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Howdy rebel ideapreneurs 🦸♂️🦸♀️
Anika writes a Sunday newsletter about regional Indian home cooking.
Each issue maps one dish from a small village most cookbooks skip.
To her, the real India lives in village kitchens, not restaurant menus.
And her readers? Mostly Americans who want that home-style cooking.
Not the same five dishes every Indian restaurant recycles.
⛳️ Problem:
Six months in, Anika's open rate slid from 52% to 38%. Ouch.
So two friends told her to go broader — Indian-fusion, or general Asian home cooking.
A bigger umbrella, they said, would grow the list faster.
By Friday she has three drafts of a new "pan-Asian weeknights" pitch.
Her struggle: whether to scrap a niche that was just starting to work.
🔥 The recipe
➡️ The genius-idiot rollercoaster
Think about a kid learning to ride a bike.
One push, she's flying — she's a genius.
One wobble, she's down — she's hopeless.
Neither feeling is the truth.
The truth is she's just learning.
Turns out a solo business feels exactly the same.
That's what Nicolas Cole and Dickie Bush teach at Write With AI.
They built Ship 30 for 30, a paid writing course that made millions.
Dickie, a former Wall Street trader, has earned over $10M across his businesses.
Their take: every solo entrepreneur rides the same emotional loop.
First the grind, with no proof it's working.
Then a few wins, and you feel like a genius.
Then a quiet week hits, and you start thinking, "I'm an idiot."
And get this — both the high and the low are lying to you.
The skill isn't picking a bigger niche.
It's coaching yourself through the dip.
Cole knows the dip firsthand.
He spent years as one of the most-read writers on Quora, a Q&A website.
Then he quit to write full-time — and the early months were dead quiet.
He didn't switch topics. He kept writing.
That same writing later grew into a course that made millions.
🚗 The steps
🎢 Step 1 — Name where you are on the rollercoaster.
A toddler having a meltdown calms down the second you name it.
"You're tired" — and the storm passes.
Naming the feeling shrinks it.
Write down whether this week you feel like a genius or an idiot.
Don't argue with the feeling.
Just label it out loud.
Anika wrote, "This week I feel like an idiot."
The dip had her half-convinced the regional angle was too small.
🧾 Step 2 — Separate the facts from the feelings.
Think of the weather versus how the rain makes you feel.
"It's 50 degrees and raining" is a fact.
"This day is ruined" is a feeling.
Same rain, two different stories — pull them apart and you see straight.
List what actually happened this week — numbers, events, words people said.
Then list how you feel about it.
Keep the two columns separate.
Anika's facts: opens dipped from 52% to 38% over six weeks.
Two issues had landed in promotions tabs for new Gmail users.
But reply volume per send had actually doubled in the same stretch.
Her feeling: "The regional niche is too small to grow."
The feeling and the facts didn't match.
🧭 Step 3 — Pick the one repeatable next move.
A lost hiker doesn't sprint in every direction at once.
She finds one clear trail and takes a single step down it.
One real move beats ten panicked ones.
Ask: what's repeatable, what's avoidable, what's just random?
Then choose one small action you can take this week.
Anika emailed her 100 most-engaged subscribers with one question.
"Which region do you want me to cover next?"
61 wrote back within 48 hours.
Most begged for South Indian — dosas, sambars, the curries restaurants never serve.
She didn't broaden.
She doubled down on South Indian and Bengali home cooking.
Her open rate climbed back to 49% within four issues.
There it is.
The prompt below acts as your no-BS coach when the dip hits.
You just tell it how you feel this week and what actually happened.
🧸 Facts + feelings + one next move = a niche you stick with.
🏄♀️ 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 as is, your AI sidekick will use the example values and will give 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:
This week I feel like (pick one): GENIUS or IDIOT
{e.g. IDIOT}
What actually happened this week (the events that triggered the feeling — just the facts, no story yet):
{e.g. open rate dipped from 52% to 38% over six weeks, two issues hit promotions tabs, reply volume actually doubled}
My niche and what I've built so far (so the coach knows what's at stake):
{e.g. a Sunday newsletter on regional Indian home cooking, 6 months in, 4,000 subscribers}
For Audience: {e.g. American home cooks who want real regional Indian dishes, not the restaurant version}
For Outcome: {e.g. a clear-eyed read on whether to broaden or stay narrow, plus the one action I take this week}
Outputs:
Act like a no-BS, level-headed coach. Ask me ONE question at a time. Do not give recommendations until you've walked me through all four steps below.
1. Separate facts from feelings — pull every fact from my input, then every feeling, in two columns.
2. What's repeatable, avoidable, or random — label each fact.
3. What I should change vs. what I should keep — based only on the repeatable column.
4. The one next action this week — small, concrete, doable in under 2 hours.
Then remind me what actually matters in one sentence.
One niche you stop second-guessing.
One dip that passes without a broadening.
One next move small enough to actually take.
That's it, my fellow anti-status-quo-ers!
Yours 'helping ideapreneurs skip years of frustration' Vijay Peduru 🦸♂️