What I Would Do Differently If I Were Starting My Online Business Today

If I could go back and talk to myself at the start of this whole journey, I'd probably be ignored. That version of me was convinced he knew what he was doing. But I'd still try, because the mistakes I made cost me about 18 months of spinning my wheels and several thousand dollars I didn't need to spend.

What I would do differently starting my online business today isn't a list of trendy tactics. It's a set of mindset and strategy shifts that I had to learn the slow way — and that I genuinely believe would have cut my timeline to real income in half.

Here's the honest version.

I Would Start Smaller and Ship Faster

I spent four months building my first online business before it launched. Website, branding, social media profiles on six platforms, a 47-page ebook I revised seventeen times. By the time I published it, I had no audience, no validation, and deep uncertainty about whether anyone actually wanted what I'd built.

The answer, it turned out, was: barely anyone.

If I were starting today, I'd build the smallest viable version of my product and get it in front of real people within two weeks. Not two months. Two weeks. This isn't a business book cliché — it's the only way to find out if you have a real idea before you invest serious time and money.

A simple landing page describing what you're building. A short email list of people who said they're interested. One version of the product that solves the core problem, even if it's rough. That's enough to learn whether you're onto something.

The market tells you what it wants. The sooner you ask it, the less time you waste building the wrong thing.

I Would Pick One Platform, Not Five

I tried to be everywhere at once. TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, Twitter, a podcast. I was mediocre on all of them and excellent on none.

The accounts and businesses I most admire were all built by going deep on one platform before expanding. They understood one algorithm. They figured out what their audience wanted on that specific platform. They became known in that space. Then — only then — they repurposed to other channels.

If I were starting today, I'd pick the platform where my audience already spends the most time and where my content format feels natural. For me now, that would probably be short-form video or a newsletter. Not both at once. One.

Six months of being consistently present on one platform beats two years of being occasionally present on six. That's not my opinion. That's what the data shows, over and over, for almost every creator and business I've watched closely.

I Would Build the Email List From Day One

This is the advice everyone gives and almost nobody follows at the start. I didn't. I spent a year building an audience on social media before I took email seriously — and then a platform algorithm change cut my reach by 70% overnight.

Your email list is the only audience you actually own. Followers, subscribers, fans — those live on platforms that can change their rules any time. Your email list is yours. You can take it anywhere.

If I were starting from zero today, I'd have a lead magnet ready before I published my first piece of content. Something genuinely useful — a checklist, a template, a short guide — that gives people a reason to hand over their email address. I'd link to it in every bio, every post, every video.

Growing an email list feels slow at first. A hundred subscribers doesn't feel like much. But a hundred people who opted in for your specific thing and said "yes, I want to hear from you" is more valuable than ten thousand passive social followers who barely remember why they clicked follow.

I Would Stop Waiting to Feel Ready

I launched my first product when I felt 80% ready. Which means I launched 14 months after I could have. The other 20% I was waiting for — more confidence, more polish, more certainty — never really arrived. I just eventually got tired of waiting and put the thing out.

Readiness is a feeling, not a state. You don't arrive at it by preparing more. You arrive at it by doing the thing, noticing it didn't kill you, and building confidence from that evidence.

The real cost of waiting to feel ready isn't just time. It's the feedback you don't get, the iteration you can't do, the revenue you don't earn, and the momentum you don't build. Everything downstream of your first launch gets better because you launched. Nothing gets better from more preparation.

This is especially true early. Launch ugly. Ship rough. Get it out. Then improve based on what real people tell you.

I Would Choose Profitability Over Vanity Metrics

Page views. Follower count. Email open rates. Monthly active users. I optimized for all of these at different points and made very little money for a long time while doing it.

Revenue is the only metric that matters when you're starting. Not because money is the point — but because revenue tells you that someone values what you're doing enough to pay for it. That signal is everything. It tells you whether you have a business or an expensive hobby.

If I were starting today, I'd have a paid offer from day one. Not a free course that maybe leads to something later. An actual product or service with a price on it. Even if it's small. Even if it's rough. Because the moment someone pays you, you learn more about your business than 10,000 page views ever told you.

Vanity metrics feel good and convert to nothing. A small number of paying customers tells you you're building something real.

The throughline in all of these is the same thing: bias toward action, toward shipping, toward reality-testing your ideas rather than perfecting them in isolation. The entrepreneurs I see succeed fastest all share this. They're comfortable being imperfect in public. They care more about learning than looking polished.

If you're ready to take that first concrete step, MadeThis is a platform built specifically for people starting online businesses from scratch — it handles the infrastructure so you can focus on building the thing that matters.