For the first week, it does. You get the dopamine hit. Buying the domain. Setting up the Notion dashboard. It feels like progress. Then the new toy energy wears off. Suddenly, you feel clumsy. The output looks rubbish. It isn't fun anymore. This is the "bottoming out" point. Most people take this as a signal to stop. They say, "It doesn't feel aligned," or "It isn't my passion." B*llocks. It just means you have started the actual practice. Information is useless without execution. And execution is miserable at first. Take languages. You have to sound like an idiot for six months to speak fluently. Awkwardness is the price of entry. If you are in the grind right now, you aren't failing. You are just paying the tax. The enjoyment comes from getting good enough to stop feeling awkward. Keep going.

I don't do "strategy sessions" or "discovery calls" or whatever the industry is calling them this week. I do coffee calls. When people get on a call with me expecting a pitch, they get confused. Even when they DM me asking for a payment link or a way to work with me, I usually tell them to wait. I send them to my email list instead. It sounds mad. Why put a barrier in front of cash? Because I can't be arsed with the "dance." I hate the performance of it. Handling objections and trying to convince a stranger I'm not a scammer is miserable work. I want clients who already get it. The list is the filter. It does the heavy lifting so I don't have to. If you read the daily emails, you know the score by now. If that works for you, great. If it annoys you, you unsubscribe. That saves us both a headache. I’d rather you leave now than buy something and realise you hate my style three weeks in. The email list ensures I only work with people who are actually aligned. If you want to see how I actually operate (and get the daily emails), the link is in my bio.

I haven't emailed in three days. I could give you a marketing excuse about "pattern interrupts" or "strategic silence." Rubbish. I was in the cave. I am building something that takes the "branding" process—which usually takes 3 months of overthinking—and compresses it into a single afternoon. But making a system do that without sounding like a generic robot is harder than it looks. Most AI tools spit out noise. They don't capture the specific weirdness that makes you buyable. So I’ve been wrestling with the logic. Trying to engineer "taste" into the code. It isn't ready yet. I’m still fixing the last few pieces. But the output is starting to look frighteningly good. Back to it.

I've talked to dozens of wellness coaches in the past few months. They're all saying the same thing: - "I'm posting consistently. I'm using keywords. I'm showing up. But fewer people are finding me." Here's what I discovered, and why it's not your fault. Think about how libraries used to work. You'd browse the shelves and find what you needed. Now imagine there's a librarian who answers questions directly and only recommends books she trusts. If the librarian doesn't know your book exists, no one will ever find it on the shelf, no matter how good it is. That's exactly what's happening with AI. Most of your potential clients aren't browsing Google anymore. They're asking ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews for wellness advice. And if your expertise isn't feeding those AI systems, you're invisible to them. The data is startling: - 60% of searches now end without a click. - People get their answers from AI, not from visiting your website. LinkedIn's own marketing team saw traffic decline by up to 60% across awareness-driven topics, even while their rankings stayed stable. The game changed. Discovery now happens inside AI-generated answers, often before anyone clicks to find you. Your website still matters for trust, depth, and conversion. But it's no longer where discovery begins. Test this yourself: Ask ChatGPT and Google AI for advice on [your wellness specialty]. See if your name or content shows up. That's your AI visibility baseline. Part 2 of this series will show you how to optimize for AI citation, not just Google rankings.

The most expensive thing I ever bought wasn't a masterclass or a high-ticket mentor. It was certainty. For years, I treated "learning" as a valid phase of business. I told myself I was researching. I was building a strategy, getting ready. That was rubbish. I was buying courses because I wanted to feel safe before I did the work. I wanted a guarantee that if I sweated, I would get paid. But certainty is a lagging indicator. It only turns up after the work is done. Buying information to cure a lack of courage is a tax. I paid it for 2 years. If you are currently "getting ready" to launch, you are paying for it too.