lifestyle as the most free, abundant and generous version of you. Then have that same approach in your business, too. This works because how you carry yourself as a person in your life will reflect in your business.

Reinvention

Before we end, here’s how I’m reinventing my journey of building online by going back to one of the things that I used to emphasize a lot before: high-performance. My aim is to help others with reaching their fullest potential. Within this aim, a focus of mine is to build a powerful community on Substack where we build together.

So I’m on a mission to help entrepreneurs (or those wanting to start building online) become more focused and relentless in who they are by optimizing systems that work for them personally. I’ll be sharing what I’m learning, testing, and struggling with in public. If you care about peak performance without burnout, follow along. Let's build something together. By the way, this is also what I’ll be focusing on a lot on my LinkedIn, so follow me there.