I have a confession to make.

Last week, I told you about my plan to launch What Really Makes Money as a premium publication on Substack.

And I got a lot of encouraging emails about it, too.

Honestly, I was buzzing with excitement!

Then on Friday, I revealed a strategy for attracting leads, using Substack’s note system.

Again, all very exciting…

I can’t wait to reach new subscribers on a thriving platform that I’ve never tried before.

But then, over the Easter weekend, I sat down to have a proper think about the project.

As I started scribbling out everything it would involve, I felt a little nauseous.

All that planning, writing, marketing and grappling with an unfamiliar publishing platform.

Suddenly it felt… well… a bit overwhelming!

Yes, believe it or not, this happens to me too….

Even with decades of writing, publishing and online business experience behind me!

But I can guarantee that even the most seasoned athlete gets nervous before a championship race…. and even experienced, well-trained astronauts can experience fear.

In fact Scott Kelly, who spent nearly a year on the ISS, has described the moments before launch as terrifying.

I’m not saying that I’m taking What Really Makes Money into outer space (although, metaphorically, that’s quite close!).

But this is a genuinely big project.

I’m starting from scratch on a brand new platform where I don’t currently have any presence…

I need to work out the content strategy, the schedule, the topics to cover, and do all that painstaking research for the blueprints I’m going to be sharing.

Never mind the short-form ‘note’ content and the social interactions I’ll need to do in order to make myself visible on the platform.

No wonder that I’m apprehensive!

And I’m sure you know this feeling only too well.

The Big Mountain Problem

It’s hard when you’re right at the beginning of a new challenge, like creating a product or starting a business.

All that excitement you experienced when you bought the course, read the book or downloaded the manual…

It suddenly evaporates.

Because now the sheer scale of the task hits you.

You feel like you’re standing at the foot of a big mountain with no equipment and no idea of how you are going to get to the top.

The idea of ever getting to the summit seems totally outlandish, suddenly.

“What was I THINKING?” you might say to yourself, sweating slightly in front of a blank screen.

Your poor brain desperately tries to process the entire goal at once… every task, every risk, every unknown… all simultaneously.

This creates a sense of overwhelm that can be paralysing.

For many people, this is where the project stalls.

They either procrastinate for weeks, fiddling around with unimportant jobs or downloading more courses and tools…

Or they simply walk away.

“It’s not for me”… they say… “I don’t have the skills”… “I haven’t got the time”… “OOH LOOK A NEW SHINY BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY – BUY! BUY!”

So how do you get past this obstacle, and actually start?

Well, here are a few ideas…

1. The Brain Dump

Before you do anything else, spend 15–20 minutes writing down everything that’s swirling around in your head about the project.

All the tasks… all the tools you need… all the worries you have… all the questions you want to ask an expert (or AI)… all the elements you’re not sure about…

It doesn’t matter how crazy it sounds, just get it all down.

Think of it like a brain dump, where you tip everything that’s in your head onto a big piece of paper.

This act alone does a lot of good.

By externalising your panicked thoughts and feelings, you will significantly reduce the overwhelm.

Now they’re on the page, right in front of you, where you can do something about them, rather than letting them buzz like angry bees inside your brain.

I did this on Saturday morning with the What Really Makes Money Substack project, and the relief was immediate.

If you still feel panicked, then put the worries into a list.

Next to each one, put a potential solution – or at least, suggest a way that you could find a solution with a bit of research.

For instance, if you worry about a lack of a specific skill, you could write “I’ll use AI for this”….

Or if you’re worried about time you could write, “I’ll make a rough schedule to see where I can free up the necessary hours each week.”

It doesn’t have to be the perfect answer. It could be something like “look this up on Google” or “ask the expert whose course I bought.”

Again, this should reduce the fear because you can see a potential route through the problem.

2. Setting Your Large Goal

A surprising amount of overwhelm comes from having a fuzzy general destination.

After all, you can’t plan a route if you don’t know where you’re going.

So the next step is to make sure you understand what the ultimate goal is, and what it will look like when you get there.

For instance, I might write: ““What Really Makes Money will be a thriving Substack publication with 200+ new followers coming onboard for the free content every month, and 1,500+ paid subscribers receiving fortnightly blueprints and monthly marketing deep-dives.”

This way, there’s a specific measure of success to aim for.

Now you need to break this major goal down into something far less intimidating.

3. Setting Small Achievable Goals

Imagine you are told to “write a 70,000 word novel in a year”.

That sounds crazy – impossible!

But now imagine you are told, “write 200 words every day”.

That seems much more like something you could probably do, even without any writing experience.

Yet it’s the same thing.

You’d still write a novel in a year!

This is how it works with a big business project.

If you break the goal down into small, achievable chunks, it doesn’t feel scary anymore.

So break down that big goal you made into smaller steps…

Then take each step and break that down into daily or weekly tasks.

For example…

• Write down 10 newsletter topics.
• Use AI to write a social media profile biog.
• Email a potential wholesale supplier asking for a price.
• Spend a morning getting familiar with Canva.

Make sure you schedule them in a calendar, giving yourself a realistic time-frame for each.

On the day, when you switch on your computer, your ONLY job is to complete the allotted task – nothing else.

Research shows that what’s called an ‘implementation intention’ (ie. “I will do X at Y time on Z day”) dramatically increases the chance you’ll actually follow through.

The more of these tasks you tick off each week, the more progress you make, the more confidence you’ll gain.

4. Now Eat the Frog!

Because of your understandable fears when starting a project, you might tend to busy yourself with low-priority tasks… and avoid the ‘blockers’.

Blockers are those crucial tasks that MUST be done to move things forward…

Yet you avoid them, for whatever reason.

You might fear that you don’t have the time or skill.

Or they seem difficult, boring, technical or frustrating.

The secret is to identify these blockers and do them first, otherwise they will hold everything up.

Once you tackle these intimidating tasks, they’ll seem less challenging and now you’ll have only the fun, exciting tasks left to do.

There’s a quote attributed to Mark Twain that goes: “If you have to eat a frog, do it first thing in the morning, and nothing worse will happen to you for the rest of the day.”

This is what you need to do…

You need to find the hardest, most anxiety-inducing task on your project, then EAT THE FROG.

One final piece of advice…

5. Embrace the Nerves!

Fear is a natural emotion to feel when you are doing something major and new in your life.

It shows just how important the goal is…

And it proves that you are stepping outside of your comfort zone.

So try to embrace those nerves as a good thing….

Then channel all that energy into taking action.

Once you get started, it all becomes a lot less intimidating, I can promise you that!

Your Monday Challenge

Is there a project you’ve been putting off because it feels too big to start?

If so, then today’s challenge is to do ‘the brain dump’.

Sit down for 20 minutes, set a time, and get everything that worries you onto a Word document, a piece of paper or a whiteboard.

See how you feel after that!

As for me and my Substack nerves, well I am already over them, and working on a plan!

I’ll give you more updates soon.