If you’d asked me a couple of years ago what I needed most in my business, I’d probably have said:
More clients.
More sales.
More income.
Making money online felt like the thing that would prove it was all worth it. Making money became the main focus. After all, we all have bills to pay and food to buy and what else we need to pay for. Everything else could wait. Or so I thought.
There was this constant pressure, some of it from me, some of it from everyone else.
“When’s the business going to take off?“
“Are you making any money yet?”
“How’s your little hobby going?”
People don’t always mean to be dismissive, but if you’ve ever built a business, you’ll know those little comments have a habit of lodging themselves somewhere in the back of your mind.
You hear them when you’re making a cup of tea.
You hear them when another launch doesn’t quite do what you hoped.
You hear them when you’re lying awake at half past two wondering whether you’ve completely lost the plot.
The Invisible Work Behind Making Money
The funny thing is, they don’t see what you see. They don’t see the hours spent learning. The website you’ve rewritten for the tenth time. The evenings spent trying to work out why something isn’t working. The books. The courses. The notebook that’s full of ideas that seemed brilliant at the time and now make almost no sense. The moments you’ve sat staring at your screen wondering why everyone else seems to be moving forwards while you’re still trying to work out what on earth you’re doing.
They just see someone sat at home, and because they don’t see money coming in yet, they assume nothing much is happening. It’s hard to explain invisible work to people who’ve never had to do it. From the outside, it probably does look as though you’re just spending an awful lot of time on your laptop.
From the inside, your head rarely switches off. You’re thinking about your business when you’re walking the dog. When you’re loading the dishwasher or doing the washing up ( I don’t have a dishwasher, I am the dishwasher)
When someone asks what you’re doing at the weekend, and you realise you’ve quietly planned to work through most of it.
When Making Money Becomes the Goal
There’s a strange sort of guilt that creeps in as well. You’re working harder than you ever have, yet somehow you still feel as though you should be doing more.
More marketing.
More networking.
More content.
More offers.
More everything.
It’s an exhausting way to spend your time because there’s always someone online doing something you haven’t thought of yet.
Someone announcing another fully booked programme.
Someone celebrating another record month.
Someone apparently managing all of this while also drinking green juice at sunrise and finding time for Pilates. I struggle to do my standing yoga on some days in my living room. I dream of doing it on the beach at sunset.
Honestly, good luck to them. I was usually just trying to remember whether I’d actually eaten lunch. The pressure to make money quickly has a habit of shrinking your world, and the strange thing about trying to make money quickly is that it often stops you building the thing that would actually make money consistently. Every decision becomes about whether it’ll bring in income.
You stop asking whether something is worth building. You start asking whether it’ll pay off fast enough.
I’d tell myself I’d sort everything else later.
I’d get clearer later.
I’d build proper systems later.
I’d stop constantly changing direction later.
I’d create the business I actually wanted once I’d made enough money. The plan was always to make money first and sort everything else out after.
Except “later” has a funny way of never arriving.
There was always another thing that promised to be the answer.
Another strategy.
Another challenge.
Another webinar.
Another expert explaining why this time I’d finally crack it.
I don’t regret any of it because I genuinely wanted to learn. But somewhere along the way I became incredibly busy without feeling particularly settled.
Busy gives you something to point at. It makes you feel productive. It also makes it surprisingly easy to avoid asking yourself whether you’re actually moving forwards. Hide behind what really needs to be done.
I thought I needed better answers. What I actually needed was better conversations.
It Felt Safer on the Sidelines
I’ve joined business groups before. Signed up full of enthusiasm. Watched the videos. Downloaded the worksheets. Made colour-coded notes that looked very impressive.
Then quietly disappeared into the background.
I’d convince myself everyone else already knew each other. That everyone else asked better questions. That I didn’t really have anything worth saying. So I’d watch from the sidelines. It felt safer there.
Then one day, for reasons I still can’t fully explain, I did something different.
I joined in.
I asked questions.
I replied to other people’s posts instead of simply reading them.
I admitted when I didn’t understand something.
Nobody laughed. Nobody rolled their eyes. In fact, the opposite happened.
People answered.
People encouraged.
People admitted they were wondering the same thing. It was oddly reassuring to discover that even people whose businesses looked established were still figuring things out. Just at a different level. That’s probably one of the biggest myths about business. We imagine there’s a point where everyone else suddenly knows exactly what they’re doing.
I’m becoming less convinced that point exists. What changes is that you become more comfortable admitting you don’t know everything.
Find Your Customers. Then Find Your Business Friends.
Somewhere amongst all those conversations I realised something nobody had ever said out loud.
We’re always told to find our people.
What they usually mean is your ideal client. The person you want to work with. The person who’ll buy your offer. The person your business exists to help.
Yes, that’s important. Without clients, it’s not much of a business. But hardly anyone talks about finding your business friends. There is talk about making the right connections, but what about business friends, the kind who are in the same boat as you, flying solo, they can be doing the same type of business or not. The people who understand why you’ve spent three hours trying to write one paragraph.
Who know the strange mix of excitement and dread that comes with pressing publish.
Who don’t need you to explain why one lovely enquiry can completely change your week.
Who laugh with you when technology decides today’s the day it’s going to test your patience.
Who understand why you’ve changed your pricing three times and still aren’t entirely sure you’ve got it right.
Who know that sometimes the biggest win isn’t a sale.
Sometimes it’s simply deciding not to quit.
They’re not your customers. They’re the people quietly walking a similar road. The ones who remind you that you’re not failing just because something feels difficult. That building something worthwhile often looks remarkably ordinary while it’s happening.
Making Money Became the Priority. Building a Business Should Have Been.
Looking back, I think I spent years believing success was mostly about finding clients and making money.
Now I think it’s about finding two groups of people. One group brings in your income. The other helps you become the sort of person who can keep building the business long enough to earn it.
You need both.
One pays the invoices. (Making money matters. I’m not going to pretend otherwise.)
The other gets you through the weeks when there aren’t any invoices to pay.
I’m still building.
I’m still learning.
I still have days where I wonder whether I’m making life unnecessarily complicated.
I still catch myself thinking that everyone else has worked something out that I’ve somehow missed.
Old habits don’t disappear overnight.
But something has shifted. The business doesn’t feel quite so lonely anymore, and strangely, that has made me better at the work itself.
Not because someone handed me the perfect strategy.
Not because everything suddenly clicked into place.
Simply because I stopped trying to figure everything out on my own. For all the time I spent chasing the next sale, I never expected that the thing I’d been missing wasn’t another customer. It was a community. Looking back, the mad rush to make money wasn’t what moved my business forward.
It was the biggest distraction of all.
If you’re looking for that second group, let’s make a connection.
We’ll talk about your business, where you’re heading and what support would genuinely help, whether that’s a Written Business Review or a Quiet Power Call.
