Scan time: 2-4 minutes / Read time: 4-6 minutes
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Hello rebel ideapreneurs 🦸♂️🦸♀️
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🙋♀️ Nora’s first video that never goes up
Nora is a UX designer starting a YouTube channel that teaches design to non-designers.
Her first video has been sitting on the laptop, edited and ready, for two months.
She hasn’t posted it, because she can’t picture making a new video every week after that.
🧩 Her struggle:
She waits until she knows how before she picks a date, so nothing is ever due.
On Saturday, she clicks on a video with the true story of a man
who also had no plan for how to run his new company,
and had his own airline flying four months later.
And he started it with one phone call.
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✈️ The Monday-morning call to Boeing
In 1984, Richard Branson ran Virgin Records, a British music company that signed bands like Culture Club and sold their records.
He knew nothing about airlines.
That February, a young American lawyer named Randolph Fields mailed him a plan for a new airline.
A cheap airline called Laker Airways had shut down two years earlier.
Randolph thought there was room for a new one, flying London to New York.
Richard took the plan home for the weekend and read it.
He wrote down the one question he had.
Could you rent a plane for just one year, and give it back if the airline failed?
On Saturday, he did his research.
He tried to book a seat on People Express, the only cheap airline flying across the Atlantic at the time.
The line was busy.
He tried all morning and never got through.
That busy line was what convinced him.
In his own words, it was “that continual engaged tone on my telephone throughout Saturday.”
If this was the best cheap airline, he could do better.
By Sunday evening he had decided.
“I would be bold. I would just do it.”
He called Simon Draper, his business partner, and told him.
Simon said he was crazy.
On Monday morning, Richard called directory assistance and asked for Boeing’s phone number.
Boeing is the American company that builds the 747, the jumbo jet, the biggest passenger plane in the world at the time.
Boeing is in Seattle, so he waited until late afternoon in London for anyone there to be at work.
Then he spent the whole afternoon and evening on the phone, asking what deals they had on a jumbo.
He says they were “rather bemused,” puzzled, “to hear an Englishman asking.”
Eventually someone told him Boeing had a second-hand jumbo, and would consider taking it back after a year.
That was his whole plan when he went to lunch with his partners the next day.
Simon’s answer: “You go ahead with this over my dead body.”
Richard went ahead anyway.
He rented the jumbo, hired a crew, and passed the government’s test flight on June 19.
Virgin Atlantic’s first flight took off from London on June 22, 1984.
Holy moly, in February a stranger’s letter arrived in the mail.
By June, Richard’s own jumbo jet was in the air.
Forbes puts Richard’s net worth at $2.8 billion today.
Richard did not wait until he knew how to run an airline.
He decided on Sunday.
On Monday, he was already on the phone working out how.
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🔥 The recipe
➡️ The Yes-First Leap
Richard decided to start an airline on Sunday, and on Monday he was on the phone to Boeing asking about a jumbo jet.
Four months later, his airline was flying passengers.
What Richard did has a name: The Yes-First Leap.
Say yes first, out loud, to someone who will remember.
Then go and work out how.
He didn’t have a plan when he said yes.
He knew that once the yes was out, the how had to follow.
Richard did give himself a way out: a plane he could hand back after a year.
Your way out is even easier.
Posting a video costs nothing.
If it does not work out, you simply stop posting.
So stop waiting until you know how you will make the next fifty videos.
This week, pick the date you will post video one, and tell five friends that date.
Now the date is public, and just like Richard, you will figure out video two because you have to.
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🛠️ Nora’s turn
Let’s check in on Nora, whose first video has sat on her laptop, edited and ready, for two months.
That evening, she runs the prompt at the bottom of this email, and tells it what she keeps telling herself she needs first.
Her AI sidekick says:
Post your first video next Sunday, and tell five friends that date tonight.
Before bed, she texts five friends that her first video goes up on Sunday.
On Sunday, it goes up.
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🌅 Nine Sundays later
Nora has posted a video every Sunday since.
She still doesn’t know how she will make video twenty.
She works out each video in the week it’s due.
Two hundred people subscribe to her channel now.
Some of them ask for the next topic in the comments.
You probably don’t need to know how you’ll make the next fifty videos before you post the first one.
Decide to start before you know how, then make your first move the very next morning.
That’s it, my fellow contrarians!
Yours ‘proving to you that most business failures are preventable and success can be engineered’ Vijay Peduru 🦸♂️
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🏄♀️ The prompt
The prompt below turns the thing you keep preparing for into a public commitment with a date on it.
🧰 What you’ll need
The thing you’ve been getting ready to do, and how long you’ve been getting ready
- e.g. start a YouTube channel teaching design to non-designers, since last autumnWhat you keep telling yourself you need first, and who would notice if you said it out loud
- Type it, or say it out loud with a voice tool.
- e.g. a full plan, a proper setup and at least one practice run, and about 400 LinkedIn followers and my design team at work would noticeWhat you could genuinely deliver eight weeks from now
- e.g. six videos on picking fonts and colors, which I could teach today
🚀 How to run it
Open your AI sidekick, ChatGPT, Claude, or whichever one you use.
Swap the three examples, the text inside the curly brackets, for your own, then run it. If your AI sidekick can already see your notes, you can run it as is.
🧪 Want to test it first? Run it without changing anything, and it will use the examples.
CONTEXT:
- Use my own material first. If you can see my video list, my analytics, or my drafts, pull the real details from there instead of the examples below.
- If you know how I write, use my voice. Otherwise, write in a clear, warm, no-jargon voice — first-person, plain words, no startup-speak.
- If you know who my readers are, write for them. Otherwise assume people who are not designers but want the things they make to look good.
- If I have replaced the examples, use only mine. If an example is still there, fill it in from what you already know about me, and mark it as your assumption. If you don't know anything about me yet, use the example exactly as written.
- The commitment must be to real people who will notice, with a real date. "I'll tell myself" does not count. Do not propose more preparation.
=============== INPUTS — edit these, or just run as is ===============
The thing I have been getting ready to do, and how long I have been getting ready:
{e.g. start a YouTube channel teaching design to non-designers, since last autumn}
What I keep telling myself I need first, and who would notice if I said it out loud:
{e.g. a full plan, a proper setup and at least one practice run, and about 400 LinkedIn followers and my design team at work would notice}
What I could genuinely deliver eight weeks from now:
{e.g. six videos on picking fonts and colors, which I could teach today}
======================== END OF INPUTS ========================
Outputs:
1. The commitment — one sentence naming what happens and when, specific enough that people can hold me to it.
2. Who to tell, and how — the exact message, and where it goes so it cannot be quietly withdrawn.
3. What the date forces — the work that becomes unavoidable once the sentence is out, in order.
4. What I can drop — everything on my preparation list that the deadline makes irrelevant.
5. The smallest version — the least I would still be proud to deliver if the eight weeks go badly.
Then tell me the date, and what I have to send today to make it real.