[DAY 1] "Why is this so hard?" challenge post
Post your challenge responses here.
Hi,
Welcome to the Frictionless Growth Challenge. Thank you so much for joining me in this inaugural challenge.
For the next seven days, I’ll be sending an email every morning with a little write-up, a task to complete, and a challenge link to post your answer. These tasks should take no more than five minutes each morning to get done.
If you ever miss a day, then you can catchup at the below link, where you’ll find all the previous emails.
Today is day one. We’re going to start by talking about why you feel stuck in your business, and how to finally get the momentum to move forward. The good news is that momentum only takes 7-days to build.
Have you ever gotten frustrated with your business and screamed into the heavens “Why is this so hard?”
Who am I kidding? You’re here, so of course you have…and you probably translated that in your head to “Why can’t this be easy?”
It makes sense. I mean easy and hard are on the same spectrum, right? Wrong, or maybe more accurately I should say sometimes, but not in this case.
Easy is a measure of difficulty, and if we wanted something easy, we wouldn’t have started doing this work in the first place. This is the wrong spectrum to view our problem, and seeing our business through it will always lead us to the wrong answer.
To get unstuck, we need to place ourselves on the right spectrum. How do we find that spectrum? Well, it starts by interpreting our initial question correctly.
What I believe we actually mean when we say “Why is this so hard?” is “Why is there so much friction when I try to do this thing I love?”
Easy measures difficulty, but ease measures friction. Easeful work removes unnecessary struggle, aligns with your natural strengths, and makes your effort matter.
It’s still work, but it’s the right work, moving you forward instead of spinning your wheels in place. Most “This is hard” moments are actually “Why am I stuck?” moments. The difficulty isn’t the problem, the friction is the reason we’re struggling.
When you’re working against friction, effort becomes struggle. Worse, when you’re stuck, more effort just digs the rut deeper.
When you remove that friction, though, the work still takes energy, but now it flows.
This challenge is about finding the path of least friction in your business. This is the avenue that creates the most meaningful progress while eliminating the most unnecessary suffering.
Frictionless growth doesn’t mean effortless. It means aligned work where it doesn’t feel like you’re constantly swimming upstream. It means the work still takes energy, but it finally goes somewhere.
Today’s task: Think back to one time when working on your business felt easeful.
While you can picture anything here, try to focus on one that you grew with ease.
It might have been speaking on a podcast that led to a bunch of new subscribers, setting up a table at a local farmer’s market that led to a bunch of sales, partnering with another business on a promotion that led to exposure, optimizing an ad that scaled perfectly, or anything else you can imagine.
Make it feel real in your mind.
What were you doing?
What kind of work was it?
Who were you doing it with or for?
If you’ve never really done anything before, think about a time in your life that your met people and it felt like you were gliding through it.
Got it? Now, be brave and share it in today’s challenge post. Then, post it on your social media #fgchallenge
Tomorrow, we start naming your path.
More soon,
-Russell
P.S. - If you’d like a more directed and community driven transformational experience, consider joining Hapitalist. You’ll get twice-monthly breakthrough sessions, a digital brain trained exclusively on all my past work, and access to all my most powerful resources, for $300/yr. My goal is to make Hapitalist the “operating system” for your writing career. Join Hapitalist
The most recent easy growth came from finding Becca Syme and Clifton strengths. I attended an in-person conference 2-3 years ago because I was struggling and in burn-out, knowing zilch about Becca and the strengths. That conference set me on a positive growth cycle that is still in play. Becca and the Clifton strengths has helped me grow personally and professionally, so a big double win.
Already breaking the rules. 2 things. One was last year's 45K kickstarter, which was almost 20K in pure profit. IT was easeful because it was a kickstarter that didn't require a lot of prep work or a lot of fulfillment headaches. It was simple, didn't have super fancy special editions, and the process of the campaign itself was joyful. Lots of people were excited and I got some of my best and most recurring clients as a part of the whole thing. The second was a recent conference where I gave the plenary session and sold books at a table. I made 2K of sales from a conference of barely over 100 attendees and am still reaping the rewards in halo effects, future speaking gigs, and high paying coaching clients.