Start something

💡When an idea strikes, act on it.

May 03, 2025

white and black wooden quote board — Photo by Mika Baumeister on Unsplash

Do you have an idea that’s bouncing around in your head? Maybe it’s a dream to start a gluten free bakery out of your kitchen? Maybe it’s a desire to find like-minded people who share your passion for making your hometown a better place? Maybe it’s wanting to see if you’ve really got what it takes to be a published poet instead of an office admin? (All true stories by the way.)

This week, I want to encourage you to start.

You may be a planner. That’s great. There’s certainly value in planning.

But I would argue there’s also value in just starting sometimes. You won’t know if your idea will get traction until you start.

I did something small this week that may be instructive.

The other night, I had an idea before bed. Rather than letting it roll around in my head or jot it down somewhere, I decided to act on it. Right then.

I created a showcase page on LinkedIn for the idea. I jumped over to Canva and created a logo. Suddenly, my idea had a container.

I was going to repost a few relevant posts from others when I decided to first write a launch post, explaining my rationale. I wrote it in one take and clicked post. At this point, this newly created page had zero followers and no one knew about it.

I clicked follow, liked the post and went to bed. It was 3am.

When I got up at 6am, I noticed three people had already followed the page. I was surprised — and encouraged. Over the course of the day, more people found and followed the page. By the end of the first day, more than 50 people had. I assumed most would be people I knew who had a shared interest in the topic. Curious, I took a look. Here is what I discovered:

Analysis by author of followers for LinkedIn showcase page Positive Portland.

While I knew the first two followers, had met the third before, and knew of the fourth, the fifth was new to me, demonstrating the power of networks. As people shared with their networks, more and more of the followers were new to me.

This was a key discovery. Initially, I had assumed this would appeal primarily to members of an existing community I’ve built over the last decade, but clearly there is broader interest, which is exciting.

The second chart above presents the same followers by degree of connection. While the majority of the followers are people I don’t yet know personally (88% by first chart), 64% of them share one or more connections with me, suggesting our paths might cross through the power of weak ties.

Even more striking than this modest number of followers was the number of people who saw that first launch post I wrote at 3am: over 1,000 people by the end of the first day!

Screenshot of LinkedIn post analytics of launch post after one day.

While this may be nothing compared to the millions of views people get on TikTok videos, it’s significant given that that it was posted to a new page with few followers and I’ve done zero promotion of it (beyond that initial like).

Clearly, it is resonating.

Why am I sharing this? Not because I’m trying to impress you with these stats (I’m not). I’m sharing this as an early real world, real time example of what’s possible. Whatever you’re into, whatever your passion, whatever your cause, there are other people who share your interest.

If you’d like to make an impact, make the world a better place, or just make a few new friends, I encourage you to start making something.

Life is about the people you meet, and the things you create with them so go out and start creating. Life is short. Live your dream and share your passion.

-The Holstee Manifesto

Long time readers may know I’m a fan of the Holstee Manifesto. Here’s its creation story. If you’ve never seen the video, I promise you will feel moved in less than 3 minutes.

What do you want to start?

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