The DM grind. Trying to trap people into admitting they had a problem just so I could push them onto a call. Then the calls themselves. Sitting there for an hour and 15 minutes, pouring value into someone, only for them to say "let me think about it" and disappear. Or worse, they don't turn up at all. You sit there staring at Zoom, realising you wasted a perfectly good morning preparing for a ghost. I was good at it. I closed $8,000 deals doing it. But I realised something worse. I couldn't teach it. It relied on pressure, performance, and a specific type of energy that makes you want to quit. If I taught that to my clients, I was just teaching them to build a job they resented. You need a filter. Marketing isn't just about attraction. It is about repulsion. You want to scare away the time-wasters before they get into your DMs. Filter out the "maybe" people before you lose 75 minutes on a call. The people who want a generic service go somewhere else. Good. The people who want you stick around. It saves you from the "dance."

You stare at the blank page and freeze. Not because you have nothing to say. But because you have too much. It’s the chaotic, brilliant mix of experiences in your head. The scars, the stories, and the specific opinions you’re usually too polite to share. It feels like a mess. And because you can’t see the pattern, you assume no one else will either. So you overthink it. You hesitate. And you stay quiet. That is a mistake. The value is in the mess. You just need a way to frame it.

For the first week, it does. You get the dopamine hit. Buying the domain. Setting up the Notion dashboard. It feels like progress. Then the new toy energy wears off. Suddenly, you feel clumsy. The output looks rubbish. It isn't fun anymore. This is the "bottoming out" point. Most people take this as a signal to stop. They say, "It doesn't feel aligned," or "It isn't my passion." B*llocks. It just means you have started the actual practice. Information is useless without execution. And execution is miserable at first. Take languages. You have to sound like an idiot for six months to speak fluently. Awkwardness is the price of entry. If you are in the grind right now, you aren't failing. You are just paying the tax. The enjoyment comes from getting good enough to stop feeling awkward. Keep going.

I don't do "strategy sessions" or "discovery calls" or whatever the industry is calling them this week. I do coffee calls. When people get on a call with me expecting a pitch, they get confused. Even when they DM me asking for a payment link or a way to work with me, I usually tell them to wait. I send them to my email list instead. It sounds mad. Why put a barrier in front of cash? Because I can't be arsed with the "dance." I hate the performance of it. Handling objections and trying to convince a stranger I'm not a scammer is miserable work. I want clients who already get it. The list is the filter. It does the heavy lifting so I don't have to. If you read the daily emails, you know the score by now. If that works for you, great. If it annoys you, you unsubscribe. That saves us both a headache. I’d rather you leave now than buy something and realise you hate my style three weeks in. The email list ensures I only work with people who are actually aligned. If you want to see how I actually operate (and get the daily emails), the link is in my bio.

I haven't emailed in three days. I could give you a marketing excuse about "pattern interrupts" or "strategic silence." Rubbish. I was in the cave. I am building something that takes the "branding" process—which usually takes 3 months of overthinking—and compresses it into a single afternoon. But making a system do that without sounding like a generic robot is harder than it looks. Most AI tools spit out noise. They don't capture the specific weirdness that makes you buyable. So I’ve been wrestling with the logic. Trying to engineer "taste" into the code. It isn't ready yet. I’m still fixing the last few pieces. But the output is starting to look frighteningly good. Back to it.