Noise is your biggest enemy
The worst thing about building a business today is that everything actually works. Cold email works. Content works. Cold DM works. Every guru is right. That’s exactly the problem.
Last year I had a conversation with one of my followers on X, let’s call him John. I asked John what was stopping him from growing his business.
He wasn’t talking about skills, not even money. The answer was much more straightforward. He said:
There’s just too much information. I don’t know what to focus on.
He didn’t end up being my client or something, but I kept hearing that same answer at least 3 more times from different people since that conversation.
And they’d all say something like this:
“I don’t know where to start, I don’t know how to grow, I don’t know if this will work or not”.
And you know who was the first person I heard that issue from?
Me.
Yeah. Me. The person writing this. I was in the same spot. I was stuck reading stories, articles, how-tos, watching all those highlight reels, YouTube videos of somewhat successful entrepreneurs in the same niche as mine. They were successful and I wasn’t there yet. I wasn’t jealous. Just quietly aware of my potential and feeling like I was standing still.
In the end I had everything I needed on paper. The guides, the willpower, the obsession for the craft. What I didn’t have was clarity.
At that point in my life my #1 issue was: “How to get more clients?”.
Hear me out, I still have this issue, but at least it’s partially solved for now.
I had somewhat of a cold email kick for a period. Tried that. Built an automated CRM for dental clinics. Sent almost 900 messages. Had a terrible reply rate, like 4-5% and an even lower interest rate. Ended up not selling anything. I felt bad about the strategy, thought it didn’t work, thought my product wasn’t good enough. LIE.
Next, I tried content. Decided to post consistently on X for 8 months. It got me a couple clients, 1k followers. But I still thought it wasn’t good enough of a method. LIE. Again.
Finally, I switched to cold DM which stopped being popular when I started doing it. Sent thousands of DMs. Results? Well, the results were far better than the other methods that I tried, got me 5 booked calls in the first 2 weeks. That’s not the point though. Thanks to trying different things I realized:
There is no perfect strategy.
Everyone who’s telling you to use a specific method or tool or strategy, even they don’t know what’s best for you. And you know why?
Context.
The reason no strategy is universal is simple. These people don’t know your offer, your audience, your schedule, or how you handle rejection. You do. That context is yours alone, and no system built for someone else’s situation will fit yours perfectly.
What I actually figured out
Here’s what I saw happening. You follow someone online who swears by cold email. You set it up. Then another person says cold DM is the move now. You add that. Then someone tells you content is non-negotiable. You add that too.
Six weeks later you’re doing three things at 30% each, burning out, and wondering why nothing is working.
The tools aren’t the problem.
Cold email works. Cold DM works. Content works. Every single one of them has built real businesses.
You’re treating it like a buffet, when it’s meant to be a real commitment.
The gurus aren’t directly lying to you. They’re showing you their one thing and calling it a “universal truth”. They committed to cold email for 18 months and it worked. Of course they think it’s the answer.
But they left out the part where they ignored everything else.
Nobody says this part out loud unfortunately. So I will.
You’re adding new tools, new strategies, new shiny objects to your life only because committing to one thing means you might fail at one thing. If you spread across three different methods, you can always tell yourself it was the wrong mix. Staying scattered keeps you safe from failing at one specific thing. That’s it.
What I actually realized is that usually the noise isn’t coming from the internet. It’s in your own decisions. Every new tactic is just replacing the last before it had a chance to work.
Pick one channel. One approach. Give it 90 days of actual 100% effort, not half-effort while testing three other things. Then evaluate.
More information is not what you need.
You need to commit harder to less, not spread thinner across more.
So if you’re juggling three methods right now and wondering why nothing is clicking - that’s your answer. Everything works. That’s actually the problem. Pick the one that fits you best and stick to it long enough. You can adjust how you do it. Just don’t keep switching what you’re doing.
Talk soon,
Ilya