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Becoming an entrepreneur is the most expensive personal development program you will ever pay for, and I’m not even talking about the money. I’m talking about the version of yourself that you have to let die: the people pleaser who waits for permission, the woman who apologizes before she speaks, that part of you who thinks staying ahead of everything will finally make you safe.

I’ve watched the girl boss era rise and fall. I’ve witnessed hustle culture get worshipped and then finally questioned. I’ve been in rooms I thought I needed to be in only to realize those weren’t my rooms at all.

Here’s what I know: entrepreneurship is not just about building a business. It’s about becoming someone who can. For women especially, this journey will ask you to unlearn almost everything you’ve been taught: to stop making yourself small, to stop waiting for permission, to stop apologizing for wanting more.

You Have to Decide It’s Worth Doing

When I launched my blog in 2011, I could wait for someone to tell me I was ready or I could just start. If I had waited, that permission would have never come.

I had to name myself a photographer before anyone paid me. I had to call myself a business owner before the revenue proved it. I had to believe I was an entrepreneur before anyone else did.

I’ll never forget the first time I said “I’m a photographer” without adding all the caveats. It happened at the dentist’s office with her hands in my mouth so I couldn’t backtrack. Nothing dramatic happened, she just said “oh, that’s cool” and kept cleaning my teeth. But for me, that moment changed everything.

Give Yourself Permission First

Before anyone claps for you, you have to decide it’s worth doing. Your business won’t wait for you to feel ready. It will require you to be bold before you feel brave, to take up space before you feel entitled to it.

When you give yourself permission, you’re going back to who you were before the world taught you to wait, before you learned to shrink. There’s a version of you who knew exactly what she wanted, and entrepreneurship is asking you to find her again and tell her she was always right.

Your Humanity Is Your Competitive Advantage

I remember posting on social media over a decade ago: me with no makeup, sweatshirt, hoodie pulled up, working at the table saying, “This is what entrepreneurship looks like.” I let people in. I talked about the messy parts, the doubt, the exhaustion. When I showed the most human parts of my journey, people leaned in.

Years ago, I did a Twitter poll asking what my audience wanted to see: wedding photography, engagement sessions, or my real life. The overwhelming majority chose my real life. I thought there’s no way people care about me, they care about the work I create.

The Experiment That Changed Everything

So I tested it. For one month, I showed my face four out of five posts instead of one out of five. That month I doubled my follower growth and engagement went through the roof. People weren’t following me for my wedding photography, they were following me for me. Years later when I pivoted away from photography, they were still there.

People hire you for what you know, but they stay because of who you are. Your realness is your competitive advantage. In a world where AI can generate content and copy entire marketing campaigns, your humanity is the thing no one else can replicate. Use AI as a tool, but never let it strip away what makes you, you.

Learning to Mess Up in Public

I’ve gotten so many things wrong over the years. I’ve contradicted myself, messed up, gotten called out, gotten canceled. One of my core wounds is wanting to be understood, so when I’ve been called out publicly, I wanted to run and disappear.

Those experiences challenged everything I believed about myself and my leadership. I had to learn what it means to mess up in front of thousands of people, to sit in discomfort without centering myself in it, to let actions rebuild what words can’t fix.

What You Do After Matters More

Entrepreneurship will put you in situations where you get it wrong, where you hurt people you don’t mean to hurt, where your blind spots become visible. The question isn’t if you’ll mess up, it’s what you do after. Do you center yourself in the pain you caused? Do you perform an apology and move on? Or do you actually pause and listen and learn and let it change you?

Somewhere along the way, you learned that being wrong meant you were bad, that making a mistake meant you were unworthy. Entrepreneurship will dismantle that belief over and over again. It will show you that you can be imperfect and still be valuable, that you can mess up and still be worthy.

Hustle Culture Is Just Control Issues with a Vision Board

We’ve lived through an era of wearing busyness like a badge of honor. We’ve bought into the idea that we should work weekends and answer emails at 10 p.m. because that’s what successful people do, and that rest is something we’ll earn later. Spoiler: later never comes.

I built a business that required all of me all of the time. I’ll never forget experiencing a miscarriage and having to shoot a wedding the next day. I remember being there on somebody’s happiest day while my body was a ticking time bomb. That day I committed to myself: I need to rebuild. I need to destroy this successful six-figure business because it doesn’t allow me to be human.

The Belief That Kept Me Stuck

Even in therapy, I uncovered this core belief: if I can just stay ahead, nothing can catch me off guard. So I worked months in advance, planned launches a year out, stayed ahead of everything. When I got ahead, I just kept working further ahead because being ahead meant safety.

The hustle culture we’ve been sold isn’t really about success. It’s control. It’s the belief that if we just do more, push more, stay ahead, we’ll finally be safe, finally be enough. For years I operated out of pure force, straight masculine energy, the push, the grind. That approach works until it doesn’t.

What Surrender Actually Looks Like

I’ve had to learn about ease and flow, about surrender instead of control, about working from rest instead of stress. There was an entire year I wore a necklace that said “surrender.” I had to learn to stop white knuckling my business and open my hands.

Here’s what nobody tells you: letting go of hustle feels like failure at first. It feels lazy, irresponsible, like you’re falling behind. But if you can loosen your grip, you’ll start coming home to yourself. You’ll go back to the version of you who knew how to play, who had hobbies outside of the roles you played, who knew how to rest without earning it, who understood that your worth had nothing to do with your output.

A business built on your depletion isn’t a business. It’s just another cage. You didn’t leave your job to build yourself a prettier prison.

Freedom Is Not Really Free If It Doesn’t Feel Like It

It’s easy in entrepreneurship to chase the metrics, the revenue goals, the download numbers, the Instagram followers. I’ve hit milestones that should have felt like wins, and maybe they did for five minutes, but then I was onto the next goal, the next thing to prove.

Success for me doesn’t look like anything you see on the internet. It’s my full presence with my kids, it’s laying in my yard watching the leaves in a tree, it’s being in awe of life. I’ve had to redefine success over and over again and shed society’s expectations.

Redefining Success on Your Terms

It’s not the number in my bank account or the chart position of my podcast. It’s the ability to be present, to be still, to not feel like I’m constantly running towards something or away from something else. Freedom isn’t really free if it doesn’t feel like it.

We’re taught that success as women means doing it all: being the CEO and the mom and the wife and the friend and the volunteer with the clean house and the thriving business and the homemade meals. That’s not success, that’s a setup.

Your Calendar Doesn’t Lie

Get brutally honest: what do you actually want? Not what you think you should want, not what Instagram tells you success looks like. There’s a version of you who knows exactly what you want and is ruthlessly honest about what feels good for you versus what looks good to everyone else.

Your calendar doesn’t lie. It’s the perfect reflection of your actual priorities. Take a look, do an audit. Are the things and people and moments and passions prioritized? Are they there? Not someday, but in the life you’re living right now.

Real success is having the courage to define that word for yourself, building a business that fits your actual life, letting go of what you think everything should look like and building what actually feels good.

The Journey Back to Yourself

If I could sit down with the version of me just starting out, here’s what I would tell her: This path will ask everything of you. It will shine a light on your money wounds, your need for control, your fear of being seen. It will expose your blind spots and push on every bruise you didn’t know you had.

It will require you to name yourself before anyone recognizes your name, to show up as a human first, not an expert, and to let go of hustle and come home to yourself. It will invite you to redefine success on your own terms.

What My Entrepreneurship Journey Has Taught Me

If you let it, this journey will transform and heal you. It will take you back to the version of you who was ruthlessly honest about what she wanted, who took up space without apologizing, who knew exactly who she was before the world taught her to doubt herself.

After 14 years, I know this: entrepreneurship is not just a career path. It’s a becoming, a journey back to yourself. It will make you more honest, more grounded, more fully you than you ever thought possible, not because you’ll figure out all the answers, but because you’ll learn what it means to trust yourself, to take up space, to believe you’re worth listening to before anyone else does.

The Real Cost and the Real Reward

This is the most expensive personal development program you’ll ever pay for, not in money, but in ego deaths, in surrendering control, in versions of you that you have to let go of. And it’s worth every single moment.

The path you’re walking matters. The messy parts, the doubting parts, the moments where you feel like you’re making it all up, those parts especially. You don’t have to have it all figured out. You just have to stay in the room, keep showing up, be present and honest.

Your growth doesn’t live in your wins. It lives in your willingness to keep showing up, to be human, to get it wrong and try again. This work will change you, and that’s exactly why it’s worth doing.

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