Time to Lock In 🔒

A Journal Entry

by Dallas Brown

"Fuck your mood. Follow the plan." - Leila Hormozi

There's something I've noticed about myself, and honestly, it's a little embarrassing to admit.

If there were ever an excuse, boy, I'd find it.

I'm tired? I'll start tomorrow. I'm overwhelmed? Let me reorganize everything first. I have too much going on? Obviously, this isn't the right time. I have a new idea? OH MY GOD, THIS IS IT. LET'S GO!

And then, somewhere between the excitement of a fresh start and the reality of actually doing the work, I disappear down another rabbit hole.

Sound familiar?

I've spent so much time learning, researching, planning, brainstorming, and trying to figure out the right way to do things that sometimes I wonder how much further along I would be if I'd just shut up and followed through on half the things I've already learned.

I know how to find information. I know how to connect dots. I can see opportunities everywhere. Give me a problem, a little time, and an internet connection, and I'll probably come up with seventeen possible solutions before lunch.

But turning all that potential into something tangible? That's where things get interesting.

The girl who keeps starting over

Here's a little about me.

I'm a Midwest mom. I work as a server at Olive Garden. I have kids to take care of, bills to pay, a household to keep running, and about a million little responsibilities that don't magically disappear because I have a dream.

I'm not sitting in a fancy home office with a perfectly curated desk, sipping an expensive coffee while I build my empire.

Sometimes I'm figuring out my next move between shifts. Sometimes I'm trying to make money stretch a little further. Sometimes I have a genuinely good idea, but the timing is terrible, my energy is gone, and somebody needs something from me before I've even finished my first thought.

And somewhere in the middle of all that, I'm trying to build a business online.

I want more freedom. More financial stability. More control over my time. I want to build something that belongs to me, something that can grow beyond the hours I physically work.

I want to prove to myself that I can take the things I've learned and turn them into something real.

So I've been learning about marketing, sales, affiliate programs, content creation, websites, digital products, and all the different ways people are making money online.

I've built things. I've had ideas. I've started projects. I've made plans that genuinely excited me.

And I've also gotten distracted by the next exciting thing before giving the current thing a fair chance.

The cycle is almost comical when I step back and look at it.

I get an idea. I research it. I get excited. I make a plan. I start building.

Then reality shows up.

The kids need something. A bill comes due. Work gets busy. I'm tired. Something doesn't work the way I expected. The numbers aren't moving fast enough.

Suddenly, I'm questioning the whole thing.

Maybe this isn't the right idea. Maybe I need a different strategy. Maybe I should learn a little more first. Maybe there's a better opportunity I haven't found yet.

And just like that, I'm back at the beginning.

Again.

Except I'm not really at the beginning, am I? I've accumulated knowledge, skills, experience, and a whole lot of half-finished projects.

The problem isn't necessarily that I don't know enough.

Maybe the problem is that I keep giving myself permission to start over instead of sticking with something long enough to see what happens.

Ouch.

Life doesn't wait for you to get your shit together

One thing about life: it does not care about your content calendar.

It doesn't care that you finally figured out your website. It doesn't care that you're motivated today or that you promised yourself this would be the week you got serious.

The electric bill still comes.

The kids still have birthdays.

Dinner still has to happen. Laundry still exists. Your car still needs gas.

And if you're building something while living a real life, you don't always get the luxury of uninterrupted afternoons to work on your dreams.

Recently, I was scrambling to pull together a birthday party at the last minute. I was piecing things together, figuring out what I could afford, and making it happen with what I had.

And I did make it happen.

But afterward, I caught myself thinking about how much easier it could have been if I'd prepared sooner.

Not because I'm a bad mom. Not because I don't care. Quite the opposite.

I cared enough to make it happen.

But caring at the last minute and consistently preparing ahead of time are two different skills.

And that got me thinking about my business, too.

How many times have I waited until something became urgent before giving it my attention?

How many times have I relied on a burst of motivation to accomplish something that would've been much easier with a little consistency?

How much unnecessary stress have I created for myself because I kept putting things off until I couldn't put them off anymore?

I'm not interested in beating myself up over the past. I've got enough to do without adding self-punishment to the schedule.

But I am interested in learning from it.

Because I don't want to keep living in reaction mode.

I want to get ahead of things. I want to prepare. I want to be the kind of person who can trust herself to handle something before it turns into a crisis.

And that person isn't built by making another pretty to-do list.

She's built by doing the things on it.

Then something started working

Here's the part that makes this whole thing a little more complicated.

I've started seeing little signs that the work I'm doing might actually be going somewhere.

Not life-changing money. Not overnight success. Not the kind of results that make for a flashy internet story.

Just little signs.

A page gets published. A post goes live. A person watches a video. Somebody clicks a link. An idea that existed only in my head becomes something another person can actually see.

And suddenly, this isn't just something I'm thinking about doing anymore.

I'm doing it.

That's exciting. It's also a little terrifying.

Because when something is only an idea, you can imagine it becoming anything you want. You can picture the success without having to confront the possibility that it might take longer than you hoped.

But when you actually put something out into the world, you have to let it exist as it is.

You have to let people see it.

You have to look at the numbers, even when they're small.

You have to accept that your first attempt might not be great and that your tenth attempt might still need work.

And you have to keep going without a guarantee that all your effort will pay off exactly the way you imagined.

I think I've spent a lot of time trying to prepare myself for failure.

I've learned to anticipate what could go wrong. I've gotten pretty good at finding the flaws in a plan before anyone else gets the chance to point them out.

But what happens when you start seeing evidence that something might actually work?

What happens when you realize that you might be capable of building the thing you've been talking about building?

For me, at least, there's a strange kind of emotional hangover.

Part of me wants to get excited and go all in. Another part wants to slow down, question everything, and protect myself from getting my hopes up.

It's easier to expect things to fail than to let yourself believe they could succeed.

If you never fully commit, you never have to find out what you're capable of.

You can always tell yourself you would've made it if you'd really tried.

And that is one hell of a comfortable excuse.

It's also a trap.

Your mood is not your manager

I came across a line from Leila Hormozi that hit me right where I needed it:

"Fuck your mood. Follow the plan."

It's blunt. It's not particularly delicate. And maybe that's exactly why it stuck.

Because I've been treating my feelings like they're in charge of my schedule.

If I feel motivated, I work.

If I feel overwhelmed, I avoid things.

If I feel uncertain, I research.

If I feel discouraged, I start questioning the entire direction of my life.

And if I feel excited about a new idea? Well, suddenly I've got all the energy in the world.

But feelings change.

That's what they do.

You can wake up ready to conquer the world and feel like a complete failure by lunchtime. You can be convinced something is going to work on Monday and question every decision you've ever made by Wednesday.

If your progress depends on feeling good, being confident, or having the perfect amount of energy, you're giving circumstances you can't fully control the power to decide what you accomplish.

That doesn't mean you should ignore exhaustion, pretend you're not struggling, or push yourself until you burn out.

It means learning to tell the difference between a legitimate need to rest and the discomfort of doing something you don't feel like doing.

Sometimes you genuinely need a break.

Sometimes you need to eat, sleep, handle a family responsibility, or give yourself some grace.

And sometimes?

Sometimes you're just avoiding the thing you said mattered to you.

I've had to start asking myself a different question.

Instead of asking, "Do I feel like doing this?"

I'm trying to ask, "What did I say I was going to do?"

Because the plan was made for a reason.

It was made when I was thinking about the bigger picture, not just how I felt in one particular moment.

And if the plan needs adjusting, I can adjust it intentionally. I don't need to abandon it every time my mood changes.

There's a difference between changing direction because you've learned something useful and changing direction because the current direction got uncomfortable.

I'm learning to recognize that difference.

I don't need another idea. I need to finish something.

This might be the hardest part for me to admit.

I love ideas.

I love learning how things work, discovering opportunities, connecting dots, and imagining what something could become.

That curiosity is part of what got me here in the first place.

But curiosity without execution can become a very convincing form of procrastination.

You can spend hours learning about business and never make a sale.

You can research content strategies for weeks without publishing anything.

You can build an elaborate plan for a project and still avoid the one uncomfortable action that would move it forward.

You can feel incredibly productive while staying exactly where you are.

I've done that.

And I'm done pretending that gathering more information is always the next step.

Sometimes I already know enough to begin.

Sometimes the next lesson I need to learn is going to come from actually doing the thing, seeing what happens, and making adjustments.

I don't need to know everything about affiliate marketing before I publish another piece of content.

I don't need a perfect website before I start sending people to it.

I don't need to feel like an expert before I share something useful that I've learned.

And I don't need to launch five different projects to prove that I'm ambitious.

I need to give one thing a real chance.

I need to show up for it consistently enough to collect meaningful information about what's working and what isn't.

I need to stop confusing the excitement of starting with the satisfaction of finishing.

Because finishing builds something that starting alone never will: evidence.

Evidence that I can follow through.

Evidence that I can make decisions and stick with them.

Evidence that I can do things even when they're boring, difficult, or less exciting than they were in my imagination.

And perhaps most importantly, evidence that I can trust myself.

So here's what I'm doing differently

I'm not making some dramatic declaration that my life is going to be perfect from this point forward.

I've made enough ambitious plans to know that a burst of enthusiasm doesn't automatically turn into a new way of living.

I'm going to have bad days. Things will get busy. I'll probably get distracted by another interesting idea at some point.

I'm human.

But I can build some rules that help me keep moving even when the excitement wears off.

1. I'm choosing priorities before distractions.

The work that matters gets a place on the schedule before I start entertaining every other idea that pops into my head.

Not every task is equally important, and being busy doesn't automatically mean I'm making progress.

2. I'm finishing before I keep expanding.

New ideas can go on a list. They don't all need to become active projects.

I can explore them later. I can save them for another season. I can let an idea sit without feeling like I'm missing my one chance to succeed.

Right now, I need to build on what I've already started.

3. I'm measuring actions, not just outcomes.

I can't force a video to go viral, make somebody buy something, or guarantee that a business will grow by a particular date.

But I can control whether I publish the video, improve the offer, follow up, learn from the results, and try again.

I want to pay attention to the things I can actually influence.

4. I'm allowing myself to be a beginner.

My first attempts don't have to look like somebody else's tenth year in business.

I don't need to hide until everything is polished.

I can learn in public. I can improve as I go. I can share the journey without pretending I've already reached the destination.

5. I'm keeping promises to myself small enough to keep.

I don't need to overhaul my entire life in one day.

I need to identify the next meaningful action and do it.

Then do the next one.

Then do the next one.

Consistency isn't always exciting. Sometimes it's almost boring.

Maybe that's the point.

6. I'm making room for real life without using it as a permanent excuse.

My kids matter. My responsibilities matter. My health matters. Rest matters.

Building a business should help me create a better life, not require me to pretend the life I already have doesn't exist.

But I can make progress within the life I have now.

I don't have to wait until everything is perfectly organized, every bill is paid, every problem is solved, and every distraction disappears.

That day may never come.

I can start where I am, with what I have, and keep going.

I'm not writing this from the finish line

I want to be clear about something.

I'm not writing this because I've figured everything out.

I'm writing it because I'm in the middle of figuring it out.

I'm still working my shifts. I'm still raising my kids. I'm still learning how to manage my money, my time, my attention, and my ambitions without spreading myself so thin that nothing gets the attention it deserves.

I'm still building DallasBrown.shop. I'm still learning how to turn the skills I'm developing into something useful, something sustainable, and eventually, something that earns.

I don't have a success story with a neat little bow on it yet.

What I have is a starting point, a growing pile of lessons, and a decision to stop waiting until I feel like a completely different person before I act like the person I want to become.

Maybe that's what this season of my life is really about.

Not becoming somebody who never struggles.

Not becoming somebody who is always motivated, always disciplined, always confident, and always ten steps ahead.

Just becoming somebody who can struggle without immediately abandoning the plan.

Somebody who can have a bad day without turning it into a bad week.

Somebody who can make a mistake without deciding the entire project is doomed.

Somebody who can feel afraid of failing and keep moving anyway.

I want to build a business, yes.

But I also want to build the version of myself who can sustain one.

Because what good is a great idea if I don't develop the habits to bring it to life?

What good is all the knowledge I've collected if I never put it to use?

And what good is dreaming about a different future if I'm unwilling to do the ordinary, sometimes uncomfortable things that might help me get there?

I'm tired of being impressed by my own potential.

I want to see what happens when I actually use it.

One more thing before you go

If you're reading this because you're trying to build something of your own, I want you to know that you don't have to have it all figured out either.

Maybe you're a mom trying to create a little more breathing room financially.

Maybe you're working a job you don't hate but know you don't want to do forever.

Maybe you've got a business idea you've been sitting on for months.

Maybe you've started over so many times that you're embarrassed to tell anybody what you're working on now.

Maybe you're just tired of making promises to yourself that you don't keep.

I get it.

And I'm not going to tell you that success is guaranteed if you just work hard enough. Life is more complicated than that, and effort doesn't guarantee a particular outcome.

But I do believe that giving your goals consistent, honest effort gives you a better chance than endlessly waiting for the perfect moment.

You don't need to feel ready.

You don't need to be fearless.

You don't need to know exactly where every step will lead.

You need to decide what matters, make a reasonable plan, and take the next step.

Then keep taking steps.

Give yourself permission to rest when you need it. Give yourself permission to change a plan when the facts call for it. Give yourself permission to be new at something.

Just stop requiring yourself to feel a certain way before you're allowed to make progress.

I'm making that change myself.

Not perfectly. Not overnight.

One decision at a time.

And if you're building something, too, I'd love for you to stick around. I'm sharing the process here: what I'm learning, what I'm trying, what works, what doesn't, and what it looks like to build something online while living a very real, very ordinary life.

No pretending I've made it.

No fake guru nonsense.

Just learning, building, earning, and repeating until I get where I'm trying to go.

Here's to following through. Even when we're not in the mood.

— Dallas 💛

Learn. Build. Earn. Repeat.

P.S. If you needed this reminder today, consider this your sign to stop negotiating with yourself about the one thing you already know you need to do.

You don't have to do everything today.

Just do the next thing.