From Broke to Building | My Honest Story

I've been trying to write this for a while. not because I don't know what to say but because I kept waiting until I had a more impressive ending to attach to it. like I wanted to write this from the other side the successful side, the "I made it" side so it would land better.

but I'm writing it now. from the middle. because honestly the middle is where most people actually are and nobody's writing about that part honestly enough.

so here it is. the whole thing. the embarrassing parts included.

✨ if you're in the middle of your own story right now this one's for you.

I Was That Girl Who Tried Everything (And Lost It Too)

it was 2018. I was in high school. and for some reason I genuinely cannot tell you what possessed me I decided I was going to start freelancing. graphic design, specifically. Fiverr, local clients, wall art for people. the whole thing.

now let me be very honest with you about something. I am not naturally creative. like, not even a little bit. other girls were out here making beautiful artwork and I was sitting there trying to figure out how to make a decent logo without it looking like a kindergarten project. but I kept going anyway. I learned. I watched tutorials at weird hours. I figured things out slowly and badly and then slightly less badly. and it was actually working. I had clients. small ones, local ones, but still clients. a high school girl with actual clients. I was lowkey feeling myself.

and then my Fiverr account got suspended.

just like that. one day it was there, the next day it wasn't. a whole year of building gone. I still don't fully know what I did wrong and I think that's the part that stung the most. not even a clear reason. just: suspended. bye.

I was devastated for about two weeks. properly devastated, the kind where you just stare at the ceiling and feel sorry for yourself and eat too many things and don't want to talk to anyone. and then something shifted. I don't know if it was stubbornness or boredom or just the fact that I genuinely didn't know what else to do with myself but I started looking at website design. WordPress had just become more accessible and the technical side of things was something I was actually decent at. turns out that's my version of creative. not making things look beautiful from scratch, but building the structure that makes things work. I didn't know that about myself until a freelance platform took everything away.

so sometimes the suspension is the redirect. that's the thing they don't print on the motivational posters.

The Chaotic Era (I Tried Everything. I Mean Everything)

okay. so after the website design phase which went well for a while and then got saturated faster than I expected I entered what I now lovingly call the chaotic era. and I want to be upfront: this is the part of the story where I do not come across well. at all.

game designing. 3D modeling. YouTube videos. dropshipping. starting my own business. I tried all of these. genuinely, not half-heartedly I actually started each one with real energy and real intention. I bought things, I watched tutorials, I made accounts, I took notes. and then approximately two weeks later I'd be looking at a new opportunity and thinking "okay but what if I tried this instead."

nothing worked. and for a long time I told myself it was because nothing was right for me, or the market was bad, or I was unlucky, or the timing was off. I had a whole rotation of explanations that kept me from having to look at the actual problem.

the actual problem was that I never gave anything 30 days. not one thing. not a single idea got a real, honest, consistent 30-day attempt before I abandoned it for the next shiny thing. and you cannot you genuinely cannot build anything in less than 30 days. it just doesn't work like that. I knew this intellectually. I just kept not applying it to myself because starting fresh always feels more exciting than staying with something when it gets hard.

if you're reading this and recognizing yourself in this paragraph hi. I see you. and I'm going to tell you what I wish someone had told me: the problem is not that you haven't found the right thing yet. the problem is that you keep leaving before the right thing has a chance to become something. stay. even when it's boring. especially when it's boring. because boring means you're past the excitement phase and actually building, which is the only phase where anything real happens.

the right opportunity doesn't run away. you do. and you keep calling it bad luck.

2026 Felt Different Though

I don't know how to explain why this year felt different. it just did. maybe I was tired of the cycle. maybe something in me had genuinely absorbed the lesson after failing at enough things enough times. maybe I just ran out of new shiny things to chase. whatever it was at the start of 2026 I made a decision and this time I meant it differently than I'd meant it before.

I was going to start a blog.

which, I know. I know how that sounds. another thing. another idea. except this time there was one specific constraint that actually ended up working in my favor: I had no money. like, actually no money for a domain and hosting. none. so the free route it was. Blogspot. which everyone in the blogging world will tell you is not the move it's harder to grow, it looks less professional, algorithms don't love it. I knew all of this going in.

I started anyway.

and this part I want to say clearly because I think it gets romanticized in the wrong way online it was not glamorous. I was staying up until 2 or 3am most nights. my back hurt constantly from sitting in bad positions for hours. I was doing WHOP work during the day to make money and blogging at night. there were days I was so tired I genuinely couldn't tell if what I was writing made sense and I'd have to re-read it in the morning and cringe at approximately forty percent of it.

but I didn't stop. and that's the only difference between this attempt and every single previous attempt. I just didn't stop. not because I felt amazing about it every day. not because I could see results. not because anyone was watching or encouraging or telling me it was working. I just kept going because I'd made a decision and I was tired of being someone who unmakes her decisions the moment it gets uncomfortable.

it's a small thing. staying. but it's actually the whole thing.

Nobody Talks About the Broke Days

I want to talk about something that nobody in the "hustle culture" space talks about honestly. when you're broke and building not broke and doing nothing, but genuinely working hard and still broke people don't see the working. they only see the broke. and they treat you accordingly.

I've been on both sides of this now, at least partially. and the difference in how people talk to you, how much they value your opinion, how much space they give you in a conversation it's real and it's uncomfortable to admit how real it is. when you have money, or even just the appearance of having things going well, people lean in. when you don't, people lean out. sometimes very suddenly, sometimes slowly, but it happens.

I'm not saying this to be bitter. I'm saying it because I think it's important to know going in, so you don't spend your broke-and-building phase wondering what's wrong with you when people don't show up the way you thought they would. there's nothing wrong with you. you're just in the phase that tests who's actually in your corner and who was only there for a comfortable version of you.

and here is the thing I want you to hear clearly: do not build an empire to prove something to those people. I genuinely mean this. build it for yourself. for your family. for the version of your life that you actually want to be living. build it because the work matters to you, not because you want someone's opinion of you to change. chasing approval through success is just a more expensive version of people-pleasing and it still doesn't work. I know because I've felt the pull of that motivation and it's empty in a way that regular motivation isn't.

make money because money gives you options and options give you freedom. not because you want people who ignored you to suddenly notice you. that's not an empire. that's just revenge in a business plan. and you're better than that, honestly.

What I'd Tell My 2018 Self

not the inspirational stuff. the actual stuff.

first: pick one thing and give it sixty days before you even think about pivoting. not thirty. sixty. because thirty days is just enough time to feel like it's not working when really you just haven't given it enough time to work. sixty days of real effort, real consistency, real output then you can evaluate. and by evaluate I mean actually look at the data, not just check in with how you feel about it on a random Tuesday when you're tired and nothing seems exciting.

second: the technical skills you have are not less valuable than the creative ones. I spent so long feeling like I wasn't as talented as other girls because I couldn't make beautiful things from scratch. but building things understanding how systems work, being able to figure out the backend of something, being comfortable with the parts other people find intimidating that's a skill. it took me years to stop apologizing for what I was good at because it didn't match what I thought I was supposed to be good at.

third: the nights you spend learning something properly really properly, not half-watching a tutorial while doing something else are the nights that pay back later. I have things I know now that I learned at 1am in 2018 and 2019 and 2020 that I'm still using. those hours didn't feel productive at the time. they were. you don't always see the return on investment immediately. sometimes it takes years. keep learning anyway.

and the last one, and this is the most important: there is no evidence out here of the effort. this is something that genuinely changed how I think about the whole thing. nobody sees the nights you stay up. nobody sees the attempts that didn't work. nobody sees the learning curve or the failures or the pivots. when things eventually go well, people assume it happened more smoothly than it did, and when things aren't there yet, people assume you haven't been trying. neither is accurate. the effort is invisible until it isn't. just keep making it anyway. the evidence comes later. the effort has to come first.

I'm Still Building and That's Okay

the blog isn't making money yet. I want to be honest about that because I think there's something important in saying it out loud instead of skipping to the part where things worked out.

I have some paid clients now through WHOP. it's not a lot. it's enough to feel like something real is happening, which is different from before. before, everything felt like it was happening to me the suspension, the saturation, the failed attempts. now things feel like I'm making them happen, even slowly, even imperfectly. that shift in how it feels from the inside matters more than I expected it to.

and I'm genuinely okay with where I am right now. not in a "I've accepted my limitations" way. in a "I understand that things take time and I'm finally willing to give them that time" way. which sounds simple and took me about eight years to actually mean. the blog will grow. the income will come. I know this not because I'm blindly optimistic but because I'm doing the work consistently for the first time in my life and consistency is the one thing that doesn't lie. if you show up enough times, something happens. it just doesn't always happen on your timeline and it never happens on the timeline you wanted when you started.

I'm 23. I started trying things at 14 or 15. that's almost a decade of figuring out what I'm doing and I'm still figuring it out. but I'm figuring it out on a blog that I built from scratch with no money in a year when I decided I was done giving up on things before they had a chance. that's enough for right now. it's actually more than enough. and when I look back at this period from wherever I am in five years, I think this is the chapter I'll be most proud of. not because it was successful yet. because I kept going when there was no particular reason to except that I'd decided I was going to. that decision the staying one is the one that changes everything eventually. I really believe that. I'm betting on it.

there is no evidence out here of the effort. nobody sees the 2am nights. nobody sees the attempts that failed. but you keep going anyway not for the audience, but because giving up on yourself has a cost too and you're done paying it.

if you made it to the end of this thank you. genuinely. this was the hardest thing I've written on this blog because it's all real and real things are scarier to put out than anything else.

if you're somewhere in your own chaotic era right now trying things, failing at things, feeling behind, wondering if you're the problem you're probably not the problem. you're probably just in the middle of your story and the middle always looks messier than the beginning or the end.

stay. give things time. make the empire for yourself. and maybe someday write about the messy middle while you're still in it, because somebody out there needs to read it. ✨

💬 tell me in the comments - what's the thing you've been quitting too early? I have a feeling a lot of us have the same answer.

20 Simple Ways to Reset Your Life

if you're in a stuck phase and need something practical to move with this is what actually helped me when motivation wasn't enough on its own.