The Simple Thing I Spent Three Years Avoiding

I was drowning.

I didn't know it at the time. Multiple platforms. Endless content creation. Connection calls that went nowhere. I called it hustle. I called it strategy. Looking back, I see it for what it really was: productive procrastination. I was spread across every possible platform, trying every new strategy that crossed my feed, convinced that if I just found the right combination, the right hack, the right secret formula, everything would click into place and success would finally arrive at my door.

Money was running out. Burnout wasn't approaching; it had already moved in and made itself comfortable. I'd start something new. Two weeks, maybe three. Then I'd abandon it for the next shiny promise. Nothing worked. Why? Because I never stayed with anything long enough for it to work, too thin across too many strategies, grasping at too many straws, believing that somewhere out there was an easier way than the obvious one staring me in the face.

The truth? It makes me angry even now. I knew about LinkedIn outreach three years before this moment. Three years. I'd learned about it, understood it conceptually, even watched others succeed with it. But I kept looking. I kept searching. Every guru, every course, every YouTube video made it seem like there had to be something more sophisticated, more elegant, less uncomfortable than just reaching out to people and having conversations. I was trying to find the "right" way when my way was sitting there, ignored.

Last year was the worst.

I'd moved away from my content business. When I did the math, I could count on my hands the number of real business conversations I'd had with potential clients over twelve months. Think about that. An entire year of "running a business," creating content, being busy, staying productive, and fewer than ten actual conversations about my offer. Specifically, service providers and coaches who spend months perfecting their websites and funnels while avoiding the one thing that actually creates clients: conversations.

Ten.

Then everything shifted. A coach I'd been following showed me what was actually working for them. Daily outreach. Conversations. That's it. They looked at my scattered approach and called it what it was: over-analysis as self-sabotage. "Pick one thing," they said. "Strip everything else away."

I resisted.

Of course I resisted. What if focusing on just one uncomfortable strategy wasn't enough? What if I became just another cold outreach person? The kind everyone rolls their eyes at? The fear of judgment was almost paralyzing. But something in their certainty, their results, their simple insistence that this was the way, it cut through my resistance like a knife through all the complicated stories I'd been telling myself about why I needed something more sophisticated.

So I committed. Authentic LinkedIn outreach became my single focus. The one thing that would transform my business from struggle to consistent $10K+ months. I stopped hiding. I stopped crafting perfect posts. I started reaching out to 25 people every day and having real conversations with whoever responded. No scripts. No templates. Just me, talking like me, being unapologetically myself.

My first high-ticket client came from that commitment. A conversation. Simple. Human. It started with a connection request.

But here's what happened next. Success scared me. Or maybe it was too simple to trust. I started tinkering. Optimizing. Adding complexity back in. If simple worked, then complex must work better, right? I turned my straightforward process into something elaborate, something that looked more like what I thought a "real" business strategy should look like, with multiple touchpoints and sophisticated sequences and careful optimization at every stage. My instincts had been Main Character. My execution became Side Character the moment I started overthinking, trying to do it "properly" instead of trusting what naturally worked.

Seven weeks of nothing followed.

Seven weeks. Not a single sale. The over-optimization had killed the very thing that made it work: the simplicity, the humanity, the directness of it. I'd taken something that worked because it was authentically me and turned it into something that failed because I was trying to be everyone else.

I even tried delegating the DM conversations to a team member. Surely I could scale myself out of the equation? Four to five weeks passed. Zero calls booked. Not fewer calls. Zero. The moment I removed myself from the conversations, the entire system collapsed like a house of cards. You can delegate finding leads. You can delegate sending initial messages. But that intuitive dance of a real conversation, knowing when to push and when to pull back, reading between the lines of what someone's really saying? That can't be outsourced. My way of connecting, my particular brand of curiosity and directness - that was the actual system. Here's the paradox resolved: The process is simple (25 daily connections), but the execution must be uniquely yours. Think of it like handwriting - we all use the same alphabet, but your signature is unmistakably yours.

During those dark weeks, fear crept in. Maybe my early wins had been luck. Maybe I didn't actually have what it took. Maybe everyone else was right to chase complicated strategies. Maybe the simple way was too simple to be real.

But I'd tasted what worked. I knew the truth. Even if I'd complicated it away. So I made outreach my non-negotiable daily priority again. Back to basics. Back to simplicity. Twenty-five connection requests every day, real conversations with whoever responded, no fancy automation, no clever hacks, just me showing up and talking to people about their problems and how I might help solve them. This time, I wore my approach like a crown instead of hiding it.

This year? Everything changed.

I've had hundreds and hundreds of conversations. Last Tuesday morning, I realized something. I'd already had ten conversations that week about my offer. Ten. In less than three days. The previous year had fewer than ten total. From zero clients to $10K months. From endless content creation to predictable sales conversations. From burnout to working 4-hour days.

Each conversation taught me something. What people really struggle with. What keeps them up at night. What they've tried that hasn't worked. What they're really saying when they object. What they're not saying but desperately want someone to understand. You can't learn this from creating content in isolation. You learn it one conversation at a time, building understanding through repetition, through showing up, through asking questions and actually listening to the answers. And crucially, by trusting my first instinct about what to say next, which is usually right.

The feedback loop is everything.

Talk to hundreds of people. Patterns emerge. You develop intuition. You know when someone's testing you. You know when they're genuinely concerned. You learn when to push. When to create space. In a world where everyone gets hundreds of DMs, standing out isn't about the perfect script. It's about genuine curiosity. Real rapport. Being human. Being yourself so thoroughly that people feel it through the screen.

Here's what I discovered. It felt like finding a secret that wasn't supposed to be a secret. There is no secret. While everyone else is climbing elaborate ladders, the door has been open the whole time. Let me be clearer: While everyone else builds complex funnels and automation sequences, the simple act of reaching out and talking to people books more calls and closes more sales than any sophisticated system. Successful people aren't hiding some complex strategy. They're sending messages. Having conversations. Everyone else? They're building elaborate systems to avoid doing exactly that.

The irony gets me.

I spent three years chasing the magic of novelty. New strategies. New platforms. New approaches. The real magic was in creating inevitability through repetition. Do the simple thing every day. Success stops being "if." It becomes "when." You feel it building, this momentum that can't be stopped, because it's based on the most fundamental business principle that has existed since the first marketplace: talking to people about how you can help them. My way. Not the "right" way. Not the way it "should" be done. My way.

I realized something else. Something that changed how I see the entire industry. When people say they hate business, they usually don't hate business itself. They hate that what they're doing isn't working. They hate the exhaustion of performing business. Creating content. Building funnels. Crafting strategies. All without ever actually doing business, which is just having conversations that lead to transactions. When business becomes as simple as reaching out to 25 people daily and having real conversations, when you can draw a straight line from action to result, it becomes enjoyable. It feels like you've cracked a code. Not because you found something complex. Because you finally stopped complicating something simple. Because you finally stopped trying to be someone else's version of professional.

The anger I felt? Three years wasted. Three years of avoiding what I already knew. That anger has transformed. It's mission now. I refuse to let others waste the same time.

Entrepreneurs come to me. Specifically, service providers making less than $10K/month who know they're good at what they do but can't seem to turn that expertise into consistent clients. They're convinced they need another strategy. Another platform. Another anything except the uncomfortable simplicity of daily outreach. I tell them the truth. The truth nobody wants to sell. The path to inevitability is boring. It's repetitive. It's uncomfortable. And it only works when you do it as yourself, not as who you think LinkedIn needs you to be.

And it works.

I help them stop hiding behind content creation, stop believing in the false magic of novelty, stop thinking there's a secret door when the front door is wide open, standing there, waiting for them to walk through it with nothing but consistency and conversation as their tools. I help them trust that their natural way of connecting is exactly what will make them stand out.

My process isn't sexy. Add 25 prospects daily. Have real conversations with whoever responds. Do it tomorrow. The next day. The next. Watch the conversations compound. Feel your intuition sharpen. See what seemed impossible become inevitable. Simple tools, powerful results. Notion pages over fancy funnels. Real relationships over automation.

Some want to delegate it all. They want results without conversations. But you can't outsource the development of intuition. You can't delegate the understanding that comes from hundreds of conversations. You can't systematize the human connection that turns a stranger into a client who trusts you with their business, their challenges, their hopes for what their business could become. You can't outsource being yourself.

This is what I know now.

Business transformation doesn't come from finding the perfect strategy. It comes from doing the simple thing you've been avoiding. For me? That was having real conversations with real people about real problems, every single day, until success became as predictable as sunrise. But more than that - it was trusting that my way of having those conversations was enough. More than enough. It was exactly what made it work.

I wasted three years looking for an easier way. Now I help entrepreneurs save those three years. The hard way? The simple, uncomfortable, repetitive way? It's actually the easiest way. When you commit to inevitability instead of chasing novelty, when you choose repetition over reinvention, when you finally stop hiding and start connecting, business stops being something you struggle with.

It becomes something that works. Something that predictably generates $10K, $15K, $20K months. Something that fills your calendar with qualified calls. Something that transforms you from someone chasing clients to someone choosing clients.

The secret is that there is no secret. Twenty-five daily connections. Real conversations. The compound effect of showing up every single day until success isn't a hope or a goal or a dream. Done your way. Wearing your approach like a crown. Trusting that being unapologetically yourself isn't just acceptable - it's your actual competitive advantage.

It's an inevitability. The inevitability of a full pipeline. The inevitability of consistent revenue. The inevitability of working with clients who value what you do because they connected with who you are. The inevitability of building a business that feels like you, sounds like you, and works because it IS you.