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Hey there rebel ideapreneurs 🦸♂️🦸♀️
Grant writes a newsletter about getting fit at home.
He got in shape with no gym and no fancy gear.
He's sure beginners can get fit at home, without a single machine.
Grant's readers can't stick with a workout — they want to get in shape, but every plan feels like too much.
⛳️ Problem:
Grant wants to launch a big paid community as his very first product.
It needs software, events, moderation — a whole complicated plan.
Six months in, it's still just a plan, and nothing has shipped. Ouch.
His struggle:
He's trying to leap straight to the big, complex product, so he never actually starts.
🔥 The recipe
➡️ The Stair-Step Method
Think about learning to cook.
You don't open a restaurant on day one.
You cook one dish, then a few more, then maybe a dinner party — one step at a time.
Turns out — nobody starts at the restaurant.
That's what Rob Walling teaches.
He built a software company called Drip and sold it, then started a startup fund, TinySeed, that manages over $59 million.
Along the way he taught the stair-step method for building a business.
His idea: don't leap straight to the big, complex product.
Climb the stairs instead: sell one simple thing first, learn from it, then add a few more.
Only once you're steady on those steps do you build the big thing at the top.
Try to leap straight to the top step, and the height alone freezes you before you start.
Take one small step you can actually finish today, and the next step gets easier.
🚗 So Grant tried it his way.
We're back with Grant and the big paid community he'd planned for six months.
He'd been trying to leap straight to the hardest thing to build.
So he climbed the stair-step instead.
Plot twist: he almost skipped step one, sure it was too small to matter.
Step one was small: a $19 "fit at home in 20 minutes" guide he could finish in a weekend.
Get this — it sold, and it taught him what his readers actually wanted.
Then he added a step: a $49 four-week program, built from what the guide taught him.
Each small step was easy to finish, and each one funded the next.
A year in, he finally built the community — but now on top of steps that already worked.
Boom.
He didn't need to leap. He needed one small step he could actually take.
Climbing beat leaping, because he finally started instead of freezing.
🧸 Don't leap to the big product. Sell one small thing, then climb, step by step.
The prompt below turns your big, stuck product into a stair-step you can climb.
You just tell it the big thing you're trying to launch.
🏄♀️ 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 big product I've been stuck trying to launch (the complex thing I keep planning):
{e.g. a big paid community with software, events, and moderation}
My topic and who it's for:
{e.g. busy beginners who want to get fit at home}
What I could make and sell simply, this month (a small first step):
{e.g. a short "fit at home in 20 minutes" guide}
For Outcome: {e.g. a stair-step plan — the small first product, then the next steps up to the big one}
Outputs:
1. Step one — the smallest, simplest thing I could sell this month, that I can actually finish.
2. The staircase — the 2-3 steps between step one and my big product, each bigger than the last.
3. What each step teaches — the thing I'll learn from each small step that de-risks the big one.
4. The 90-day climb — which step to take when, so I'm shipping and learning instead of planning.
Then name the ONE reason I keep trying to leap to the top, and why step one is safe to start now.
That's it, my fellow trailblazers!
Yours 'helping you build an AI sidekick that works and makes money while you enjoy life' Vijay Peduru 🦸♂️