How Not To Start An Online Business | Modern Wisdom Podcast 279
Jonny (guest), Chris Williamson (host)
In this episode of Modern Wisdom, featuring Jonny and Chris Williamson, How Not To Start An Online Business | Modern Wisdom Podcast 279 explores avoid These Classic Mistakes When Starting Your Online Business Today Chris Williamson and Johnny from Propane Fitness unpack how to realistically start and grow an online business, especially service and information-based ones like coaching or consulting.
Avoid These Classic Mistakes When Starting Your Online Business Today
Chris Williamson and Johnny from Propane Fitness unpack how to realistically start and grow an online business, especially service and information-based ones like coaching or consulting.
They contrast low-barrier, laptop-based businesses with traditional brick-and-mortar, and emphasize validating demand, solving real problems, and avoiding vanity tasks like perfect branding or fancy websites.
The conversation covers traffic generation (organic vs paid), building simple but effective sales funnels, and designing your delivery so it can scale beyond one-to-one work.
Throughout, they demystify the hype around ‘easy’ online income, arguing that success is about consistent execution, understanding customers deeply, and building systems that eventually run without you.
Key Takeaways
Validate demand before building elaborate products or websites.
Start by testing whether anyone will pay to solve the problem you want to address—ask your network, talk to potential customers, and try to get a first paying client before obsessing over branding, colors, or legal structure.
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Monetize skills and knowledge you already have, ideally by ‘scratching your own itch’.
Your best starting point is something people already ask you for help with (fitness, parenting, guitar, tech, etc. ...
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Don’t confuse being online with being easy—business fundamentals still apply.
Even if your offer is delivered via laptop, you still need real value, clear outcomes, trust, and a path from stranger to buyer; a course platform or webinar alone won’t overcome weak demand or an unclear offer.
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Use customers to co-create your product, then capture answers as reusable assets.
Early on, work closely with a few clients, note every recurring question, and turn your best explanations into videos, guides, or SOPs so you answer once and reuse, rather than retyping bespoke emails forever.
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Think in terms of sales journeys, not ‘post and hope’ marketing.
A good sales funnel mimics how your ideal customer naturally decides—quick paths for buyers already ready to purchase, and longer nurture (e. ...
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Prioritize search-based, evergreen content over fragile social feeds for organic growth.
Platforms like YouTube, blogs, and podcasts create assets that can be discovered for years via search, whereas feed-based platforms (Instagram, TikTok, Facebook) churn content in 24 hours and can lose reach or die off quickly.
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Design for scalability from the start, then document and delegate.
If your delivery relies entirely on you doing bespoke one-to-one work, growth will quickly become misery; instead, build systems, templates, and SOPs (à la McDonald’s or Derek Sivers’ ‘How to be Derek’ doc) so others can eventually do what you do.
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Notable Quotes
“Just because a business is online, it doesn’t mean demand and supply and the basic principles of why someone purchases something don’t apply.”
— Johnny
“If you’ve got an idea, sell it and then build it with your customers, and you’ll end up building a better product.”
— Johnny
“Perfectionism is a nice way to hide from shipping at a pace necessary to find what works.”
— Chris (quoting a commenter on Tiago Forte’s post)
“Only you know what the 100% might have looked like. No one else knows that your 80% was actually the 100%.”
— Johnny
“You can have the best idea for a YouTube video in the world, but if your execution of it is awful, then no one’s gonna listen.”
— Chris
Questions Answered in This Episode
How do I practically test whether my specific idea has real demand before investing significant time or money?
Chris Williamson and Johnny from Propane Fitness unpack how to realistically start and grow an online business, especially service and information-based ones like coaching or consulting.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Given my temperament (e.g., introverted vs extroverted, analytical vs expressive), which online business model and platforms would best suit me?
They contrast low-barrier, laptop-based businesses with traditional brick-and-mortar, and emphasize validating demand, solving real problems, and avoiding vanity tasks like perfect branding or fancy websites.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
What would a simple, minimal viable sales funnel look like for my service or course in the next 30 days?
The conversation covers traffic generation (organic vs paid), building simple but effective sales funnels, and designing your delivery so it can scale beyond one-to-one work.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
How can I start building evergreen, search-based content (YouTube, blog, podcast) without getting overwhelmed by production quality concerns?
Throughout, they demystify the hype around ‘easy’ online income, arguing that success is about consistent execution, understanding customers deeply, and building systems that eventually run without you.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
What recurring customer questions or problems could I turn into standardized resources or SOPs to make my delivery scalable?
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Transcript Preview
You don't need an office. You don't need a 25 grand startup loan. You don't need loads of stock. You don't need a factory or production line or any, any of that stuff. Uh, it can literally be you and a laptop, and, uh, the information that you have or some kind of service that you're looking to provide.
Feels like we're missing something today.
I know. I know.
What is it?
The, the third square.
Missing a, a, a scone-shaped-
That's normally on the call.
... like the, like raisin and almond scone-shaped hole.
(laughs)
Uh, Yusuf is saving lives, uh, whereas me and you just spend all our time on the internet. So I thought I'd get a hold of you today and just record a, a rogue podcast. What are we gonna be talking about?
Well, the internet, basically, or how, how people make money using the internet. So, I guess the, the broad subject would be online business, building an online business, starting an online business.
You can't make money anywhere else. There is no money to be made in real person at the moment.
(laughs) Yeah. Yeah. Well, I suppose, like, e- even people who go to offices or have worked in an office their entire life are now basically living the same life as someone who's been a, like a digital entrepreneur their entire life, so everyone's working from home, there's a lot of remote working. Um, but yeah, so I suppose, uh, this is something that I've been doing with Yusuf for quite a while, um, since 2010-ish, officially. Um, I think we actually incorporated the business, I don't know whether you know this, Chris, but I think we actually incorporated Propain in your flat in Jesmond.
Yeah. I seem to remember that. So you've been running an online business for over a decade, and now the main source of your business is teaching other people to run an online business. So if there is anybody on the internet that can tell us what ... how to start an online business-
(laughs)
... how not to, it's you.
W- well, I mean, that's very kind of you. (laughs) I can, I can certainly talk about the, the, the pros and cons and the kind of the common mistakes. So we do, uh, fitness coaching, and then the other side of what we do is, I guess, teaching people who do fitness coaching to use the internet to teach fitness coaching.
(laughs)
Um, and that's (laughs) that's kind of the ... so, you know, helping, helping PTs. A lot of personal trainers at the moment are, um, obviously they can't train clients, so a lot of them are using the internet, u- using an online-based service to coach clients. And that, I think a lot of them have run into this problem of like, "Oh, I'll just do a Zoom thing. I'll just get people on a Z-" and then, you're like, "Ah, actually, there's quite a lot to this. It's quite complicated." Um, and then we step in to help.
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