What Have I Done Today to Grow My Business?

Every night before you close your laptop, there is one question worth asking: What have I done today to grow my business? Alston Godbolt built this question into a daily ritual, asking it multiple times throughout the day, and he credits it as one of the core habits that kept him pushing through YouTube, blogging, freelancing, and building a web hosting and web design business from scratch.

This is a Sunday motivation post, but do not let the word “motivation” fool you. What follows is a practical framework, a daily accountability system, and an honest look at why most people who want to build a business online never break through. If you are building anything on the side right now, whether it is affiliate marketing, email newsletters, content creation, or freelancing, the question at the center of this post could change your weekly output starting today.

What You’ll Walk Out With

The exact daily question Alston uses to keep his business moving forward
A list of micro-actions you can take in 15 minutes or less on a lunch break
Why treating your side hustle like a hobby guarantees failure
The front-end sacrifice, back-end reward model explained with real numbers from the video
How to write your interests, desires, and motivation so you can pull them out when you want to quit
Why your competitor is improving at this exact moment, and what that means for you
A clear way to figure out which online income stream fits your current skills with finder.platformproof.com

The Daily Question That Changes Everything

Alston says he asks himself “What have I done to grow my business?” multiple times every single day. Not once at the end of the night when he is half asleep. Multiple times. Morning, afternoon, evening. And each time, the answer has to be a real, concrete answer, not a vague “I was thinking about it” non-answer.

The answer could sound like this: I wrote down ten ideas for blog posts. I outlined a YouTube video. I recorded a video and it just needs editing. I sent a follow-up email to a potential client. I told a friend about what I’m building. These are all real answers. They all count. The question is whether you can answer it honestly every night when you close your eyes.

If the answer is empty, that is a signal. It is not a judgment, it is just data. The question functions like a scoreboard you can only see in private. No one is grading you. But the scoreboard is honest, and over weeks and months, the pattern becomes hard to ignore. Either you are building something or you are not. The question forces you to reckon with which one is true.

The real power of the question is not in the asking. It is in what happens when the answer embarrasses you. That discomfort, the moment when you realize you cannot honestly say you did anything today to move your business forward, is one of the most reliable motivators available. It comes from inside rather than from an external deadline or a boss looking over your shoulder. Internal accountability is harder to build than external accountability, but it is far more durable once it is in place.

Treat It Like a Business, Not a Hobby

Alston is direct about this: you cannot approach affiliate marketing, blogging, email marketing, or any online business as something you do “for funsies.” His exact words. If you go in with a hobby mindset, you will get hobby results, which usually means zero income and a lot of frustrated journal entries at the six-month mark.

A business mindset means making moves like a business. Businesses have output. Businesses track what is working. Businesses show up every day regardless of how they feel. If you are serious about building something online, that same discipline has to apply to you even when you are the only employee, the only manager, and the only shareholder.

There is always a reason to delay. Alston mentions the classic one: 10:30 at night, exhausted, just want to go to sleep. Or sitting on the couch watching TV when you could be creating, thinking about creating, or figuring out how to create better. The interest was there in the beginning. The desire was there. The motivation was there. A business mindset is what turns those three things into consistent output across the weeks when nothing seems to be working yet.

One more distinction worth making: wanting the results is not the same as running it like a business. Almost everyone who starts affiliate marketing or blogging wants the results. Very few are willing to bring the same discipline they would bring to a job they are being paid for. The difference between those two groups is not talent. It is mindset, and the daily question is one of the clearest ways to reinforce the mindset you need.

You Have More Time Than You Think

The most common objection to building anything on the side is time. “I don’t have time to make a blog post. I don’t have time to record a video. I don’t have time to write that email.” Alston does not argue with this objection directly. He just reframes it with a question that is harder to dismiss.

If something is valuable to you, you make time for it. You make time to stop by the grocery store. You make time to browse the electronics store. You make time to read that magazine. If you can make time for those things, you can make time to grow your business. The “I don’t have time” framing is really an “I haven’t decided this is a priority” framing in disguise.

The practical reality Alston describes: you can grow a business from your phone during lunch. You can move something meaningful forward in a 15-minute break. Those windows do not feel like enough time, but they add up fast when you use them consistently instead of scrolling social media or watching videos that have nothing to do with your goals. The days of needing hours, weeks, and years of uninterrupted time to build something online are gone. Compounding small actions across many short windows is now one of the most viable paths forward for anyone building a content or affiliate business around a full-time job.

The harder question is not whether you have time. It is whether you are willing to use the time you already have differently. Watching YouTube about cats playing with yarn is time spent. Watching YouTube about growing a business, testing email subject lines, or studying what is working in your niche is also time spent. The output of each is very different. Only one of them helps you answer the daily question with a real answer tonight.

Write Down Your Interests, Desires, and Motivation

Alston gives a concrete recommendation in this video that is easy to skip but worth taking seriously. When you are having trouble finding motivation or generating content ideas, the fix is to open a notepad or your phone notes and read what you originally wrote about why you started.

The three things he says to write down: your interests, your desires, and your motivation. Write them down. Keep them with you in your car, in your phone notes, somewhere you can pull them up in 30 seconds. When the energy is gone and the results have not arrived yet, this is what you return to.

His examples of what those motivations might look like in practice: “I want to spend more time with my family.” “I want to pay off my student loans.” “I want to stop trading time for money.” These are not abstract aspirations. They are specific, emotionally charged, personally relevant reasons that can push you through a night when every other option sounds better than working on your business.

The interests and desires section also serves as a cure for content block. If you do not know what to write about or record next, your interests list is the starting point. Your genuine curiosity and lived experience in a topic is what makes your content different from everyone else covering the same ground with the same generic information. Readers and viewers can feel the difference between someone who actually cares about the topic and someone who is just filling space.

Alston says to keep this list somewhere accessible. Not buried in a folder on your laptop. Not written on a sticky note you lost three weeks ago. In your car. On your phone. Somewhere you will actually open it. The exercise only works if the list shows up when the motivation does not.

Your Competitor Is Getting Better Right Now

This is the line from the video that hits hardest: “There is somebody right now getting better. There is somebody right now doing the little things that are separating themselves from their competition.” Alston says this is true at this exact moment, and he is right.

The online business space is not paused when you are tired. It is not waiting for you to feel ready. Someone in your niche is writing an extra paragraph right now. Someone is spending ten more minutes on that blog post. Someone is jotting down ideas for their next video while you are watching TV. The gap between that person and where you are does not close by itself.

The flip side is equally true. When you put in an extra 30 minutes on a Saturday, you are the person pulling ahead. When you answer the daily question with a real list of actions, you are the competitor someone else is trying to catch. The question is which side of that gap you want to be on, and the daily question is one of the few mechanisms that actually makes you choose.

Alston frames this not as competition in a combative sense but as a reality check. You are not racing against a specific person. You are racing against the version of yourself that does nothing today. Every day you act, you make it harder for inaction to win the next day. Every day you do not act, you make the next day’s inaction a little easier to justify.

Front-End Sacrifice, Back-End Reward

Alston puts a specific frame around the sacrifice required to build something online, and it is worth sitting with for a moment. He says: if you dedicate an hour and a half to two hours every single day for the next year, you could be in a position to retire from your job. That is not a motivational poster line. That is a specific time commitment with a specific potential outcome attached to it.

He poses the question directly: “What if someone told you, if you work until midnight every single night for the next year, you’ll have zero debt and a job you love that you built yourself. Would you do it?” He assumes the answer is yes, and the assumption is reasonable. Most people reading this are already working long hours at jobs they did not choose, building someone else’s business. The difference is that this version of the work compounds for you instead of for your employer.

The analogy he uses is sports. You shoot a thousand jump shots on the front end so that when it counts, you make the shot. You run on the treadmill before you run the race. The front-end work is invisible to everyone else, and that is exactly the point. No one sees the hour and a half you put in every day. No one sees the midnight sessions in January. But the results of those sessions show up eventually, and when they do, people will say you got lucky or that things happened fast for you. What they will not see is the specific night it actually turned.

Alston gives a vivid image for this: “Your success happened at 11:59 PM on January 3rd when everyone else was sleeping. Your reward happens six months later. Your reward happens maybe two years later.” The success is not the reward. The success is the effort on the specific night when no one was watching. The reward is the delayed consequence of showing up on that night and every night like it.

The Sacrifice Alston Made

Alston gives one personal example in this video that makes the front-end sacrifice principle concrete. Before he started building his YouTube and blogging business, his default way to relax was video games. He stopped playing video games almost entirely for about a year to a year and a half so that he could redirect that time into building his business.

He frames it this way: the people who made the video games he loved are doing exactly what they want to do because they made their own sacrifices first. They built something, and that thing became the product he was consuming. If he wanted to build something of his own, he had to stop consuming and start producing. That mental shift, from consumer to creator, is one of the most important moves in the early stages of building any online business.

What are you consuming right now that you could redirect into building? It does not have to be video games. It could be the hour after dinner you spend scrolling social media. It could be the podcast you listen to during a commute that you could swap for a voice note about your next piece of content. The sacrifice does not have to be dramatic. It just has to be consistent and honest.

You Have to Go Get It

Alston tells a story about a Facebook post he saw where someone expressed the idea of letting go and trusting that things would work out on their own. He responded to the post, and then he walks through why even the most passive version of success requires active effort on your part.

His example is the lottery. The person who wins a billion-dollar jackpot still had to get out of bed, get dressed, walk or drive to a convenience store, and buy the ticket. Even the easiest conceivable path to wealth in existence required a physical action to initiate it. Success does not show up at your door. You have to go find it, and finding it means doing something toward it every single day.

He says you might not succeed on the first try or the second. But if you are out there, trying different things, putting in the effort consistently, you will eventually find what works. And once you find it, you keep going. The people who succeed are not the ones who found the right thing on the first attempt. They are the ones who kept trying after the first few attempts did not produce results, and who stayed in the game long enough for their consistency to compound.

Not sure which online income stream fits your current skills and schedule?

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What Growing Your Business Actually Looks Like Daily

Alston gives a real list of things that count as “growing your business” in the context of a content and affiliate marketing operation. None of these require a full studio or a six-hour block of free time. Most of them can happen in under 20 minutes. Here are the specific actions he names in the video:

Writing down ten ideas for blog posts
Creating an outline for a YouTube video
Recording a YouTube video, even if editing is still pending
Telling a friend or family member about your business and what you are working on
Making a voice note with ideas when you cannot sit down to type
Reaching out to a connection or business contact
Discussing new strategies with someone building alongside you
Watching a YouTube video specifically about business growth or competitive strategy in your niche
Uploading content you already wrote or recorded but have not published yet
Sending a follow-up email or making a follow-up phone call to a lead or client

Notice the breadth of that list. It includes creation, distribution, outreach, research, and conversation. Growing your business is not only publishing. It is any action that puts you in a better position tomorrow than you are today. The daily question works because it forces you to identify at least one action from that list and actually do it, rather than thinking about doing it.

A Seven-Day Starter Plan for Daily Business Growth

If you want to put the daily question to work this week, here is a simple structure you can follow. Each day takes between 15 and 60 minutes depending on your available time. The goal is not perfection. The goal is to have a real answer for the daily question every single night by Friday.

Day 1: Write down your interests, desires, and motivation. Be specific. Keep the list somewhere you can find it in 30 seconds, not buried in a folder.
Day 2: Generate 10 content ideas based on questions your target audience is already asking. Write one rough paragraph about the idea that excites you most.
Day 3: Create one piece of content: a blog post outline, a YouTube video script, or a draft email to your list. Do not worry about publishing it yet.
Day 4: Tell one real person about your business. Ask them what questions they would have about the topic you cover. Write down their answers.
Day 5: Publish or upload one piece of content, even a short one. Starting the publishing habit matters more than the length of the first piece.
Day 6: Review what you did this week. Rate your daily question answer from 1 to 10 for each day. Identify which day was the weakest and why.
Day 7: Plan next week. Set three specific outputs you want completed by end of week, not tasks on a list, but finished deliverables you can point to.

The structure matters less than the habit of showing up to it. After seven days, you will have a clearer sense of which parts of building your business come naturally and which parts you are avoiding. The daily question will start to surface the avoidance patterns that most people never examine because they are too comfortable calling them “busy.”

Honest Drawbacks

Daily consistency sounds straightforward until you are three weeks in and nothing has worked yet. The front-end sacrifice, back-end reward model is real, but the timeline is not fixed. Alston says the reward could show up in six months or it could take two years. That is a long runway to maintain discipline without visible results, and most people are not prepared for it emotionally before they start.

The second drawback is that not all daily actions are equal. Spending 90 minutes organizing a spreadsheet or tweaking your logo does not move the needle the same way 90 minutes of writing, recording, or direct outreach does. You can answer the daily question with a technically true list and still make very little real progress. Quality of action matters alongside consistency of action.

A third honest note: isolation is hard. Building alone means no one is checking your work, giving you feedback, or holding you accountable to anything other than your own internal standard. The motivation framework Alston describes helps, but it works best when paired with some kind of external accountability structure, even if it is just a weekly check-in with someone else working on their own business.

Finally, the daily question can become a guilt loop if you are not careful. If you miss a day and spend the next week beating yourself up about it, the question stops being a tool and starts being a punishment. The goal is honest accounting, not self-punishment. Miss a day, note it, move on. What matters is the pattern over months, not the perfection of any individual day.

Find Your X

Before you can grow a business every day, you need to know which business is worth growing. Alston built his around YouTube, blogging, freelancing, and web hosting because those mapped to his actual skills and genuine interests. If you are still figuring out which online income stream matches where you are right now, the Platform Proof finder is a practical starting point. Answer a few questions about your skills, your available time, and your financial goals, and get matched to the income model most likely to work for your specific situation. Visit finder.platformproof.com to get your match in under two minutes.

Frequently Asked Questions

What counts as “growing my business” on a slow day?

On a slow day, small actions still count. Alston specifically mentions making a voice note, reaching out to one connection, discussing strategy with a partner, or reading content directly related to your niche. The bar is not a finished product every day. The bar is a real action that moved something forward, even by an inch. The key word is “real,” not impressive.

How long before daily consistent action produces visible results?

Alston says six months on the short end, two years on the longer end. This matches what most content creators and affiliate marketers report from their own experience. The first months are mostly invisible growth: building skills, learning what works in your niche, accumulating content. The results start appearing later, often all at once, which is why people who quit before the six-month mark almost never find out what would have happened if they had stayed.

What should I do when I have zero motivation to work on my business?

Alston’s direct answer: pull out the notepad or phone note where you wrote your interests, desires, and motivation, and read it. That is the cure he describes for low-energy nights. The motivation was real when you wrote it down, and reading it reconnects you to why you started. That reconnection is usually enough to push you to do at least one small thing that qualifies as growing the business before you sleep.

Can I really build a business in 15 minutes a day?

Alston says yes, with an important nuance. Fifteen minutes alone will not replace a full income quickly. His point is that 15 minutes of genuine effort during a lunch break is better than zero, and it keeps the habit alive on the hardest days. The 15-minute sessions should not be the ceiling. They should be the floor on the days when everything else is competing for your time.

Is watching YouTube or reading blogs considered growing my business?

It depends entirely on what you are watching or reading. Alston draws a clear line. Watching YouTube about your industry, your competitors, or strategies that directly apply to your business is a form of growing your business. Watching YouTube about unrelated entertainment is not. The test he implies: did what you just consumed give you something you can act on within the next week? If yes, it counts. If no, it does not.

What if I try an online business model and fail on the first attempt?

Alston addresses this directly in the video. He says you might not succeed on the first try or the second. The process of trying, learning, and adjusting is how you eventually find what works for your specific skills and situation. The people who build successful online businesses are not the ones who found the right model immediately. They are the ones who kept searching after the first few attempts did not produce results.

How do I decide which online business to build first?

Alston’s framework from this video points to starting with your strongest existing skill or your deepest genuine interest. He built around YouTube and blogging because those matched his communication strengths and his interest in teaching others. If you are unsure which direction fits your situation best, use the Platform Proof finder to get a personalized match based on where you are right now, not where someone else started.

Does asking the daily question actually work long-term as a habit?

The question works because it forces a daily accounting that you cannot fake to yourself. Over time, having to answer it honestly every day builds an internal standard: you start to feel genuinely uncomfortable ending a day with an empty answer. That discomfort becomes one of the most reliable motivators available, because no one gave it to you and no one can take it away. It is built from the inside, which is exactly what makes it sustainable across months and years of building.

Sources

Alston Godbolt, “What have I Done Today to Grow My Business?” YouTube (Sunday motivation series), https://youtu.be/wW8tviU_vA4
Platform Proof Finder, personalized online income stream matching, https://finder.platformproof.com