At the age of 25, I had a sudden revelation. I had no idea how to survive alone. I had no idea who I was without my people, my duties and who I would become if they’re taken away. I decided to venture into the world or entrepreneurship, less to actually build a business, but more for the experience of having 100% responsibility of something, owning it from front to back and learn new things.
Was it a success? No. A part of me knew it wouldn’t be. There was almost zero staff besides me and my friend and I was handling about 95% of the things because she had another full time job. Marketing, designing, vendor calls, calendar, scheduling—you name it, I did it. It taught me more than any structured 9-5 ever could. Because I learned everything from scratch. Starting as a girl who dropped out of college and didn’t even know what the terms CAC or KPI meant, I became one who had a failed business. I learned to use AI, not just casually, but like a work buddy. I learned basic automation. I didn’t even know what that meant.
I know. Most people who read this, will only boil everything down to one thing: a failed, poorly executed business. They’ll be right too. But that failed, poorly executed, half-baked business somehow made me become close to a full-baked version of myself.
I lost money. I lost so many things. I lost relationships. I almost lost my sanity. I cried. I screamed. I was working so hard, beyond what my body could support, and I was on my knees, praying to God for a reward.
And he gave me my sense of self back. He made me a woman that would make my ten year old self’s jaw drop. He showed me who was meant to be a permanent face in my life, and who was meant to be a passing one. I found courage, a spine I built by myself inch by inch, and, a new cognitive programming that craved the discomfort and saw that as more of the reward than the outcome. My walk changed, my tonality changed, my presence changed.
It was not the exact kind of reward I was anticipating or asking for. I am not exactly the glass-half-full kind of woman either. Maybe all I mean to say is, the reward we ask for is not always the one that is given to us, but that doesn’t make it any less precious. It’s all in the way you look at it.
