Almost a decade ago, we made a decision that changed everything. Not a grand, perfectly timed decision. Not one backed by a business degree, a marketing background, or a clear roadmap of what we were doing. Just a simple, stubborn decision that we wanted something different.
We wanted more freedom. More time together. More control over how we lived our lives. And we believed, even without evidence at the time, that building something online could give us exactly that.
If you are sitting here right now wondering how to start a digital business and feeling like you might be missing some crucial piece of knowledge or experience to make it work, this post is for you. Because we were you. And here is what we actually learned.
You Do Not Need to Have It All Figured Out Before You Start
This is probably the most important thing we can tell you, and it is also the hardest one to believe when you are at the beginning.
When we started, we had no idea how to run a multi-million dollar organization. We did not know how to scale a team. We had never managed a community of thousands of people or set up a CRM or run a webinar. We figured all of that out as we went, because we had to.
The version of the business you are building today does not need to look like the version you will be running in five years. It just needs to exist. It needs to be started. And then it needs to be worked on, every single day, with whatever skills you currently have.
The people who succeed in this space are not the ones who wait until everything is perfect. They are the ones who decide they want it badly enough to be imperfect in public, to make mistakes, to keep going anyway.
Start With the Decision, Not the Plan
Almost a decade ago, Mike and I did not stumble across some magical moment where everything suddenly lined up. We did not find a perfect window of time, a zero-risk opportunity, or some sign from the universe that this was the right move.
We made a decision. That was it.
We decided we wanted more freedom with our time and our money, and we committed to building something that could give us that. The specific plan came after the decision, not before it.
This matters because a lot of people get stuck in the research phase. They read everything they can find about how to start a digital business, they watch every video, they compare every option, and then they never actually begin. Because there is always one more thing to learn, one more risk to understand, one more reason to wait a little longer.
At some point, you have to make the call. And the business plan, the actual digital business plan that will guide your early decisions, is something you build as you go, not something you need to have finished before you take the first step.
Go Online-First From Day One
One of the best decisions we made early on was to build our business entirely online. We did not host local meetings. We did not rely on a warm market of friends and family. We went digital from the start.
That meant running ads on social media, building a Facebook group, creating content, and learning to communicate with people we had never met through a screen. It felt strange at first. But it opened up something that local or in-person building simply cannot: access to a global audience.
When your business exists online, geography stops being a ceiling. The people who need what you have are not limited to your city, your country, or your existing network. They are everywhere. And with the right content and the right advertising strategy, you can reach them.
We started by targeting people in our local area because it felt safer. Someone in British Columbia might trust us more if they knew we were also from British Columbia. That logic made sense at the beginning. But fairly quickly, we started branching out. And today we have team members building their own businesses across dozens of countries.
Going online-first is not just a tactical decision. It is a mindset. It means treating your social media presence as the front door to your business, your content as your calling card, and your community as the engine that runs everything.
Build Systems Early, Even Small Ones
Here is something nobody tells you when you are just getting started: the systems you put in place when you have ten people in your community will either scale with you or collapse under you when you have ten thousand.
We learned this the hard way. In the early days, we were using Skype to stay in touch with our first few team members. Then we outgrew that. Then we moved to another platform, outgrew that too, and kept going. Same story with our funnel software, our webinar tools, our CRM.
The lesson is not to find the perfect system before you start. The lesson is to start building the habit of systematizing things from day one, even if the system is simple. A spreadsheet is a system. A weekly check-in schedule is a system. A document that explains how you onboard a new person is a system.
As you grow, those systems get more sophisticated. But the habit of thinking systemically, asking yourself how do I make this repeatable and teachable, is something you can start building right now, before you have anyone to teach it to.
Teach What You Know as You Learn It
One of the things that accelerated our growth more than almost anything else was the decision to share what we were learning as we were learning it.
Social media changes constantly. What works today might not work the same way in six months. So rather than trying to master something completely before teaching it, we started bringing our team along with us in real time. When we figured out something that worked, we shared it. When we made a mistake, we talked about it. When the algorithm shifted or a new tool showed up, we explored it together.
This approach did two things. It kept our community engaged because they felt like they were building alongside us rather than following behind us. And it kept us sharper, because when you teach something, you understand it better yourself.
If you are just starting out, you do not need to be an expert before you can be useful to someone else. You just need to be a step ahead. Find the people who are where you were six months ago and share what you have learned since then. That is where it starts.
The One Thing That Actually Makes It Work
We have spent a lot of words on strategy and systems here. But the honest truth about how to start a digital business and actually see it through is simpler than any of that.
You have to believe you can figure it out.
Not hope you can. Not kind of think maybe it might work if the conditions are right. Believe, with full conviction, that you are capable of building something, that you deserve to build something, and that the gaps in your knowledge and experience are things you can bridge.
A lot of people say they want a business. They spend months thinking about it, researching it, bookmarking things to come back to later. But they never start because somewhere underneath all of that, they do not actually believe it is possible for them.
We are telling you, from the other side of almost ten years of building this: it is possible. Not easy, not guaranteed, not without effort and time and patience. But possible. For people who had no marketing background. No business experience. No idea what they were doing.
If that sounds like you, you are in exactly the right place to start.
Where to Go From Here
Starting a digital business does not require you to have everything figured out. It requires a decision, a basic digital business plan you are willing to adjust as you go, a willingness to learn in public, and a community around you that can accelerate the learning curve.
That last part is something we care about deeply. Inside our Dream Team community, we have built a complete training infrastructure, from beginner to advanced, specifically because we know what it is like to start with nothing and wish someone had laid the path out a little more clearly.
If you are serious about building something real online, we would love to have you as part of what we have created here.
