The Sparkline — a blog for independent creatives and entrepreneurs building matterful things.

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This is a quicky but it packs a punch. I stumbled across an article written by someone who’d just officially killed his startup. His story speaks volumes. You’ve got to go read his post here. You can sense the pain in his words.

There are people at the top and then there are the rest of us. And most of us in “the rest of us” camp pay special attention to the folks up top. We follow them around, dream of them noticing us, fantasize about them becoming our best friends.

If you have a business or are thinking about starting one, it’s going to be in the real world. Not in your mind. Your audience and customers are going to be real people, not imaginary. So why are you validating ideas in your head? You need real, hands-on feedback. This feedback helps you make better business decisions.

Everything changes when we stop thinking about how to get ahead or skip steps, and focus instead on building consistent, repetitive creative habits. Business builders early on in their career often think looking for shortcuts or figuring out the mistakes to avoid is the best way to be successful faster.

Last week we promised a big announcement. Here it is! Think Traffic has now become The Sparkline: a blog for independent creatives and entrepreneurs building matterful things. We’ve fallen in love over the past year. Our Fizzle community and The Fizzle Show have revealed a whole crew of people putting their asses on the line to build something they care about.

Note from Corbett: a couple of months ago Natalie Sisson from The Suitcase Entrepreneur stopped by for an in-depth Founders' Story interview for Fizzle. Afterward we got to talking about strategies she could use to boost her new book launch. I suggested an oldie-but-goodie idea of running a blog challenge. Her results were pretty incredible, and I asked her to share them with you in this special guest post. This is a thorough guide, and the full process is laid out here.