Hey Reader,
Have you ever noticed how the hardest part of something you actually enjoy is just... starting?
It's Thursday evening, 6:55pm. My D&D session starts in five minutes, and I'm staring at my character sheet thinking "I could just cancel. I'm tired. Not really feeling it tonight."
But I don't cancel. I log in. We start playing.
By 7:30pm? I'm completely absorbed. Laughing at terrible dice rolls, reacting to plot twists, working with my party to solve problems in ways none of us anticipated. I'm having the time of my life, and I forget I almost didn't show up.
Here's the thing: this isn't just a D&D problem.
Over the past two weeks, I've had nearly identical conversations with three different clients. Each one said some variation of: "Once I'm actually working on my marketing, I enjoy it. But STARTING? That's the bit I keep avoiding."
Sound familiar?
You know you need to write that email sequence. You know you want to work on your lead magnet. You know that blog post would help your audience. But somehow, opening your laptop to actually do it feels like pushing a boulder uphill.
Here's what I've noticed: it's not about motivation
When my clients finally sit down and start working on their marketing, they get into flow. They have ideas. They enjoy the creative process. The problem was never that they don't like marketing (though they might tell themselves that story).
The problem is that starting requires a specific type of energy that doing doesn't need.
Starting means:
- Making decisions before you have momentum
- Facing the blank page or empty automation
- Choosing where to begin when everything feels equally urgent
- Fighting the voice that says "this probably won't work anyway"
Once you're in motion? Those obstacles disappear. You're making decisions from within the work, not from outside it. You're building on what you just created. You have proof it's working because you're literally watching it happen.
So what actually helps?
I can't promise these will magically make starting easy, but here's what I've seen work for my clients (and for my Thursday night D&D sessions):
Lower the stakes of starting Don't sit down to "write your email sequence." Make it ridiculously small. Sit down to write one terrible first draft of one email. You can fix it later. You just need words on a page.
Create a regular time or ritual Same time, same setup, same mug of tea. Your brain learns "oh, this is when we do marketing" and stops negotiating with you about whether today is the day. It becomes automatic instead of a decision you have to make fresh every time.
Borrow someone else's momentum This is the secret weapon, honestly. It's SO much easier to start when someone else is starting at the same time. There's something about other people working that makes your brain go "oh, we're doing this now? Okay."
This is exactly why I run multiple marketing coworking sessions every week. Not because my clients need me looking over their shoulder, but because showing up when other people are showing up makes starting infinitely easier.
You work on your marketing. They work on theirs. Nobody's alone with the blank page.
And just like my Thursday night D&D sessions, once you're 30 minutes in, you usually wonder why starting felt so hard in the first place.
If you're tired of the starting struggle...
Marketing Momentum is designed specifically for this. It's my programme that includes multiple coworking sessions every week at different times, so you can find what works for your schedule. Show up, work on whatever marketing task has been lurking on your to do list, and borrow the momentum of other people doing the same thing.
(Plus other support to keep you moving when life gets in the way, because let's be honest, it always does.)
Sometimes the best strategy isn't working harder on motivation. It's just making starting easier.
P.S. Nobody except my DM knows I almost cancelled last Thursday. The session ended up being one of our best ones this year. Funny how that works.
