Editor’s note: This is a guest post from world traveller and remarkable writer Chris Guillebeau.

For a long time, I focused on starting big projects. And for a long time, I had a hard time finishing any of them. Sometimes I got overwhelmed, other times I just looked at the faraway goal and thought: what comes next? How do I know which step is the right one?

Only when I studied the art of breaking down big projects into very small steps was I able to make progress.

It’s kind of like mountain climbing. Mountains look impossible from a distance. But if you come to basecamp and just start putting one foot in front of another, all you see is the path ahead. You can’t help but make progress—and as long as you have a trail, you know you’re going the right way.

For the past few months, I’ve been conducting an intensive research project with small business owners. From an initial group of 300, I selected 15 “emperors” who had built profitable businesses with less than three employees.

I wanted to find out exactly how they did it, and the key was to separate the essential steps from the optional ones. The central question was: can you really build a business around something you love to do, without going crazy—or without going broke?

What I discovered was that most businesses are not built from big ideas. Big ideas are good, but it’s more important to look at all of the smaller steps that bring you to the bigger goal. » Continue your journey »