Three years ago I knew I wanted to build something of my own. I wanted to sell digital products. Which niche, for whom, why me? No idea. But I wanted to move, so I did what felt like the obvious next step. I hired an expensive business coach. She was good. She helped me in several ways. But something kept chafing, and it took me three years to understand what. A business coach helps you build a business. Strategy, offers, pricing, launching. All of that is gold when you know what you want to build. I didn't. I only knew I felt a pull toward something more. Those are two completely different starting points, and they need different kinds of support. To be fair, many business coaches do include that clarity work. Mine didn't, at least not in the way I needed back then. What I actually needed first was clarity. What I'm good at when nobody's watching. What I can talk about for hours without getting tired. Once that was in place, the niche and the offer got so much easier to see. The strange part is that clarity didn't come from thinking harder. It came from testing things, talking to people, noticing what gave me energy and what drained me. The biggest piece arrived sideways: I certified as an NLP practitioner, mostly for my own sake, and working on my own patterns during that training showed me what I actually wanted to build. Sitting on the sofa analyzing got me nowhere for a long time. And I'll be honest about the part I'm still working on: my own thoughts around sales. Sales is definatly my weak spot. I create something, start talking about it, and when the response doesn't come right away I feel like a failure and go quiet. Which of course guarantees no results. But I am very councious about it and therefore can change it. My thoughts shape my feelings, my feelings decide what I do, and what I do gives me my outcomes. Knowing the chain doesn't make me immune to it. I'm curious if anyone else has done this in reverse order. Did you invest in the "how" before you knew your "what"? Or did you have it figured out from the start?