The Year I Bet on Myself (and What It Really Took)

Nineteen months ago, I made a decision that, at the time, felt both empowering and terrifying in equal measure. I stopped looking for a job. Not because I had something lined up, and not because I felt ready, but because I realized I didn’t want to keep building someone else’s vision while mine sat untouched in the background. Fourteen months ago I launched my business. I told myself that I was going to build this design business or die trying.

That might sound dramatic, but when you reach a certain point, the alternative feels heavier than the risk. Staying where I was no longer felt safe. It felt like giving something up. But I also knew being on the hamster wheel of tech no longer appealed to me either. I just couldn’t face one more layoff. So I chose the harder path, not because I was certain it would work, but because I knew I wouldn’t forgive myself if I didn’t try.

What followed was not the polished version of entrepreneurship people like to share. There were no overnight wins or perfectly timed breakthroughs. Instead, there was structure, repetition, and a commitment to showing up even when I didn’t feel like it. For over a year, I spent two hours a day, four days a week, doing direct outreach and content marketing. I sent hundreds of messages. Some thoughtful, some rushed, some I cringed at later. I had dozens of sales calls that ranged from energizing to awkward to completely unproductive. Over time, though, something started to build. I closed ten clients.

Ten people who said yes. Ten people who chose to trust me at a time when I was still learning how to trust myself. If you’re one of them, you should know that I carry a deep sense of gratitude for you. You weren’t just clients. You were proof that this could work.

At the same time I was trying to build momentum, life had its own plans. I lost my part-time UX mentorship role when the program was discontinued. One day it was there, the next it wasn’t. That loss forced me to get creative quickly. I started renting out my car on Turo, and for a while, it more than made up for the lost income. It felt like I had found a temporary solution that actually worked.

Then one of my renters got into an accident. My car ended up in the shop for two months while insurance companies argued back and forth. There was no income from it during that time, just a long stretch of waiting and uncertainty. When I finally got the car back, I made the decision not to go back to relying on that income stream. It had felt too fragile.

So I pivoted again. I took a part-time role as a TA in my local elementary school, helping teach second and third-graders’ math and reading skills. (Which I quit after 3 months because it was horrible.) Then, I signed up for Poplin and started doing other people’s laundry. It wasn’t something I had ever imagined myself doing; hell, I pay my cleaning lady to wash my clothes! But it fit into my life in a way that allowed me to keep building my business. I could take orders, wash, fold, and deliver, and in between those tasks, I would jump on sales calls or work on client projects. It wasn’t glamorous, but it was flexible, and eventually, I built it into a steady 700 dollars a week. In that season, stability mattered more than anything else.

There was another layer to all of this that I haven’t talked about much until now. To make ends meet, I had been drawing 1000 dollars a month from my 401k. It wasn’t something I felt good about, but it was what allowed me to stay in the game a little longer. Month after month, that cushion got thinner until eventually, it ran out. When it did, there was no backup plan left. It was just me, the work I was doing, and the belief that somehow it had to start working.

Around Christmas, things hit their lowest point. I found myself donating plasma just to cover groceries and buy a few gifts for my kids. It was a skimpy Christmas, and I felt that deeply. Not because of what we didn’t have, but because of what I wanted to provide and couldn’t in that moment. It would have been completely reasonable to stop then, to decide that this experiment had gone far enough, and it was time to go back to something stable.

But I didn’t.

Not because I felt strong or certain, but because I had already made the decision to see this through. Even in that moment, there was something in me that believed quitting would cost more than continuing.

Over the course of that year, I made plenty of mistakes. I invested in coaches and services that didn’t align with my values, hoping they would be the thing that made everything click. Most of them just didn’t. I experienced buyer’s remorse more than once, questioned my judgment, and wondered if I was making this harder than it needed to be. But even in that uncertainty, I kept moving forward.

Then something shifted. I had two sessions with a mindset coach who generously offered to walk me through her process. It wasn’t a massive, dramatic transformation, but something subtle and important changed in how I saw myself and how I showed up. I spoke differently about my work. I carried myself differently in conversations. I believed, even just a little more, that what I was building had value.

Within three weeks of those sessions, I sold about 10,000 dollars in design services. And if you add the laundry money to that sum, the next 30 days are going to be life-changing for me.

It would be easy to point to that moment and call it the turning point, but the truth is, it was built on everything that came before it. The consistency, the outreach, the uncomfortable conversations, the persistence when I didn’t feel like it, all of it compounded. That shift didn’t create the opportunity. It allowed me to receive it.

A year ago, a coach told me something I didn’t want to hear. The only way out is through. At the time, it felt frustrating. I wanted a strategy, a shortcut, something that would make the process faster or easier. But now I understand what she meant. There is no clean way around the hard parts. You move through them, one step at a time, often without immediate evidence that it’s working.

One of the ways I kept myself going through all of this was by setting boundaries where I could. I limited my computer work to four days a week, which helped me maintain some level of sanity. The laundry business, on the other hand, required me to be available seven days a week, but it gave me the financial breathing room I needed. It wasn’t perfect, but it was enough.

Today, things are different. I haven’t needed to donate plasma in over a month. The laundry business is steady, but I’m preparing to step away from it so I can reclaim more of my time and energy. For the first time in a long time, it feels like I’m not just surviving. I am starting to build something sustainable.

If there’s anything this year has taught me, it’s that persistence matters more than perfection, and consistency matters more than motivation. You don’t need to feel ready. You don’t need to have it all figured out. You just need to keep going, especially when it’s uncomfortable, especially when it feels slow, and especially when it seems like nothing is happening.

Because something is happening. You just can’t always see it yet.

If you’re in that place right now, in the messy middle where you’re doing the work and wondering when it will pay off, I understand. I’ve been there, and in many ways, I’m still walking through it. But I also know that it doesn’t take forever. It just takes longer than you want it to.

And if you want help building a service business that actually brings in clients without spending months figuring out what doesn’t work the way I did, you don’t have to do it alone. Book a call, and we’ll find where your client acquisition system is breaking down and how to fix it.

There may not be a magic bullet, but there is a smarter way to move forward.

http://www.bookwithbecky.me