The Failure That Made My Business Possible

I didn’t struggle to see myself as a business owner. I’d already been one.

Years ago, I ran an online baby gift boutique. I poured myself into it: the ideas, the late nights, the hope that this was going to be the thing that allowed me to work from home and have time flexibility.

And it failed. Miserably and publicly. I wasn’t sure I could stand another heartbreak like that.

But I didn’t want to go back to corporate, even though I was questioning my ability to pull this off based on my past experience.

I questioned my judgment. I doubted my instincts. And honestly, I wasn’t sure I could trust myself again.

So when I eventually started my Virtual Assistant business, confidence wasn’t the issue. It was something deeper.

I told a coach friend of mine the whole story. The excitement. The collapse. The embarrassment I still carried.

She didn’t flinch. She didn’t sugarcoat anything. She looked at me and said, “That will be the reason you succeed now.”

That sentence still gives me chills.

She wasn’t saying the failure didn’t matter. She was saying it mattered in the right way.

Because once you’ve had something fall apart, you see differently. You listen differently. You build differently.

You realize how important it is to keep a business simple. You stop worrying about what other people will think. You start trusting your gut again.

You learn how to create something that fits your life instead of running it into the ground.

My failed business wasn’t proof that I couldn’t do this. It was the training that made my Virtual Assistant business possible.

It taught me resilience. It taught me to build smarter, not harder. It taught me to stop looking over my shoulder and comparing myself to others. It taught me to trust myself again, to learn from failure rather than be defined by it, and to see that being willing to try again meant I had what it takes.

So if you’ve tried something in the past and it went sideways… if you’re carrying that knot of doubt in your stomach… if you’re wondering whether you can trust yourself again… hear this:

Your past isn’t a warning. It’s a credential.

You’ve already done the hardest part. You got back up. And that’s exactly why you’re going to succeed now.