What I learned from 6 months of hating my business.
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There’s a thing lurking in the online business owner space currently that no one really talks about.
And imma talk about it.
Starting Your Own Business really had a moment there over the last few years. Since the pandemic revealed that many of us in desk jobs did not in fact need the desk to be in the office to do said desk job, we’ve entered a whole new era of possibility when it comes to the way we work.
Cue a complete transformation of how businesses employ their teams - and an explosion of small and solo businesses serving work from anywhere freedom to anyone and everyone with a laptop and a skill to offer.
And for someone like me who’d spent most of my time in corporate feeling like a canary with a clipped wing, the lure and possibility of starting my own gig - and possibly making more money in less time than my corporate role - was too good to say no to. So, in 2022, I left my corporate role while I was on maternity leave after the birth of my second daughter to start an online business as a Virtual Assistant.
At first, everything was dandy. I worked hard at securing clients and booked myself out fairly quickly.
But then something happened.
Instagram happened.
Suddenly, it wasn’t enough to just start a business, get clients for your business, grow that business and earn money to support your family from your business.
It had to be a 6 or 7 figure business. And if it wasn’t? I mean, seriously.
Do you even business, bro?
Your offer had to be something that felt ALIGNED (god, the alignment. Seriously, if there was such a thing as chiros for business they’d make a shit ton).
You had to have a compelling and rich WHY that involved a combination of your children, location freedom, feeling LIT UP and bloody aligned 24/7, but forget actually telling it like it is and shouting from the rooftops that you’re clearly hoping to make as much money as the Instagram coach you’ve invested your life savings into said you would because that’s not an approved why in the world of female business ownership (this is NOT a female problem. This is a societal problem from decades of social conditioning of how people feel about a woman who wants to make money. I have lots of things to say about this, but I’ll save them for another post).
There’s nothing wrong with any of this - feeling aligned, feeling lit up, starting a business so we can spend more time with our kids, work from anywhere, being flexible with when we work or making more money. The problems start when we start comparing ourselves to the (largely exaggerated) content we see on our daily scrollathon and as a result, feel ridiculously inadequate because we’re not achieving all of these things in 3 seconds.
I’ve just reverse engineered you in to my story, gang.
For about 6 months of last year I felt a constant pervading sense of panic and anxiety when it came to my business. I was constantly evaluating where I was at, thinking about where I wanted to go and berating myself because I wasn’t moving 'fast enough’ and that freedom and flexibility I’d dreamed up in my head 12 months ago just wasn’t equating to the life I was living day to day.
I started my business for a few reasons:
To have more creative freedom to grow and make something of my very own, and take it in the direction I wanted to take it without answering to anyone or being constrained by corporate red tape
To be able to spend more time with my daughters, my husband and my family
Because I didn’t want to spend 30 hours of my week feeling forced into working a job I, frankly, had grown out of years ago
Because I liked the idea of having my own business in the context of sipping on coffees, having meetings in cafes and going to the beach whenever I wanted (note no actual work happening in any of these scenarios)
Honestly? Because I thought I’d be able to make more money, more easily, than I had in my corporate role (HAHAHAHA. HAHA. HA. Ha.)
Fast forward a year later, and I was in a place where I felt like I really had none of those things.
And I was seriously thinking about going back to my 9-5. SERIOUSLY.
Now, I want to caveat all of this by saying I realise the fact that I’m even in a position to be sitting at home drinking a bloody sparkling water with lemon in it like a class A wanker, writing this article on a laptop I purchased myself and banging on about the woes and horrors of having the luxury of being able to start your own business without immediately plummeting into potential bankruptcy is absolutely not a scenario that is available to everyone. In fact, it’s probably not immediately available to most people. I’m aware that I am lucky I had the opportunity to start my business on maternity leave from a role where I earned a fairly decent salary and had the confidence that I’d be able to return to should I end up in the proverbial shit end of the creek without a paddle.
That being said.
What this all boils down to is one key, gigantic, glaring learning on starting and growing an online business that slapped me in the face toward the end of 2023:
The reality of actually businessing is completely different to the Instagram of businessing.
Translated, running your own business takes a lot more and is a lot harder than Instagram would have you believe. And yes, you can absolutely get to a place where you’re businessing from a place of ease, where it’s not as hard as it was when you started and where you’re actually making decent money without working every available minute you have - but to get there, you have to do the hard bit first.
You just do. No matter what anyone tells you in a reel.
When I actually acknowledged this I had a realisation that totally changed how I started 2024.
I realised I still wanted my business. I wanted to grow it, be in it, learn through it. But to do that, I HAD to actually translate the freedom I wanted and the goals I had into time lived.
That meant actually working out what that looked like on a daily basis and scheduling it into my calendar.
I had to carve out the time with my girls that I started my business to have.
I had to literally write down and schedule time for things outside my business (aside from scrolling on my phone) that I loved and that would inspire me so that I was the best person I could be when I did sit down at my desk.
I created goals completely separate to my business that I knew would help me nurture my brain and my sanity and I prioritised breaking these down into doable things every single month, week and day.
I mapped out how living my goals would look day to day. Doing this helped me move away from the big, giant, scary overwhelming picture and toward actually living (and liking) the journey toward achieving what I wanted to achieve.
And, 12 days in, I’m liking how 2024 is looking so far.
Thanks so much for reading. I can’t wait to share more with you next week!
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