Resources that helped me stop thinking and start building

One of the first things I discovered when setting up a business was how quickly the list of decisions grew. Registering a company was only one step. I also needed to think about the purpose of the business, its market, finances, risks, launch activity and the systems that would support it once it was operating.

I used UMi Business Sat Nav because I wanted a structured way to work through those questions and reduce the risk of overlooking something important. Rather than relying on disconnected articles and trying to decide what mattered, SatNav gave me a clearer route through the early planning process.

The essential guide to starting a business gave me a useful overview of the journey from an initial idea to a functioning business. Its checklist organised the process into five practical stages: clarify the vision, plan and prepare, register and set up, promote and launch, and find appropriate help and support.

I found that structure valuable because it encouraged me to look beyond company registration. It prompted me to think about demand, the type of business I wanted to create, how I would reach customers, which systems I needed and where professional support might become necessary.

I worked through the start a business checklist to create a more complete view of the tasks ahead. It gave me something practical to review rather than relying on memory or assuming I had already considered every important step.

I used the business plan template to organise the idea more formally. It helped me define the purpose of the business, the problem it was intended to address, the audience, the route to market and the practical requirements involved in moving forward.

The SWOT analysis template helped me assess the idea more critically. Writing down the strengths and opportunities was useful, but the greater value came from considering weaknesses and external threats that enthusiasm can make easy to overlook.

I also used the profit-and-loss forecast calculator to begin translating the idea into numbers. It encouraged me to consider expected revenue, ongoing costs and the level of activity the business would need before it could become financially meaningful.

Taken together, these resources helped me prepare more methodically and leave fewer assumptions untested. They did not remove the uncertainty involved in starting a business, but they gave me a stronger framework for identifying what I knew, what still needed research and which decisions could not be postponed.

That was particularly important because I was learning as I went while continuing to work full time. Having practical templates and a defined checklist reduced some of the mental load and helped me turn a large, unfamiliar project into smaller decisions I could address one at a time.

The broader SatNav platform also provides business guidance, tools, articles and routes to support. I found it useful to have these resources collected in one place, particularly when I needed to revisit a subject or check whether an area of the business required more attention.

Templates and calculators can improve the planning process, but they cannot make the decisions for you. The quality of the result still depends on the assumptions and information you enter. Forecasts should be treated as working estimates and reviewed as better evidence becomes available.

Business circumstances also vary. Legal, tax, financial and regulatory questions may require qualified professional advice. I used SatNav as a planning and learning resource, not as a substitute for specialist guidance where that was needed.

Building a website is only useful if you can understand whether people are finding it and what they do when they arrive. That requires two related skills: learning how search works and learning how to measure performance.

Google's own training and documentation are the most sensible place to establish that foundation. Skillshop provides product training for Google Analytics and Google Ads, while Search Central explains how Google discovers, crawls, indexes and presents websites in organic search.

I started with the Google Analytics material in Skillshop. This helped me understand the role of events, conversions, traffic sources and reports. The most valuable lesson was that collecting data is not the same as learning from it. Analytics only becomes useful when it is connected to a clear question about how a website is performing.

I also explored Google's Search advertising training. Even where paid advertising is not the immediate priority, the material provides a useful introduction to search intent, keywords, campaign structure, bidding and performance measurement. Those principles helped me think more carefully about how people search for products, services and referral offers.

For organic search, I read Google's SEO Starter Guide and worked through its introductory Search Console guidance. These resources helped clarify the fundamentals without relying on shortcuts: useful content, clear page structure, descriptive titles, internal linking and making pages understandable to both visitors and search engines.

The material comes directly from the company responsible for the platforms. That does not make it a complete marketing education, but I found it gave me a dependable baseline for Earned on the Side and helped me assess third-party opinions, tactics and case studies more critically.

Product training can teach you how a platform works, but it cannot decide your business strategy or create useful content for you. Complete the training with a real website in front of you and apply each lesson to an actual measurement, search or content problem.

Use Google Analytics and Search Console on Earned on the Side, then treat the official training as a working reference. Learning is more likely to stick when every report and setting relates to a real site you are actively improving.

Website builders can make publishing easier, but they can also hide the principles that determine whether a page is clear, responsive and maintainable. I worked through Webflow University because I wanted to understand more than where to click. I wanted a stronger grasp of how modern websites are actually structured.

Webflow 101 was particularly useful because it teaches website building through a practical project. It covers page structure, layout, styling, responsive design and accessibility while introducing the underlying ideas behind HTML and CSS.

The course is naturally centred on Webflow, but the underlying lessons transfer to other platforms. Page hierarchy, containers, spacing, responsive breakpoints, reusable styles and content structure matter whether the final website is built with Webflow, WordPress, Hostinger or custom code.

Working through the course made it easier for me to recognise why certain layouts work and others feel awkward. It also helped me communicate design changes more clearly and make better decisions when using AI-assisted website-building tools.

Learning inside one visual platform can make its interface feel like the subject. Keep separating the transferable principle from the Webflow-specific implementation. The objective is to understand websites better, not to assume every future project must use the same builder.

Start with Webflow 101 for the complete page-building journey, then use the shorter Webflow University lessons when you need to revisit a specific subject such as CMS structure, accessibility or design systems.

I started with AI Foundations, which explains the basics of artificial intelligence, large language models and ChatGPT. The practical emphasis was useful: give clear instructions, provide relevant context, review the result and remain responsible for the final decision rather than accepting an answer simply because it sounds confident.

Applied AI Foundations then moved from individual prompts towards repeatable work. It demonstrated how to take a recurring task, break it into stages, identify where ChatGPT can help and deliberately add review points. That was particularly relevant to this project because building a website involves repeated research, drafting, checking and updating rather than one perfect prompt.

I have also watched OpenAI Academy webinars aimed at small businesses. These demonstrations helped connect the broader technology to ordinary business tasks such as planning, analysing information, producing first drafts and improving recurring workflows. The most useful message was that AI becomes more valuable when it is connected to a clearly defined task and checked by somebody who understands the intended result.

The Academy material influenced how I have approached Earned on the Side. Instead of asking AI to build everything in one step, I have broken the project into decisions: page purpose, information architecture, copy, data structures, accessibility, SEO and verification.

It has also reinforced the importance of keeping a human review stage. AI can accelerate research, organisation, drafting and coding, but it should not invent personal experience, financial results, referral terms or product claims. Those boundaries are now part of the way I work on the site.

My longer-term goal is to use AI and automation to reduce repetitive work across the project. Applied AI Foundations provides a useful model for doing that responsibly: define the process first, decide which stages can be assisted and keep review points where accuracy and judgement matter.

Watching demonstrations can make AI workflows look effortless. Applying them to real work still requires clear source information, sensible boundaries, testing and the willingness to correct weak outputs. Treat the Academy as a practical starting point and then build small workflows around tasks you genuinely understand.

Begin with AI Foundations, continue to Applied AI Foundations and then watch the small-business sessions that match your own work. Move to Agents and Workflows only when you are comfortable defining a repeatable process and reviewing what the system produces.

A founder can easily become absorbed in building a product or website while underestimating the range of skills required to make a business work. I read The Personal MBA because I wanted a broader understanding of the commercial system around what I was building.

The book covers value creation, marketing, sales, finance, decision-making, productivity, communication, systems and operations. That breadth was its main value for me. It helped connect subjects that are often learned separately and showed how the different parts of a business affect one another.

I did not approach it as a book that needed to be memorised from beginning to end. I treated it as both an introduction and a reference. When a concept related to a decision I was making, I could return to that section and consider how it applied to the situation in front of me.

The material also reinforced the importance of experimentation. When you are building something for the first time, you rarely have complete information. It is often more useful to test a manageable idea, observe the result and make a better-informed decision than to wait indefinitely for certainty.

Breadth is both the strength and limitation of a resource like this. It can help you recognise the important parts of a business, but it cannot replace specialist advice or practical experience in every area. Use it to improve the questions you ask and to identify where deeper learning is required.

A broad and practical reference that gave me a clearer picture of the commercial skills I need to continue developing as Earned on the Side grows.