So I’m moving my entire online business to a new platform right now. Website, shop, emails. All of it.

And instead of just popping up on the other side as if nothing happened, I figured I’d pull back the curtain. Because if you ever have to do this (and let’s be honest, you probably will at some point), you deserve to know what it actually looks like. Spoiler: it looks like my dining room table covered in sticky notes.

The part that actually went well:

I used AI to write a Python script that extracted 100 blog posts and 63 newsletters from my old platform. In one go. Years of content, just pulled right out, that Kajabi wouldn’t let me export easily. I’m not going to lie, I did a little fist pump at my desk. Nobody was around to high-five, so the coffee mug got one instead.

Is the idea of moving all your content the thing keeping you stuck on a platform you’ve outgrown? That part is very solvable. Genuinely the least painful piece of this whole thing.

The part nobody warns you about:

Turns out moving your content is like 20% of the job. The other 80% is rebuilding all the invisible stuff that made your business actually work.

Forms. Every single one needs to be rebuilt from scratch. Pipelines and automations. You know all those nice little systems humming away in the background? The ones sending the welcome email, delivering the freebie, and tagging the new subscriber? Yeah, none of that comes with you. You’re rebuilding every single one by hand like some kind of digital pioneer on the Oregon Trail.

And if you have ADHD like me, this process is a special kind of torture. You sit down to build a page. But the page needs a form. So now you’re building a form. But the form needs a workflow behind it. So now you’re setting up a workflow. And by the time you finish the workflow, you’ve completely forgotten what page you were building in the first place.

Tags and segments. Different platforms organize your email list in totally different ways. So you can’t just dump your contacts in and cross your fingers. You’ve got to clean everything up, reorganize it, and try not to cry. Today I had to decide whether to deal with my tags now or let them become a future Erica problem. The tags almost broke me, but I’m finally seeing a light at the end of the tunnel. 

And then there’s the learning curve. Every platform has its own logic. So even when you know exactly what you need to build, you’re still googling “how do I do this very basic thing” forty times a day.

I’ve got 9 days. I’m at the stage of moving where I just want to start ripping things off shelves and throwing them in boxes. You know that moment? When the packing system completely falls apart, and the spatula ends up with the bath towels, and you just don’t care anymore? I would love to be there. But you can’t do that with a website. Not unless you want to blow up the SEO you spent years building. So here I am. Carefully labelling boxes while my eye twitches.

What this means for you:

Things might get a little wonky around here for the next couple of weeks. A link might break. The GPTs might vanish from the shop for a day or two. Something might look half done because it is absolutely half done.

If this were a physical store, you’d walk in and see boxes stacked everywhere,  a sign taped to the counter that says “still open, just ignore the chaos.” But online, you can’t see any of that. So I’m telling you. Consider this the sign on the counter.

If you’re a business owner and this sounds familiar:

If you’ve been thinking about switching platforms but the idea of the mess is keeping you frozen, I get it. It IS messy. But staying on a platform that isn’t working for you is its own kind of mess. It’s just the quiet kind. The kind that slowly drives you nuts instead of all at once.

Start with your content. That’s the part that feels scariest, and it’s honestly the most movable. The rebuilding is where the real time goes, so plan for that. And give yourself full permission to let things be ugly for a while. Done and messy beats perfect and stuck every single time.

More soon. If the tags don’t take me out first.

Wish me luck.