I quit my job without a backup plan. Here’s what happened next.

Back in December 2017, I was really going through it. My relationship was crumbling, I’d fallen out with a close friend and, to top it all off, my workplace had suddenly become quite toxic and I’d been signed off work with stress.

I’d recently launched a website where I offered help and resources to small business owners and I’d heard countless stories of entrepreneurs taking the leap and building wildly successful businesses, so I decided to take the leap.

But…I didn’t have any paying clients yet, and I had minimal savings.

Here’s what happened.

I had no idea what to do to next

When I first handed in my notice, I was excited. It was Christmas time and I couldn’t wait to start my new life as an entrepreneur.

But come the first week of January, I opened my laptop and…had no idea what to do. I knew that posting on Instagram every day wasn’t enough to start bringing in sales; or at least it wouldn’t be for a while. So I put together a list of influencers and small business owners I wanted to work with, created a free admin resource and a price list PDF and started emailing people.

My thinking was that if an influencer shared my business with their large audience, I might get some followers from it.

Most people didn’t reply, but some did, and some even shared the resource on their Instagram Story!

After that, my next list was of businesses to pitch workshops to, and next was publications I wanted to write for.

As with my first list, most of my recipients didn’t reply, but with each that did, my confidence and business grew.

Maybe I could make this work…

I wasted a lot of money on false promises

When I say I was hooked on girlboss culture, I was HOOKED.

But I quickly learned that many of the gurus out there make a lot of promises they can’t keep.

I wasted a lot of money on courses and coaches that didn’t pay off, but at least I learned a valuable lesson (at least, that’s how I make myself better about all of that wasted moolah).

What I will say is that I have consistently been disappointed by people with a large following. For the (expensive!) services I paid for, it was quite clear that they hadn’t actually read the information I provided before our sessions, and that they were spouting off tired advice that wasn’t tailored at all.

However, there are a lot of brilliant coaches and mentors out there, I’ve just learned to be more discerning.

I felt like a failure

Six months into my entrepreneurial career, I was on holiday in New York. But I couldn’t enjoy myself, because every time I swiped my card I felt guilty for spending money when I was just about breaking even each month,

Despite the gurus telling me I could manifest wealth, daily money-making meditations and endless gratitude lists, I still wasn’t making £10k a month.

The thing is, I was being impatient. I’m not sure why I expected to start a business and be making tons of money straight away, other than that I listened to and read a lot of overnight success stories.

Rather than recognise that most businesses need a lot of time to become successful, I thought that I was the problem and spent a lot of time wondering what was wrong with me and burning myself out by trying to work even harder.

I was shocked by my own boldness

Let me tell you something: quitting my job and pitching for work are so unlike me that I don’t think anyone in my family quite believed me when I told them about it.

By nature I am quite shy and reserved, and I actually have a lot of pride in how I handled the situation, especially given what I was going through in my personal life at the time.

I started to build a community

I’ve always been someone who replies to every single DM on social media (except bots and pervy men. Sorry guys).

And I knew that engaging with other small business owners and potential clients was important. I set aside a couple of minutes a day to comment on other users’ Instagram posts and reply to interesting tweets.

As my following grew, so did a beautiful community of small business owners. This meant that when I launched my subscription service in December 2018, lots of people signed up straight away.

I’m so proud to say that I never once had to remove unkind or inappropriate comments in our community platform, and I’m still good friends with many of the members of that community today.

So, that’s what happened when I quit my job without a backup plan.

Have you ever done something like this before? Share your story with us on Instagram.