You'll never be ready, but I'm begging you to start

Send the email. Ship the thing. Start the business. Be seen trying.

Doing it scared.

This weekend I did something that sounds boring on paper, but felt strangely emotional in practice.

I made my business real.

Not in a fun or inspirational way… in the admin way. I spent money, I filed paperwork, I got my business license, I opened a dedicated bank account. I set up the kind of infrastructure that doesn’t impress anyone and doesn’t make for good content, but changes something inside your nervous system the second it’s done.

Because once it’s real on paper, it starts feeling real in your head, and that shift matters more than people think.

For the past few months, I’ve been doing the work in a way that still had a faint aura of “this is just my little project.” Even though I’ve been serious and consistent and the work has mattered deeply to me, there was still a part of my brain treating it like something I could quietly back away from if I needed to. Something I could rationalize as temporary or keep in the private category until I felt more legitimate.

But this weekend, I intentionally crossed a line.

It’s not that anything has changed on the outside. I'm still the same person writing the same essays about the same things. I’m not magically more qualified because I opened a bank account. But it feels different. I can feel myself taking my own work more seriously now because I’ve created consequences for it. I’ve created a structure that expects me to show up. I’ve placed myself in the position of someone who is no longer just “thinking about it,” but actively building something that requires upkeep.

That creates accountability in a way motivation never does.

I think part of why this all feels so intense is because I’ve been out of the game for a while. The last time I fully owned and operated my own business was the marketing agency I started back in 2016, which I shut down during Covid in 2021. That's almost five years of being out of the game—long enough to forget how much of entrepreneurship is just tedious admin work that makes you feel like a fraud pretending to be a professional. Long enough to forget the particular embarrassment of being seen trying. That stretch rewired me more than I realized. I forgot what it feels like to choose uncertainty on purpose and bet on myself with no safety net other than my own follow-through.

Over the weekend, I also started setting up new social accounts for BAD GIRL. I’m now on Instagram, Threads, LinkedIn, Facebook, Pinterest, and of course Substack. Which is objectively excessive and slightly unhinged, but it felt important. It felt like planting flags in different places and saying, “Okay. I’m here now.”

So that's where I am again. Back at the cringe stage where you have 7 followers and post anyway, where your bio sounds try-hard no matter how many times you rewrite it, where you're acutely aware that people from high school or your old job might stumble across your little venture and think oh, she's doing that now? Your ambition feels a little too… exposed. This is the worst part. Not the work itself, but the visibility of the effort before the results justify it.

Anyway, while I was organizing everything this weekend—archiving old projects and building out new systems, I came across a lot of work I created a few years ago that I never shared. Writing I didn’t have the nerve to publish, ideas I was too embarrassed to pitch, projects I abandoned because I wasn’t sure I had the right to make them.

I found myself looking through them like, wow… some of this is actually good! It wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough that I could see exactly what happened. I had been talented then, too. I had instincts and ideas then, too. I just didn’t have the courage to share them. My stomach dropped a little as I thought what would have happened if I’d just put this out there? Maybe nothing. Maybe it would have flopped and I’d be in the same place I am now. But maybe I would have gotten those reps in earlier or found my voice faster, and maybe Bad Girl Media would have started three years ago instead of one, and I’d be further along today than I am.

There’s no way to know. But I do know that the reason I didn’t share any of it wasn’t because I wasn’t ready. It was because I was afraid, and I told myself the fear meant I wasn’t ready, which felt more dignified than admitting I was just scared to be seen trying (ugh the cringe of trying!)

I had imposter syndrome. I didn’t want to be perceived. I didn’t want people watching me try. I didn’t want to post something and realize no one cared, or worse, someone would care and I’d have to keep going. So I kept it all tucked away like a dirty little secret.

I lost time pretending I needed to be ready, when what I really needed was momentum.

That’s the part people avoid—the part that makes grown adults procrastinate for years. And that’s why I’m sharing this with you today.

Because if you’re waiting to feel ready, you are going to be waiting forever. You’re not broken for feeling afraid, you’re not uniquely unqualified, you’re not the one person who needs more preparation than everyone else. You’re just standing at the edge of something that matters to you, and your brain is doing what brains do when something matters: trying to protect you from risk.

But the protection comes at a cost.

The cost is that your life stays theoretical.

This weekend I made my life a little less theoretical, and I can feel the difference already. My anxiety is still very real. If anything, it’s louder now, because I’ve made a commitment I can’t pretend isn’t happening.

But I also feel more alive than I’ve felt in a long time!

I’ve woken up every day since and felt absolutley lit up. Trust me, I’m not suddenly fearless. It just feels so good to know I’m finally moving. I’m finally building. I’m finally inside the thing instead of just circling it.

So if you’re sitting on something you keep telling yourself you’ll start when you’re ready, I’m asking you to stop negotiating with your fear.

Start while it’s cringe. Start while it’s imperfect. Start while you’re still not sure.

You’re never going to feel ready, but you can absolutely become someone who did it anyway.

And that version of you is closer than you think.

PS: Thanks for supporting me even when I’m cringe. It means the world to me.

The BAD GIRL internet takeover has begun ツ

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