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Hey rebel ideapreneurs 🦸♂️🦸♀️
Micah wants to start a weekly newsletter about chess for casual players.
He loves the game and he's decent — no master, just good enough to beat his friends.
He's sure a little chess makes any ordinary evening more fun.
That's Micah's readers too — they want small, fun games, not homework.
⛳️ Problem:
Micah keeps telling himself he isn't ready to teach chess yet.
He thinks he has to master the game for years before he earns the right to write.
So the newsletter stays an idea, and a year later issue one still isn't written. That one hurts.
His struggle:
He believes he must be an expert before he starts, so he never starts at all.
🔥 The recipe
➡️ The Get-It-Going Rule
Think about learning to ride a bike as a kid.
You didn't study for years before your first wobble down the street.
A few tries, a few scrapes, and you were riding to a friend's house.
Wild, right? Nobody masters the bike first.
That's what Barbara Corcoran proved.
With a $1,000 loan and no experience, she started a real-estate business while working as a waitress.
She grew it into The Corcoran Group and sold it for $66 million in 2001.
She wasn't an expert when she began — nowhere close.
Her line says it all: "You don't have to get it right. You just have to get it going."
She even hired for attitude over experience, certain that a hungry beginner beats a bored expert who stopped trying.
You don't earn the right to start by mastering something first.
You start, you help a few people, and you get good by doing — not before.
🚗 So Micah tried it his way.
We're back with Micah and his chess newsletter for casual players.
He'd been waiting to become a master before writing a single issue.
So he stopped waiting, and just got it going instead.
Turns out that "ready" feeling never actually shows up.
Before, his goal was "become a chess expert" — a finish line years away.
Now he picked something he could already do: help a beginner win a few more games.
He wrote issue one on one thing — the four-move trap every new player falls for.
He wasn't the best player in the world, and it didn't matter.
He hit send before he could lose his nerve.
He sent it to forty friends and two chess groups, and a few wrote back for more.
Plot twist: good enough was plenty.
The newsletter was finally real.
And he got a little better every week by writing — not by waiting to feel ready.
Nailed it.
🧸 You don't earn the right to start by mastering it first. You start, then get good.
The prompt below turns "I'm not expert enough yet" into a good-enough start you can ship this week.
You just tell it your skill and who you want to help.
🏄♀️ The prompt
Save this prompt as a Skill or add to Project in your favorite AI tool — build once, use often.
Update your input values in the prompt, or just run it as is. Your AI sidekick will use the example values and give you an output.
CONTEXT:
- (use what's available, fall back to the inline values)
- If my Voice Profile exists, write in that voice. Otherwise, write in a clear, warm, no-jargon voice — first-person, plain words, no startup-speak.
- If my ICP / Audience doc exists, target that reader. Otherwise, use the audience below.
Inputs:
The thing I keep waiting to feel "expert enough" to start:
{e.g. a weekly newsletter teaching casual chess players}
How good I actually am right now (be honest — "decent" is plenty):
{e.g. decent — I beat most friends but I'm no master}
Who I want to help, and the small win I could give them today:
{e.g. total beginners who want to win a few more friendly games}
For Audience: {e.g. casual players who want fun games without hours of study}
For Outcome: {e.g. a good-enough goal and a first issue I can send this week}
Outputs:
1. My good-enough goal — the small, useful version of my skill I can already teach today, instead of "master it first."
2. The belief I'm hiding behind — the exact "I'm not expert enough" story I'm telling myself, named plainly so I can see it.
3. Issue one — a first newsletter built from what I already know, ready to send now.
4. The get-it-going step — the single smallest move that gets me started this week, before I feel ready.
Then name the ONE "I need to be an expert first" excuse I should drop — because getting going beats getting it perfect.
That's it, my fellow contrarians!
Yours 'proving to you that most business failures are preventable and success can be engineered' Vijay Peduru 🦸♂️