The First Thing You Try Doesn’t Have to Be the Thing You Keep
Starting a business sounds exciting until you’re crying over email templates and start wondering if Costco is hiring. Welcome to the real story.
I’m Julie, a former corporate VP who left in 2019 after building my first product-based business. I’ve been creating (and occasionally torching) physical and digital businesses ever since. And yes, I still sometimes google “online business ideas that don’t involve video, sales calls, or being awake by 9.” I know what works for me!
In 2018, I started a business selling high-end dog gear. Coastal-inspired. Nautical rope. Very “if Martha Stewart had a Golden Retriever.”
I created the whole thing from scratch. Designed the products. Built the website. Found the suppliers. Spent way too much time at the post office.
It wasn’t a side hustle. It was a brand. It was my full-time job. And for a while, it felt like the dream.
Until it didn’t.
Because here’s what no one tells you when you’re starting out: Just because you built it doesn’t mean you have to keep it.
A few years in, I realized I hated what I’d created. The logistics. The physical inventory. The returns. The constant chasing of what might sell.
It became another job. Except this time, I couldn’t leave the office. And there was no IT department when the website broke. No accounting team to track the numbers for me.
So I pivoted. Hard. I shut it down, walked away from thousands of hours of work, and started over.
Was it scary? Yes. Did it feel like failure? Also yes, for longer than I’d like to admit. But it turned out to be the best decision I made!
Because that experience gave me one very loud, very expensive insight:
The first thing you try doesn’t have to be the thing. It just has to be the thing that gets you started.
And that’s why I created The Next Step Checklist. It’s a free, 10-minute gut-check to help you figure out what kind of business might actually work for you, before you build something you secretly resent.
It won’t give you all the answers. But it will ask the right questions. Like whether you actually want to be shipping products out of your garage. Or whether marketing yourself on video gives you energy, or makes you want to crawl in a hole if you have to hear your voice talking back to you.
The goal isn’t to get it perfect. It’s to get closer. To something that fits. To something that lasts. To something that won’t burn you out by year two.
If you’re thinking about starting something, or if you’ve already started and you’re low-key panicking that you hate it, grab the checklist.
And please remember: There’s no prize for sticking with a business you can’t stand. You’re allowed to pivot. In fact, for many of us, it’s one of the smartest moves you can make!
So, go start something already. And then pivot if you need to.