What To Do When Nothing Is Going As You Planned
The phase nobody talks about and how to get past it?
It makes absolutely no sense for you to keep going.
You planned, outlined everything that needs to be done to get to your goals, systemised your approach, and are making consistent efforts to make it work. Still, you’re far from where you thought you’d be at this stage.
You’re past the initial stages and have outgrown the advice that tells you to be consistent for three months. You have plans for the future as well, but to execute them, the current plan needs to work.
Some people might say not to focus on numbers and keep creating value, but let’s be realistic, metrics tell you whether other people find what you’re building valuable or not.
And you need to know that because you shouldn’t be building something that you want to leverage, only for yourself.
But the problem goes a bit deeper. We were both presented with the wrong version of the building phase.
Everyone talks about how difficult it is to start and that the first six months are the hardest.
But when you cross that mark and still don’t have any proof that it’s working, you look around and find that nobody’s talking about this phase.
You feel like either you’re an anomaly or this thing isn’t for you, because you passed the hardest phase, and it should work as it did for others.
I’m writing this newsletter to ninety subscribers. Although I really appreciate each person who takes the time to read my newsletters and gets value from them, when I started eleven months ago, I thought it’d be much more than this.
At that time, I gave myself two years, and I believed that in one year, I would have an audience and enough direction to determine what I would be building with them.
The same is for the content strategy I’m pitching.
I build a complete content system for the entrepreneur I want to pitch. Take their YouTube video and convert it into text content for newsletters, LinkedIn, and Threads.
Every entrepreneur is different. So I need to align everything with their voice, goals, and platforms, and reach out to them with no idea if any of them will respond.
None of it is going the way I initially planned.
So am I abandoning it all, thinking it isn’t working, or worse, sticking with it for another year without any direction?
Here’s what I’m doing to make sense of all this and build better. You can align the strategy with your own goals.
No Half Measures
When something does not work the way we intended, and the initial phase of motivation passes, we start to dilute our efforts to do that thing.
This should be avoided because you might not be quitting, but you’d be doing it in a way that doesn’t cut it.
And in my experience, it isn’t possible to put real effort unless you’re genuinely curious about what you’re doing, believe where doing it would lead you, and absolutely want to avoid the path you would otherwise be on.
When these things are clear, we try to leave no excuse for it not to work and make enough efforts even when our plans seem to be failing.
I clearly understand the path I want to avoid, and I’m making efforts to build something that is the opposite of that path and aligns with my curiosities.
That is why I’m writing this newsletter after eleven months of silence, and why I’d be pitching to the next entrepreneur.
But honestly, if you think it isn’t working, you might be reading the metrics wrong.
Read The Metrics Right
Numbers are important. But only the “numbers” shouldn’t tell you if this is worth carrying on. Let me explain.
When you can see the right metrics on the dashboard, you can determine whether this is working or not. However, the long-term metrics might not be visible on your current dashboard.
Just as low profitability doesn’t mean that the startup is going to be unsuccessful, why?
Because the founders and VCs look at the company in years and decades, and do not panic if the company lost money in the last quarter, similarly, the low metrics you have now don’t represent failure.
Whatever you’re building, you should view it from this perspective; that’s what I’m doing.
I built my first web app that helps students share notes with eachother. Right now, it has around ten users, but I believe that it solves a genuine problem, and I will still be promoting it at my university.
Look where it’ll take you in the years to come. You’re building it for your version that exists five years from now.
But there comes a phase where you’re sure that you need to let this thing go, and you should if it isn’t serving your goals well, but strategically.
Quit Like This
Don’t give up on your goals, but intentionally subtract what is taking your time, and you know will provide insufficient returns.
I was posting consistently across four platforms: Substack, LinkedIn, X, and Threads. It was working well, and while doing it, I built the initial version of the content distribution strategy that I’m now pitching.
Although I had systemised the content writing, I couldn’t just post and ghost on any of these platforms. I had to engage and build relationships for these channels to work.
I did that for a while, but when I started reaching out to offer my content system, I realised I couldn’t be efficient in everything. That’s when I didn’t completely quit, but limited my posting on LinkedIn & Threads.
If adding something that will serve my goals better means I will need to subtract some existing work, I will happily make this choice. When I build my SaaS, I might quit providing services.
But one thing to keep in mind, when you quit something to start doing something new, you should be willing to accept that you’d be starting from zero, and it would be hard to make this work as well.
Final Note
You shouldn’t be looking at the average, or whether it did or didn’t work for others, when you’re building something yourself.
I sometimes think that a lot of people hit ninety subscribers in weeks or get their first client in a month, and it is taking me way longer.
But it isn’t the right way to compare yourself to someone who is building a completely different thing from a completely different perspective.
Or evaluating yourself from the industry’s standard. Just because someone had a breakthrough at month six doesn’t mean you ought to have one too.
Be consistent in your efforts, close every gap, and more importantly, don’t just wait for things to happen to you. Happen to things.
P.S.: Hey there, I appreciate your read. Hopefully, you found value. I might be switching the day of posting newsletters from Wednesday to Thursday. Will let you guys know about it.