It's almost 2025.

If you still think that starting a business requires a big capital, wake up.

Starting an online business requires time, not money.

Here's how I got started:

Step 1: Gather all my ideas on Notion

The hardest part of the climb is always the starting point:

When you haven’t yet warmed up, don’t have the momentum, and how you can see how far you need to climb.

That is also why most people don’t dare to start.

The best exercise I do is brainstorming ideas without any judgment. On a blank Notion page, I write down all possible ideas I can write about. When I say no judgment, it means I don’t overthink whether the idea will do good or not. I don’t overanalyze whether I know the topic well enough or not. I don’t worry whether people will agree with the idea or not.

I just record everything on Notion -- no matter how weird the idea might seem. I might write about them or not later on. The important thing is that I have a list of ideas to pull when it’s hard to start writing, aka when I have no inpiration.

So go ahead and do this exercise now:

Set a 15 minute timer. Sit on your desk and write down everything that comes to mind.

You’re not allowed to get up until the timer is done.

Once you do this exercise, you’ll start to notice that throughout the day, more ideas will come to you — note them down.

Once you have a few ideas, you can now validate them:

Step 2: Validate my ideas on Twitter

Now is the time for judgment.

But here’s the twist: the judgment doesn’t come from you, it’s from the audience.

You don’t get to decide whether it’s a great idea or not. So no matter how absurd the idea is, I challenge you to post it on the internet.

Chances are you’re going to chicken out and hide all your ideas on Notion. But you know what happens when you do this? You miss the chance of discovering the idea that stands out.

Are you going to let your ego stand in the way?

I know exactly how you think:

• People will laugh at your ideas if they are not good.

• People will think you’re stupid because that idea has been said many times before.

• People will ridicule you because what you said is the opposite of what they believe.

I know because I was exactly at that place when I was starting. But then I realized something when I decided to ignore my ego.

When your idea is terrible, not unique enough, or nonsense — nobody will see it. I used to cry at getting zero views. Then I realized this is exactly the point. When you get zero views, it gives you the hint that the idea is terrible — but without any of the worries of being ridiculed because people didn’t even see it.

Go post as much as you can.

People will either ignore or see them — in both cases, you win.

Step 3: Write long-form posts on Beehiiv (and Medium)

The mistake I made as a beginner was skipping the first two steps.

I went straight to this step and experienced burnout.

I thought all I had to do was write an article on the internet. I thought if I spent 2-4 hours writing something, I would come up with a masterpiece. Then people will start reading my amazing post and clients will magically find me and hire me to write for them.

The result?

Zero views. Losing my confidence. Giving up.

So it’s important to only spend time writing about something that people want to read about. Again, you don’t get to decide which one is this. This is why it's important to do the first two steps.

Once you have 30+ tweets (which shouldn’t take more than two hours to write) you will have data to analyze on what topics work.

But here’s the thing, if you only write 30+ tweets. Chances are you’re not going to get a viral post. And you might be waiting for that viral post before expanding it.

Wrong again.

All you have to do is get the most number of views, likes, retweets, or comments,

It doesn’t matter whether you get 0 views vs 10 views. It doesn’t matter if it’s 0 likes vs 2 likes. It doesn’t matter if you get 0 comment of 1 comment.

Pick the top-performing posts. And when I say top-performing, I don’t mean the one that got 100M views — it could mean the one that got 10 views, 1 comment, and 1 like.

That’s it - after doing it for a few weeks, you can proceed to the next:

Step 4: Use Carrd to build a landing page

The next 3 steps is where the fun begins.

Once you have a social profile, validated ideas, and a writing habit, you can start experimenting with your first offer.

This can either be a product or a service — depending on what you have learned during the last few weeks of writing.

I know this is something you will overthing (as I have). You don’t need to, it can be a niche product that you can sell for $5. The important thing is you can have something to work on.

Once you have decided on this, build the landing page using Carrd.

This is where you start learning how to write a copy and get creative.

If you are not ready for this, you can simply post your product on Gumroad.

But I recommend you don’t skip the next step:

Step 5: Use Canva for design

Of course, to look legit you need a cover for your product.

You can design it for free on Canva. There are also mockups that you can just edit. Again, don’t spend so much time on this — you just need something to make your product look appealing.

You can customize it and make things better once you start earning.

And here’s how you get paid:

Step 6: Set up Stripe for payment

I’m still not that familiar with all the business side I need to work on.

Fortunately, Stripe makes it easy to get paid so I can just worry about building and improving my business.

It’s easy to set up and takes care of the receipts.

All I had to do was create a stripe page for each of my product/service, then link it to my Carrd page.

Step 7: Rinse and repeat

Lastly, it’s important to iterate.

Your first tries will not be perfect — but you have to get going.

PS.

I teach all these on my coaching program. You can still get $200 off until December 2 11:59PM.

After that, the program will be gone forever. I’m starting a new one — it covers more in-depth strategies but costs more. I’ve been working hard for it and excited to share it with you soon.

Catch you next week!

-M