Imagine you’ve got a great idea.

You decide to take the bull by the horns and get started.

It’s day one…

Time for action.

You make some tea. You bring it to your desk. You switch on your laptop.

The screen in front of you is white, with a blinking cursor.

Suddenly it dawns on you…

There is a LOT to do.

A crazy amount to do.

It’s almost impossible at this point to imagine a fully fledged business with thousands of customers, emails flying out, payment systems set up, social media accounts buzzing, orders coming in, products ready to download.

You feel sick suddenly, overwhelmed by the vastness of the task ahead.

You wonder…are you insane?

You can’t REALLY do this, can you?

This is not something people like you do.

“This is pointless…this is hopeless…I’m dreaming”.

This is what many people think, in sheer panic, before they switch off the computer or find an excuse to leave the room in a hurry.

“I’ll feel better tomorrow” they say.

They won’t.

This is such a common problem that, before you do anything else, you’re going to need a strategy to deal with it.

I guarantee this, because all successful people have to deal with this same problem too…

And how they do it may surprise you…

How success is sometimes about doing very LITTLE

Kate DiCamillo is a successful American writer of children’s fiction.

She has written several big sellers that are popular overseas, including Winn-Dixie, The Tale of Despereau and Flora & Ulysses. Yet she still has to overcome the pressure and panic of having to sit down and write a whole book.

So she breaks it down into very small tasks…

“My goal is two pages a day, five days a week”, she says. “I never want to write, but I’m always glad that I have done it.”

This same technique has been used by other writers to overcome the psychological pressure of a huge goal.

British novelist Linda Grant says: “I don’t write for very long, three hours at most.”

Children’s author Jaqueline Wilson says: “I feel exhausted simply thinking about a writer like Anthony Trollope, starting to write at 5.30 am every day, completing 3,000 words… I let myself off after a mere 500 words, roughly half an hour’s work.”

Lots of amateur writers use this approach too…

There’s a website called the 500 Words Club. It helps people who want to write books – but are so daunted by the prospect that they never get around to it, or give up when the going gets tough.

The 500 Word Club’s recommended method is simply to write 500 words every day, no matter what. Those words can be utter rubbish, totally off the point, or just garbage straight off the top of your head….

But as long as you do this every day, you’ll progress.

The key is to START…

And start SMALL…

The same approach will work for you, if you are trying to set up your online business. Because just as a novelist has to put together a vast amount of material, so you too have to carry out a large amount of work to get a subscription information business online and running.

You’ve got to put together videos, emails, sales pages, written instructions, web copy, customer service response emails, and many other tasks.

I’ve been doing information publishing for decades and even I get that nauseous, overwhelmed feeling when I think of what needs to be done when I first start on a new project.

To avoid this, I use a similar approach to the 500 word writing technique, known as ‘Kaizen’.

And I recommend you try it too…

The Kaizen Success technique

Kaizen is a Japanese success strategy described as “continual improvement”. The idea is that you break down a big challenge into tiny, achievable steps.

You focus purely on the first small step… then the next small step… then the next small step…. progressing slowly, but surely, towards that big goal.

It’s very similar to how a novelist might reach the daunting goal of writing 80,000 words by aiming simply for 500 words a day.

The main benefit of Kaizen is that it gets you over the fear of getting started.

In his book, One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way, Robert Maurer Ph.D shows that the human brain is hotwired to “fight-or-flight” when confronted by a big challenge.

If you ask too much of yourself too soon, it can send you into a panic. You feel an overpowering urge to run away, hide, give up, find a reason to avoid the project altogether.

This is why many of us procrastinate, get distracted and come up with excuses as to why we can’t get going this week…

And it’s all because of a natural, primal fear.

So if you’ve got this same fear, don’t beat yourself up about it, as it’s absolutely hardwired into your emotional system.

The secret of success is to find a way to override it.

And that’s what Kaizen does.

It encourages you to make tiny, almost effortless steps in the direction of your goal. By keeping these steps small and manageable, your brain doesn’t kick in with its fear response.

Here’s how it works…

It’s DAY ONE again.

This time, you don’t think about the sheer mass of tasks that must be done to get your business up and running.

Instead you ask yourself: “What’s the smallest step I can take towards that goal today?”

Once you work that out, you take a small, easy action to achieve it.

Even if you only spend 10, 20, 30 minutes on that task, then switch off your computer, you’re on your way.

Doesn’t seem hard, does it? Not so daunting now?

An example might be…

• You write a Facebook post
• You email a question to a mentor
• You write a list of potential domain names
• You read the first step or chapter of an advice manual
• You write a paragraph about yourself for your ‘about me’ page

It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as you DO something, not tomorrow but TODAY.

Each time you achieve even something small, you will feel a jolt of satisfaction that you’re heading somewhere.

This is why, in the longer term, Kaizen keeps you going after that burst of initial energy fades… when you hit obstacles… when you run out of enthusiasm…. When you get tired… when life distracts you.

Try it today.

Spend the next spare hour asking yourself “What’s the smallest step I can take towards that goal today?”

Don’t just start on something – really think about it and make sure it’s the smallest step possible.

…Write it down.

….Do it.

…Then tick it off the list.

Well done, now you can go and do something else.

As long as you repeat this tomorrow, and every single day thereafter, you WILL reach your goal. Guaranteed.

The more you do, the more confident you’ll become, the easier it will be to take bigger and bigger steps each time.

But it has to start now.

By taking steps this small, the good thing is that there’s no excuse and nothing to fear.