245: Take action and start before you're ready

Hello everyone, welcome back to Cani Crystals, the podcast. As you know by now, my name is Mart Tweedy, I am your host, and what a week it's been in the UK. If you were from the UK, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. This heat, this heat is absolutely killing me. I'm sat here right now in a pair of shorts. I'm pretty sure that my balls are stuck to my legs. That's how hot it is. We don't get heat like this in the UK. At one point my car the other day said 38 degrees. 38 degrees. I couldn't believe it. It has been so hot. I'm really flustered, really bothered. I'm going to get through this episode as quickly as possible so that you can get on with the rest of your day. And so I was trying to think of things to talk about this week, and I've had so many messages since Manifest a couple of weekends ago saying that people were really inspired by my talk about taking action. So today I kind of want to build on that because I want to talk about something that I genuinely believe has shaped almost every opportunity or every business and every single success that I've had in me life. Now, it It's not manifestation because I didn't know about manifestation when most of this happened. And it probably— well, it probably is mindset, but it's, it's not really mindset because I wasn't aware of self-development or anything back then either. And it's not affirmations, it's not visualization, or any of the things that people would probably expect me to say. Don't get us wrong, those things have absolutely played a role, but underneath all of them is something much simpler, and it's just taking action. More specifically, it's just being willing to start before you feel ready to do so. And the reason that I wanted to record this episode now is because I'm just seeing so many people sat on incredible ideas. The amount of people that have messaged me after Manifest and said, "You've really inspired me to take action on this, this, and this. I've had this idea for years." And I'm like, well, if you've had this idea for years, why haven't you ever done anything about it? So maybe that's you right now. Maybe you've got a business idea that you've been thinking about for years, Or maybe there's a podcast that you want to launch, or even a book that you want to write, or a social media account that you want to start. Maybe it's just like a complete different direction that you want to take your life in, yet despite how much you want it and how often you think about it and how excited it makes you whenever that idea comes into your mind, nothing actually happens. Why? Why? Why do you do that to yourselves? Now, I don't think it's because people are lazy. In fact, I think Probably the opposite is true, if I'm honest. I think most people who have dreams or ambitions, they spend more time thinking about them than anyone else. The problem is, is that we all sit around waiting for this magical moment where they think that they'll suddenly feel ready. So, they're waiting until they've got more confidence, or more knowledge, or more certainty, or more money, or more qualifications, or some kind of a guarantee that things are going to work out because We don't want to put our energy into something if we don't think that it's going to work out, do we? Now, the truth is though that if you study almost anyone who has built something successful in life, you'll find that they probably didn't have those things when they started either. Like, we love to look at successful people, don't we? And we imagine that they knew exactly what they were doing from day one. And we tell ourselves stories about how they must have had a plan or a strategy connections, experience, expertise. Let me tell you, when I started Connie Crystals, I had none of that. I think what we rarely see is that very messy beginning part because people aren't willing to share it, whereas I'm going to share that in this episode. I'm going to share with you all the mindset shifts and everything that I had to go through to just start doing something before I felt ready to do so. Like, we don't see any of the uncertainty or the the mistakes people make, or the self-doubt, or the amount of learning that happened after they started. So when I look back over my own life, like every single business that I've ever built, it just began with a simple idea and absolutely zero clue where it would end up leading to. Like, none of them started with me feeling qualified or me thinking, right, I'm gonna write myself a 10-year plan and then I'm going to launch my business on this date. Nah, I don't do shit like that. You know me, I do everything off the cuff. Like, none of these things that I've done in my life started with me having any experience in that industry. None of them started with me knowing all the answers. They all just started because I put one foot in front of the other and I just decided to take one small step and see what happened next, see what opened up next. So years ago, as you probably already know, I was working for the NHS, and at the time I had quite a bit of debt hanging over me head. And if I'm honest, it was constantly sat in the back of me head. Like, every single thing that I would do, it would just be like, oh my God, you can't do that, you've got all this debt. So every single month I was making payments and trying to chip away at it, but I felt like I was just running on a treadmill uphill. Like, every time I paid some money off it, um, what's it called, like the fees and everything, and the, um, what's it called, why can't I think, the interest, the interest was building back up. So, I wasn't getting anywhere particularly quickly, and I knew that I needed to find a way of bringing in some extra money. So, around that time, I started working from home 3 days a week. It was perfect. This was long before working from home became the norm, by the way. This was like 20— 2017, 2018, I think it was. And I quickly realised something. Like, without all of the interruptions from my office, without all the distractions in the NHS, without all the conversations that naturally happen on the wards and in an office environment, I could get through me workload so much faster. So I wasn't doing any less work, I was still doing everything that I would do on a day-to-day basis, but I was doing it in about 3 or 4 hours. So I was getting it done more efficiently, and that meant that I suddenly had a bit of spare time during the day. So obviously I couldn't just leave like me laptop before 5 o'clock, for example, It didn't work like that. However, what I could do is I could take an extended lunch break. So one of the things that I started doing was taking longer walks with me dog, and I started looking after myself, getting healthier, going to the gym. And looking back now, it's funny, like, how many important ideas seem to arrive when you're not actively looking for them, isn't it? So I was just out walking, me mind was wandering, and suddenly a thought appeared.. And during one of those walks, I remember thinking to myself, like, I wonder if anyone would actually pay me to walk their dog at the same time as mine. That was literally the idea that I had. That was the entire business plan. There was no spreadsheet, there was no market research, there was no 5-year growth strategy, there was nothing. It was simply a thought that popped into me head whilst walking through the park. Now, the interesting thing is that most people would have left that thought there, wouldn't they? They would have thought that, "Oh my God, that's a nice idea," and then immediately found reasons why it wouldn't work because that's what we do as human beings. They would have told themselves that they weren't qualified, or they would have convinced themselves that someone else was already doing it. They would have worried about insurance or competition, pricing, customer acquisition, branding, social media, and probably a million other things before they'd even walked a single dog. Now, for whatever reason, I didn't do that. I don't know why, I just felt inspired. And instead, I decided to see what would happen if I actually just gave it a go. So Johnny, me partner, designed me a logo. I came up with the name of The Barkin' Brigade. I thought that was quite apt. And I had a couple of hundred business cards printed. And when I say business cards, I mean like them tiny little business cards that you give out. And do you want to know how I marketed it? I posted on our estate Facebook group once, and I put these little business cards through people's doors on our estate. That's all I did. I created a basic booking form in Microsoft Word, and I just waited to see if anyone was interested. Now, looking back now, that was incredibly basic, right? There was nothing sophisticated about it. It cost me £15 to get some business cards printed. It took me about an hour to go around and put them through people's doors. And a couple of minutes to put this post on Facebook, right? That was literally it. There was no fancy website, there was no marketing funnels, there was no, you know, customer requisition, what's it called, management system. There was no automated email sequences, there was nothing. It was just me trying something. Yet within a week, I had 7 or 8 regular customers. And before I knew it, I was taking 2 groups of dogs out during me lunch break 3 times a week and earning around £1,000 extra each month. Now what's fascinating to me is how close that business came to never existing. Like, all it would have taken was me deciding that I wasn't experienced enough, or me convincing myself that I needed to spend 6 months researching dog walking before I could begin. All it would have taken was me worrying about what people might think of us. But instead, I learned something that has followed me through every single business that I've built since, and that's you do not learn by thinking about doing something. You learn by physically doing it, okay? You can think about something until the cows come home. You are not going to learn anything about it until you do it. Every single customer taught me something. Every single problem that I had with the dogs taught me something. Every mistake taught me something. The knowledge that I thought I needed before I started was actually just waiting for us on the other side of starting. And I think that's one of the biggest misconceptions that people have. They believe that the confidence will come first and then the action will come second. But no, in reality, it's usually the other way around, isn't it? Action creates confidence. The more you do something, the more you're going to feel confident in doing that, and you're going to feel more competent, and it's going to create clarity as well. So the people who seem fearless, they're not fearless because they know everything. They're fearless because they've developed trust in their ability to figure things out along the way. Now, that lesson would become even more important when the next business idea came along, because if I thought I was making it up as I went along with dog walking, I hadn't seen anything yet. Because looking back now, what's funny is that The Barkin' Brigade wasn't really about dog walking. At the time, I thought I was just simply finding a way to earn some extra money and pay off me debt. That's how I viewed it. I wasn't sitting there thinking that I was building these entrepreneurial skills or laying the foundations for future businesses. I wasn't really even thinking about like personal growth or mindset or any of the things that I talk about today. I just had a problem that needed solving and an idea that seemed worth trying, and it worked. And it's only with hindsight now that I can see what was really happening. What that little business actually taught us was one of the most valuable lessons that I've ever learned, because it taught us that action creates opportunities that thinking never can. You can literally sit and visualize, you can sit and meditate, you can think about different ideas, but until you start taking that inspired action, you're never going to create those opportunities for yourself, are you? Now obviously I can't show you because, um, this is a podcast and I can't show you visuals, but at Manifest I even put on the screen we have stages of taking action, and usually it's dreaming about something. So you'll, you'll come up with an idea, you'll dream about it, then you go into the planning phase, and then you start planning how that's going to look like. Then you go into the learning phase, so if you need to learn any skills or anything like that. Then you go into the researching phase, so, you know, what, what else do I need to know physically about this thing that I'm dreaming about? And then people wait and they wait and they wait, and 9 times out of 10, that manifestation won't happen because there's no action being taken. And I honestly think that one of the biggest reasons that people stay stuck is because they're trying to see the entire journey before before they take that first step. So they want guarantees or certainty that it's going to work out. They want to know where an idea is going to lead before they invest any time and energy into it. And I mean, that's quite sensible, isn't it? But you're never going to see where it's going to lead if you just sit in that planning stage. Yeah, the problem is that life doesn't work like that. If someone had sat me down whilst I was walking dogs around Newcastle and told me that one day I'd have a business called Cani Crystals, I'd be hosting large live events, I'd be speaking on stages, interviewing best-selling authors, recording a podcast listened to by thousands of people every single week. I would have thought that they were absolutely bloody mental. There was no logical line between those things. I couldn't see the path because the path didn't exist yet. And I think the path only became visible because I kept taking steps forward. Now, I often think that people put far too much pressure on themselves to get things right from the beginning. You know, we are constantly exposed to people's finished products, aren't we? Look at social media. No one shows you the journey. They show you the end result. We see that polished Instagram account or the successful business or the packed-out event or the best-selling book, and we compare that to our first attempt. Honestly, if I could have shown you backstage at Manifest— well, not even backstage, just the planning process. There'd be nights where I would wake up at 3 o'clock in the morning, let me dog out for a wee because he's got a bloody bladder the size of an acorn, and then I would be awake for the next like 3 or 4 hours because I'd be stressed thinking about not selling enough tickets on Manifest or something that would have just popped into my head that I hadn't dealt with yet. It was a nightmare, but nobody saw that because I didn't show anyone that. Yeah, we compare somebody else's chapter 20 to our chapter 1, don't we? What we don't see are the years of trial and error that happened behind the scenes. We don't see the mistakes or the failed ideas or the awkward beginnings or even the moments where, you know, they questioned whether any of it was going to work. We just see the result and we assume that they must have known what they were doing from day one. So, going back to me story— sorry, I went off on a tangent there— going back to me story, The pandemic arrived, didn't it, in 2020, 2021? And like everyone else, my life changed almost overnight. The world felt uncertain. Nobody really knew what was around the corner, did we? And I'm sure wherever you're listening to this from in the world, like, we all had the same kind of experience, didn't we? Like, businesses were shutting, people were worried about money. There was a lot of fear about what the future was actually going to look like. But in amongst all that uncertainty, something interesting was happening because people's habits were changing. More and more people were ordering things online because they had no choice. They couldn't go to the shops. The shops were all shut. Everyone was on furlough. So, deliveries became part of everyday life. And what I find fascinating is that in every single major change, whether it be personal or global, opportunities often appear alongside the problems. So, what I mean by that is that most people become completely focused on the problem, which is understandable. Like, a smaller group start asking a different question though. They start asking, 'What opportunity exists here?' And that's what I want for you. So, one of our friends in Leeds, he had started a sweets delivery business, and he was doing really well with it. And I remember seeing what he was doing and thinking, 'Well, why can't I do that in Newcastle?' There was nothing particularly revolutionary about the idea. Like, it wasn't some groundbreaking innovation, it was just spotting something that was already working elsewhere and adapting it for a different area. So I sent him a message and I said, you know, would I be able to do something similar in Newcastle? Can I franchise his business, so to speak? And he was more than happy for me to do it. And that simple conversation ended up setting me off down another completely unexpected journey. Now, here's the part that people often overlook, because at that point I knew absolutely nothing about running an e-commerce business. I didn't know how to build a site. I didn't know how to process online orders. I didn't know how to manage stock. I didn't know how to handle customer service inquiries. I didn't know how to create marketing campaigns. I didn't know how to source products from wholesalers. In fact, if you looked at me CV, it was literally 99% NHS work. There was absolutely nothing that suggested that I should be running an online sweets company. The only qualification that I really needed was a basic food hygiene certificate, which I completed online in about an hour. It cost us— it was something like £10-15. It wasn't much at all, but what happened next completely changed the way that I think about learning. Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. Now, I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited premium wireless for $15 a month is back, so I thought it would be fun if we made made $15 bills, but it turns out that's very illegal. Uh, so there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it a try at mintmobile.com/switch. Upfront payment of $45 for 3 months, $90 for 6 months, or $180 for 12-month plan required. $15 per month equivalent, taxes and fees extra. Initial plan term only. Greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. See terms. So rather than spending 6 months researching how to run an e-commerce business, I just started one. I built a Shopify website. Was it perfect? Absolutely not. I watched myself a YouTube video whenever I got stuck. If I needed to learn how to add products, I searched for a video. If I needed to learn how to process orders, I watched a video. If I needed to learn how to change something on the website, I watched a video. Every single problem became an opportunity to learn something new, and instead of trying to learn everything before I began, I just thought, well, why don't I just learn on the job? So, I learned exactly what I needed at the moment that I actually needed it. Now, that approach people might think is crazy. Like, people would think, God, I'd never do that in a million years. Most people would think that they needed confidence before they took action. But like I said earlier, confidence is usually the result of taking action. You get the confidence from doing it. Like, you wouldn't go into a brand new job on your first day in, like, a brand new office or whatever. And go into that job totally confident, would you? You'd learn on the job, and a few weeks later, then you'd feel confident. Nobody feels confident doing something that they've never done before. Like, why would they? Confidence isn't some magical feeling that comes one morning and suddenly transforms your life, is it? Confidence is evidence. It's built through experience. So every time that you solve a problem, or every time that you overcome an obstacle, or you figure something out that previously felt impossible, You just collect another piece of evidence that says, actually, I can do hard things. And then before long, I was buying stock, I was packing orders, I was delivering sweets around Newcastle, and I was learning skills that I'd never even imagined that I'd need. Now, looking back, I can see the, the sweets business, that wasn't really about sweets any more than the Barkham Brigade was really about dog walking. But what those businesses were actually doing was teaching me how capable I was. They were teaching me how resourceful I could be and how I could make money when I stopped waiting for permission and I started trusting myself to just figure things out. Every single challenge that I faced, it strengthened that belief a little bit more, and every single problem that I solved made the next problem feel less intimidating. And I think that's what people miss when they wait for certainty. They imagine themselves facing future challenges as the person that they are right now today. Now, of course, that's going to feel overwhelming, like it's going to feel scary, isn't it? But the version of you that faces those future challenges, that won't be today's version of you. There'll be a stronger version, a more experienced version. They're going to be a version that's grown because of everything that they've learned along the way. The only catch is that person never gets created unless you physically start today. So little did I know at the time, all of those experiences in those past two jobs, they were preparing me for the idea that would eventually change my life completely. Because after dog walking and after the sweets, another idea appeared out of absolutely nowhere. Just like the others, it didn't arrive with guarantees, didn't arrive with a roadmap or a plan or certainty. It just came as a simple thought one night, and once again I had a choice. I could either walk through the door and ignore it, or I could walk through the other door and see where it might lead. Now, the thing about ideas is that they very rarely arrive when you're expecting them. Like, people often talk about finding the purpose as though one day they're going to wake up and the heavens are just going to open and be like, ah, this beam of light is going to shine through the bedroom window and suddenly everything's going to make sense. And just from that experience, they're going to know exactly what they're meant to do with the rest of their life. That certainty wasn't my experience, and it won't be 100% of other people's experiences either. Every opportunity that I've ever had has arrived in exactly the same way: as an idea, usually when I wasn't looking for it. Cani Crystals was no different. I can still remember how random it all felt at the time. Like, there wasn't a grand vision to create a crystal company. There wasn't this business plan sat in a drawer somewhere. There wasn't a strategy outlining how I'd one day host live events or build this podcast or build a membership, create courses online or write books. There was just an idea, one of many ideas that had passed through me head over the years. The difference this time was that I acted on that idea. So when I look back now, that's probably the biggest lesson of this entire episode. Most people think successful people have better ideas. I don't think that's true at all. I think every single person on the planet has ideas. I think most people have dozens of potentially life-changing ideas throughout their lifetime. The difference is that some people dismiss them immediately whilst others get a little bit curious enough to explore them. That's all it was. That's exactly what happened with Canny Crystals. I had an idea while I was out for a dog walk, and I got home, I said to my partner, thinking of creating a little crystal website. And he just went, okay, looked at me a bit weird. And I was like, well, you know, I've got 200 of me own now. I want to like share the power of like crystals with other people as well. And I just said, would you be able to design me a logo? And he said, yeah, I can do that quite easily. When do you need it? And I just went ASAP. And he went, yeah, I can have it with you in half an hour. Do you know what kind of logo you want? And I just quickly looked online and I was like, I want this shape with two interlocking C's. That's literally it. And he said, why the seas? And I went, I think I'm going to call it Canny Crystals. I'd been thinking about the name of the business while I'd been out on me dog walk, and I was trying to think of a name. And I can remember that me granddad used to always say, gan canny, and his voice popped into me head and just said, gan canny, son. And straight away I was like, oh my God, Canny Crystals. And it came from that. It was just a little idea, and within a day of having that idea I'd built my entire website. Not because I was a web designer or because I knew what I was doing, just because I'd learned enough from previous businesses to know that I could probably just figure it out. And that's an important point because confidence compounds. The first time you do something new, it's going to feel terrifying. Of course it is. But then the second time, it's going to feel slightly less terrifying. And then by the third or fourth or fifth time, you'll start building evidence that you're capable of doing it. Now, I wasn't confident because I knew how to build a crystal business. Far from it. I was confident because I'd already proven to myself that I could learn. There's a huge difference there. I think many people believe that confidence comes from knowledge, whereas in reality, like I say, it comes from trust and taking action. Trust that even if things go wrong, you'll find a way through. Or even if you don't know the answer today, you'll figure it out tomorrow. So I started researching suppliers. I started learning more about crystals. I started figuring out what products people wanted. I started building social media pages. Every day there seemed to be something new to learn, and every day you best believe I learned it. Again, no qualifications. Nobody handed us a certificate declaring me officially ready to sell crystals. Nobody even gave us permission. Nobody tapped us on the shoulder and said, "Mark, congratulations, we've assessed your capabilities. We've decided that you're now qualified to run a business. Woohoo! Party poppers on the go!" I just started. The funny thing is that when you start something new, you suddenly realise that almost everybody else started in exactly the same place. Just think about that for a moment. Every successful business owner that you admire they once made their first sale. Every single business that you've ever ordered from, whether it be like ASOS or Boohoo or, you know, any other clothing company or anything like that, they once made their first sale. They didn't know that they were going to grow into these global brands now, did they? Every best-selling author once stared at a blank page. Every podcaster once recorded their first episode. Every speaker once stood on stage for the very first time. What I'm trying to say is that every expert was once a beginner, yet we somehow convince ourselves that we are the exception. You know, you. We look at where somebody is today and we compare it to where we are right now, completely ignoring everything that happened in between. And I think that's one of the most destructive habits that we can fall into, because comparison doesn't just steal joy, it steals your momentum. Instead of focusing on the next step in front of you, you'll start to become obsessed with the 100th step that somebody else has already taken. So imagine if I had looked at an established crystal business and I decided there was no point because they were bigger than me. Or imagine if I'd convinced myself that there wasn't enough room in the world for a second crystal business. Imagine if I looked at people with years of experience and just used that as evidence that I shouldn't begin. I wouldn't be sat here right now recording this episode. I'd be still working in the NHS. None of this would have happened. There'd be no Canny Crystals, no academy, no podcast, no manifest, no books, no community, nothing. I think we spend so much time worrying about what might happen if we fail, but we rarely stop to consider what happens if we don't start. Like, what opportunities might you miss? What people won't you meet? What lessons won't you learn? What experiences won't you have? What version of you will never get the chance to exist? Most of the things that changed my life, they didn't look life-changing when they began. They looked small. The Barkham Brigade looked like a way to earn some extra money. The sweets business looked like a way to stay productive during lockdown. Canny Crystals looked like a little website selling crystals from me spare room. Which it was for the first, uh, 18 months, but we won't go there. But none of them arrived looking like the future. The future only became visible because I was willing to take the first step and then the next and the next and the next. Yeah, sometimes inspired action is just ordering a batch of business cards. Sometimes it's posting a social media post for the first time. Sometimes it's just registering a domain name so that you've got the website. Or sending an email or having a conversation or making a website that looks absolutely dogshit compared to the vision in your head. Because that's what happened to me. The very first version of Candy Crystals, the website. Jesus Christ. But every meaningful journey begins with actions that seem insignificant at the time. Now, looking back, it's easy for me to connect the dots. It's easy to tell quite a neat story about how one thing led to another and how everything unfolded exactly as it should. But living through it, it felt very different. It felt uncertain and messy, and it felt like I was just making things up as I went along. And if I'm honest with you, do you know what? I was. And I think the secret is that most people are. The difference is that some people are willing to keep moving while they figure it out. And that's why I believe action is one of the highest forms of self-belief, because when you take action, You're sending yourself a message saying, "I don't have all the answers right now, but I do trust myself enough to begin." And when you repeat that process over and over again, something amazing will happen. You'll stop waiting for permission and stop waiting until you feel ready, because eventually you'll realize that nobody ever feels 100% ready. They just start anyway. And I think one of the biggest reasons that people don't start isn't because they lack talent or intelligence or opportunity. I think it's that most of the time it's because they're carrying around fears that feel incredibly real in that moment. The frustrating thing about those fears is that when you look back at them years later, you'll realize they were never ever the obstacle at all anyway. They felt huge at the time, yeah, but they only ever had power because you believed that they did. If I think about every business that I've started, or every risk I've taken, and every opportunity I've gone after, there's always been some sort of fear present. The difference wasn't that I felt fearless, because I'm not fearless whatsoever. The difference was just that eventually I decided the fear wasn't a good enough reason to stay exactly where I was in life. You know, we all have like a fear of judgment, don't we? And I think this stops more dreams than lack of money, lack of experience, or lack of opportunity. Because people will spend years worrying about what other people might think of them. They worry about looking silly or about failing publicly, or they'll worry about somebody making a comment online or a friend questioning what they're doing or a family member telling them that it's unrealistic. And we often hand enormous power to the opinions of people who aren't actually living our lives and won't experience the consequences of our decisions. When I started the Barkin' Brigade, I didn't know whether people would think it was ridiculous. When I started the sweets business, I was just a bloke driving around Newcastle delivering pick 'n' mix during a global pandemic. If you told me a few years earlier that I'd be doing that, I would have laughed. You know, when I started Canny Crystals, I was selling crystals online at a time when plenty of people would have just rolled their eyes and dismissed it as nonsense. The reality is that no matter what you choose to do in life, somebody will probably have an opinion about it. Somebody will think that it's a great idea. Someone will think that it's a terrible idea. Some people might support you. Some will doubt you. That's just how life works. But if they're going to have an opinion anyway, why would you allow that opinion to dictate the course of your life? I've never understood why we are so willing to disappoint ourselves in order to avoid disappointing somebody else. Think about how many people spend years doing the things that they don't enjoy, staying in situations that they're not growing, or even ignoring ideas that they're excited about because they're trying to avoid criticism. The irony is that the criticism often arrives regardless. You can play small and people will judge you. You can take a risk and people will judge you. You can succeed at something and people will judge you. You can fail and people will judge you. And I think once you realize that, that people are going to judge you regardless, you start understanding how pointless it is to build your life around avoiding judgment. So when I look back over the last decade, like, almost every meaningful thing in my life came from taking action before I felt ready. That's all that there ever was to it. There was never a magical moment where all uncertainty disappeared, or a point where I suddenly knew exactly what was going to happen. Every decision carried some degree of risk. Every opportunity came with questions that I couldn't answer. The greatest risk in life is spending years waiting for a feeling that's never going to arrive, because whilst you're waiting to feel ready, somebody else is learning. Somebody else is gaining that experience, and guess what? They're going to take your idea. Somebody else is out there making mistakes, solving problems, growing stronger. They're not ahead because they're smarter than you. They're ahead because they started before they felt prepared. That's all there is to it. So the next time you have an idea, just start. Start the ball rolling. Start taking those inspired action steps towards that. That's all you have to do. You'll never know if you don't give it a chance. Obviously, that doesn't mean that every single idea is going to become a million-pound business. It doesn't mean that every project is going to succeed or every risk is going to pay off because some things won't work and that's okay. It's not the end of the world. God, I've had tons of ideas that went nowhere. I've launched things that didn't perform how I hoped. I've cancelled things. I've made mistakes. I've wasted time. I've wasted money. I've taken wrong turns. But even those experiences were valuable because they taught us something and they helped us grow and move forward. Very rarely is any action truly wasted if you're willing to learn from it. I think the biggest myth that I've ever believed is that successful people know something that the rest of us don't. I always used to think that. I was like, oh, they must have a secret entrepreneurs club, or like a creators and a business club. But the further I've gone down the line with this, like, I've realized that's simply not true. Most people are just figuring things out as they go. Most people don't have all the answers. They're just making decisions with incomplete information, and hopefully they're moving in the right direction. And that's what I do on a day-to-day basis. The difference is that they don't let uncertainty stop them. So if you've listened to this episode today and there's something that you've been putting off, or something that you've been dreaming about that you've been talking yourself out of, I want you to stop waiting for permission. I want you to stop waiting for the perfect time. Consider this your spiritual slap. There you go, I've slapped you across the cheek. Stop waiting until you know everything and stop waiting until you're guaranteed success because none of those things are coming. Sorry, spoiler alert, they are not coming. Just ask yourself, what is the next step? Not the next 50 steps, not the entire plan, just what is the next step? And like I say, maybe it's buying the website. By the way, my website, honestly, 79p for the first year. cannycrystals.co.uk. I paid 79p for it. After that, I think it's like £17 a year. I also got cannycrystals.com, you know, just a few others, just so that if anyone types .com instead of .co.uk, it kind of goes back into the main website. But still, even that one, 79p for the first year. Crazy. Maybe it's creating an Instagram account. That's free. You can do that today. Maybe it's making a phone call. Maybe it's researching suppliers. Maybe it's signing up for a course. Maybe it's writing the first page of your book. Or recording a video. That's all free. It's stuff that you can do for free. But whatever it is, take that inspired action and then tomorrow do the next thing and the day after that do the next thing. That's how everything worthwhile is built. Not in a huge giant moment of inspiration, but just through thousands of small tiny actions that are going to compound over time. And I genuinely believe that there are people listening to this episode right now whose lives could look completely different a year from now. Not because they're lucky or because they're more talented than you, but simply because they decided that today is the day that they stop thinking about it and they start doing something about it. And years from now, you'll be thanking us. You won't remember the day that you finally fully felt ready because that day isn't coming, because you're never gonna feel fully ready. But what you will remember is the day that you decided to begin despite not feeling ready. The day that you chose action over overthinking, and when you stopped waiting for certainty and you just started bloody trusting yourself. And who knows, the thing that you're worried about starting today, that might just become the story that you're telling on a podcast 10 years from now. Who knows what's going to happen? But yeah, I just hope that this episode has inspired you to take some action today. I really hope it's helped you. If you've enjoyed this episode, or maybe you've got a friend that has been putting off an idea, send this bloody episode to them. Send it in a WhatsApp group or a Facebook group. Inspire people to take action. I want to see everyone taking action. If you want to take some action this weekend or the next week, please put it on your Instagram story, share what you're doing, tag me. I am @cannycrystals. Follow me, tag me, do what you need to do to hold yourself accountable. If you've enjoyed this episode as well, please do leave me a rating or a review. Follow this podcast, subscribe for more. We have new episodes every single Friday. I don't know why I said 'we' because it's literally just me. Um, I have brand new episodes every single Friday. I hope that you've loved this episode. I hope it's inspired you to take some action. Go out, do the thing, and I will see you all next Friday for another episode. Speak soon, guys. Bye!