Dean Maden

“Don’t bite off more than you can chew.”

F**k that. Genuinely.

That phrase has kept more people small than any recession ever has. It sounds like wisdom and it functions like a leash.

Every meaningful thing I’ve done, I was underqualified for on the day I committed to it. The gym. The first competition. The house in Spain I put a deposit on before I’d run it past my wife. The 250km race across the desert that I entered having never run a marathon in my life.

None of that was reckless. It was just committed before I was ready, which is the only order it ever actually happens in. You don’t get ready and then commit. You commit, and the readiness turns up because it has to.

And the risk everyone’s terrified of is almost never as bad as they’ve built it up to be. Worst case, you take too big a bite, you choke a bit, you spit some out. You are still miles ahead of the version of you who sat there nibbling for another two years.

Nibbling has a cost. Nobody ever puts a number on it, but it’s the biggest one on the list.

If you want a bite big enough to move something, it’s £250 a month and you can cancel any time you like. Price, guarantee and everything inside it is all laid out, no DM-me-for-details game.

Link’s in my bio.

That’s the back of a t-shirt I used to wear.

My mobile number. Printed on my own back. In a font I picked myself because I couldn’t afford anyone who knew better.

I wore it in the gym. I wore it in the supermarket. I wore it to the pub once and a bloke asked if I was a taxi. (True story)

No brand. No niche. No content strategy. No funnel. A field, a bag of kit, and my number on my back like a walking Yellow Pages advert.

And I’d stand in that field at 6am waiting to see if anyone turned up.

Here’s what I want you to actually take from this, because it isn’t “look how far I’ve come.”

It’s that I was doing the thing.

Badly. Cheaply. With awful graphics and a phone number nobody rang for weeks. But the reps were going in. Every session I ran taught me something the next one didn’t have to.

You’re sat there with a better logo than I had, a better camera than I had, and better information than I had, and you’re not shipping because it isn’t ready.

Mate, it’s never ready. Ready is a thing you feel afterwards.

I got here because I did four hundred bad things before I did one good one. That’s it. That’s the actual secret and it’s boring as hell, which is exactly why nobody sells it to you.

Do the rep. Then do the next one.

The free 7-day Growth Engine challenge is in my bio. It’s the first fourteen reps, laid out in order, so you’re not guessing which one to do.