Hustling your way to nowhere.

Back in the middle of 2018, I was suffering through burnout at my job. I knew that some time in the next year or so, I'd leave and hoped to build my own consulting firm, helping early-stage healthcare companies grow their revenue.

The big problem at that time was that I didn't know how to get much attention.

I had built a small following of maybe 5,000 on LinkedIn, but I figured the more places you could find me, the better.

So, I started answering questions every day on Quora.

My goal was to connect with sales leaders, CEOs, and VPs who were looking to learn about sales strategies and tactics. So, I'd find their questions, type out these detailed answers showing off everything I knew, then link back to my website, hoping they'd come book a discovery call.

Since I was just starting to learn how to communicate through writing, my answers would often take 15-30 minutes to type out and explain. I'd share my favorite frameworks, give examples, and try to make my advice actionable.

Once I hit "post", I felt great about myself for giving away the "goods" that had helped me so much in my career.

And, sometimes, it really resonated. Hundreds of views, some upvotes, and a few dozen visitors to my website. People thanked me in the comments. I was doing exactly what all the content marketing blogs said to do.

In my mind, I was working hard, writing every day, helping people, and building authority. After doing this for a full six months, I looked at the spreadsheet I created to track leads.

Zero consulting clients from Quora. Not one discovery call. A half year of work that led to absolutely nothing.

The results were obviously pretty frustrating, but I think the most frustrating thing is that I knew it wasn't working after month two or three. The data was right there in front of my face. No button clicks, no conversions, no nothing. And I just kept doing it anyway because it felt like I was doing something.

The problem wasn't that I was lazy or inconsistent. In fact, I was operating the very opposite of that. I showed up every single day and did the work.

But when you're brand new to entrepreneurship, it's easy to get the wrong kind of results and mistake them for the right kind. The views and upvotes I was getting on Quora felt like validation. Comments saying "this is a great framework" felt like I was genuinely helping the people who would eventually become my ideal customers. And I WAS helping people, technically. It just turns out that they weren't the people who would ever pay me for consulting.

I was hustling hard, putting in the work, tiring myself out, and getting absolutely nowhere.

What I built instead

One night, I sat down with a notebook and decided to start treating my new business a lot like how I'd approach hitting sales targets at the startup companies I had spent the last decade at.

So, I worked backward from the end goal of making $350K in income.

I figured that conservatively, I could close at a 25% clip, which meant that I'd need around $1.4 million in pipeline. I charged around $6,250 per month and hypothesized that I could keep an average client around 6-8 months. That meant I would need about 32 business prospects in my pipeline at all times. If I wanted to ramp up my pipeline in the next 10-12 weeks, I'd need roughly 3 new ideal prospects to enter my funnel each week.

Once I had that mapped out, I could see exactly how I could be successful and hit my goals. But there were still a lot of unanswered questions.

How would people discover me? How would I build authority? How would I prove I was worth paying? And how would all those pieces connect to move someone from "I don't know who this guy is" to "I want to hire Justin"?

When I looked at what I was actually doing against what I needed to be doing, most of it was completely pointless.

I was on Instagram creating little graphics about sales strategy for 442 followers. None of my potential clients were scrolling Instagram looking for consulting advice. I was on Reddit and Quora answering random questions from people who'd never hire a consultant. I was spreading myself across a bunch of different platforms, trying to be everywhere, but being mediocre at all of them.

So I cut everything except LinkedIn. I deleted Instagram from my phone and stopped checking Reddit and Quora entirely.

I took all of that energy and focused it on one place where my actual target customers actually hung out. Instead of being average at five or six different channels, I got really, really good at one.

By the time November 2019 rolled around (about 12 weeks after I officially launched my business), I could see an easy path to $350K. By the time year one was over, I had earned $534K. And I worked fewer hours than I did at my previous job as CRO.

That's the difference between activity and direction. I wasn't working harder. I was just finally working on something that actually moved me forward.

Making the same mistake

I have a friend who strategizes, builds, and films video courses for other creators.

He's legitimately talented. His courses are well-produced, his teaching methods make the information very clear, and the people who buy from him love what he ends up producing for them.

But he has no idea how to market or sell his services. So he basically just wings it. He posts randomly on social media, sends a few cold emails here and there, and hopes something sticks. Every once in a while, someone buys a package, and he gets excited. Then, he won't book anything else for two months. Then another sale. Then nothing again. That's my definition of an anxiety roller coaster.

Every time I talk to him, I ask if he's reading any books on marketing. Is he taking any courses? Working with a coach? Studying how other people sell services successfully?

Nope. He's too busy making random social media posts and crossing his fingers.

He's so focused on activity that he has zero time to get better at anything that would actually make his business work. And because he never stops to figure out why that one sale happened or why the next fifty pieces of content did nothing, he just keeps doing the same thing over and over.

A few months ago, out of the blue, he got some traction. He signed three clients in one week. Naturally, he was thrilled. Finally, something was working!

I asked him what was different. What changed? Where did those people come from?

He didn't know. He was just happy he made some sales.

Two months later, he was (unsurprisingly) back at zero. He still had absolutely no idea what worked or why. And now that he'd gotten his hopes up and failed again, I'm sure it hurt twice as much.

But, as of this newsletter being published, he's still doing the exact same thing. No matter how many times I guide him or show him what to do differently, he just keeps cranking out random content and hoping the next post is the big winner that lands him all of the clients he's dreamed of.

What I'd tell myself six years ago

If I could go back and give the 2018 version of myself one piece of advice, it would be this:

Start with how much money you need to make and work backward. How much pipeline does that require? How many calls? How many people need to see your landing page? I'd encourage "2018 me" to map out every step and track what converts at each point.

Then every week, look at the data. What's actually working? What's not? Do more of what works, cut what doesn't.

Of course, it's not easy, but it's also not complicated. The big problem is that most people skip this part entirely. They just start hustling and hope something eventually happens. And when nothing does, they don't stop to ask why; they just push harder and harder, getting more and more frustrated.

The people who win aren't the ones working the hardest. They're the ones who built a map, tested what works, and iterated on the data.

The bottom line

I wasted six months on Quora because I confused activity with progress. And I'm certainly not the only person to make that mistake.

My friend is wasting years on his business because he won't stop to study what actually works.

And I see this pattern everywhere. People are working incredibly hard, burning themselves out, and wondering why nothing is changing. The work isn't the problem. The direction is.

You can hustle for ten years and still end up exactly where you started. Or you can stop, build a map, and start building something that actually works.

So here's my question for this week: What are you doing right now that feels productive but isn't actually moving you forward?

Reply and tell me. While I can't answer every email, I read every single response.

That's all for this week.

See you next Saturday.

P.S. I spent six years building out everything that works for online entrepreneurs so you don't have to figure it out yourself. The Creator MBA walks you through exactly how to set up the funnel: discovery to authority to trust to purchase. No theory. No hustle culture. Just the steps that actually work. I'm offering 75% off for the next 60 hours only. If you're tired of hustling your way to nowhere, this is how you get off the treadmill. Offer expires Monday, December 1st at 11:59 p.m. EST.

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