Start an online business, they said. It’ll be easy, they said.
You imagine making a cute website, picking a logo font you’ll probably change three times, posting a few things online and then… voilà.
Income.
Flexibility.
That vague “I work for myself now” feeling.
What actually happens is you sit down to “quickly set something up” and six hours later you’re watching a YouTube video about domain hosting, wondering why nothing is connecting to anything, and questioning all of your life choices.
This isn’t a dramatic take. This is just how it goes.
I’ve started businesses, stopped them, pivoted, restarted, changed my mind, changed direction again — and these are the things I personally wish I’d known earlier. Not advice. Just observations from someone who’s been very much in it.
#1. Your Email List Is Your Business BFF 💌
This took me way too long to really understand.
Social media feels important because it’s loud and visible.
But you don’t actually own any of it.
If TikTok disappeared tomorrow, you’d have no way to contact your people.
One algorithm change, one weird account issue, one platform falling out of fashion – and suddenly all that effort is just… gone.
An email list is the only thing you actually own.
It’s not exciting. No one brags about their email platform. But it’s the one thing that won’t randomly disappear on you.
I’m not saying everyone must have one immediately. I’m just saying that once I finally took mine seriously, things felt less stressful.
#2. When You Start An Online Business, Everything Takes Longer Than You Expect
You’ll start one tiny task and somehow end up learning five completely new things you didn’t even know existed.
Like… why am I suddenly reading about APIs. I didn’t sign up for this.
It’s not that you’re bad at business. It’s that you’re doing things for the first time, constantly, all at once.
Eventually, the same tasks stop feeling heavy.
But in the beginning?
Everything feels like a project.
#3. Your First Version Will Make You Cringe Later
This is unavoidable.
Your first website will look like it belongs to a different person. Your first logo will feel deeply questionable. Old posts will make you think, “Why did I write like that.”
That doesn’t mean you did it wrong. It just means you kept going.
I don’t know anyone who looks back at their early stuff and thinks, “Yes. Nailed it immediately.” That’s not a thing.
#4. You Can’t Talk to Everyone (and You’ll Notice When You Try)
At the beginning, I definitely tried to sound more… neutral. Less opinionated. More “this applies to everyone”.
And it just didn’t work.
The posts that landed best were always the ones where I was specific – about yacht crew, about business, about the type of person I actually was. The more I tried to generalise things so no one felt left out, the more forgettable everything became.
Some people won’t like how you write or what you focus on. That doesn’t mean it’s wrong. It usually just means they weren’t the person you were writing for.
The minute I stopped trying to water things down, it got easier to write – and easier for the right people to stick around.
#5. Some People Will React… Oddly
This one still surprises people, but it happens a lot.
You start something new and a few people you know just go quiet about it. They don’t ask questions. They make half-jokes. Or they suddenly have a lot of opinions you didn’t ask for.
I used to take that quite personally.
Now I just clock it and move on.
What balances it out is the unexpected support – people you barely know recommending you, messaging you, or quietly following along. That side of it doesn’t get talked about as much, but it’s very real.
You learn pretty quickly whose reactions actually matter.
#6. Most Businesses Don’t End Up Looking Like the Original Plan
I’ve started things thinking “this is the one”, only to realise six months or a year later that I didn’t actually want to keep doing it long-term.
That doesn’t mean it was a mistake.
Every version taught me something practical – how to market myself, how to sell, how to talk about what I do, what I enjoy, what I don’t, what I’m good at, what drains me.
None of that knowledge disappears when you pivot.
Very few people build something once and never change it. Most just don’t talk about the in-between bits.
#7. Canva (and Similar Tools) Are Enough for Most People
I’m not interested in becoming a designer.
I just want things to look clean, readable, and not embarrassing.
Using tools like Canva meant I could make blog graphics, Pinterest pins, workbooks, and product mockups myself without it turning into a full project every time.
Could a professional designer do it better? Obviously.
Did I need that at the beginning? Absolutely not.
Being able to get something done quickly mattered more than it being perfect.
#8. Don’t Steal Photos (Even by Accident)
We’ve all done it – found a cute image on Pinterest and thought, “that’ll do.”
Legally? It won’t. 😬
This is something I genuinely didn’t think about early on.
I’d grab images from Pinterest, stick them on a blog post or Instagram, and move on. Loads of people do this – but it’s not actually okay, and it can cause problems later.
Once I realised that, I tried the usual free stock sites. They were fine, but everything felt very generic – the same beige desks, flat whites, and neutral notebooks everywhere.
So I ended up making my own stock images in the style I actually wanted to use – lifestyle, beauty, everyday content – and started using those across my blog and Pinterest instead.
They’re the same images you see on this site, and I’ve put them on Etsy as stock packs so I don’t have to think about licensing or visuals every time I post.
👉 You can browse my lifestyle & beauty stock photo packs here
They’re the same images I use on this site, so it made sense to just package them up.
#9. Fiverr = Your Secret Weapon
It’s a marketplace with heaps of amazing Freelancers on there to do the projects that you don’t want to do.
Need a logo?
A podcast intro?
A product mock-up?
Someone to fix something on your website that you do not want to touch?
You can usually find someone who does exactly that.
I’ve used it for website fixes, DNS issues, eBook edits, scripts, and random one-off jobs that would’ve taken me days to figure out myself.
You still have to read reviews and be clear with your brief, but it’s saved me a lot of time and frustration over the years.
(Also – got myself drawn as a Disney Princess a few years ago – you can’t tell me this wasn’t worth the money 🤣👇)
#10. Lean Into the Parts That Come Easily
The things that worked best for me were always the things I didn’t overthink.
When I leaned into humour with my CV business and made meme-style reels about yacht life, they did well because they felt real – not because they were polished.
If something feels natural to you – explaining things, writing, making visuals, talking – that’s probably the thing worth focusing on.
Forcing yourself into formats you hate usually just leads to inconsistency.
#11. Pinterest Takes Time, but It Actually Makes Sense
Pinterest works very differently to Instagram, which I did not understand at first.
Instagram is loud and fast. You post, it does its thing for a day or two, and then it’s basically gone. Pinterest is slower, but the upside is that things don’t just disappear.
A pin you make now can still send people to your site months – sometimes years – later. Which is ideal if you’re blogging or creating anything evergreen.
What helped me was treating Pinterest like something I set up alongside everything else, not something I had to be actively posting on every day. I schedule pins in batches and let them run in the background rather than constantly thinking about it.
I use Tailwind for that, purely because it saves time and stops Pinterest from becoming another app I need to babysit. I schedule, leave it alone, and get on with other things.
It’s not instant, and it’s not exciting in the way social media is – but for long-term traffic, it’s one of the more logical platforms I’ve used.
Final Thoughts
Running a business isn’t neat or linear.
It’s mostly figuring things out as you go, changing your mind, and slowly getting better without really noticing when it happens.
If you’re early on and everything feels a bit scrappy – that’s normal.
If you’ve pivoted more than once – also normal.
Most people just don’t talk about that part.
If you’re new to business, what’s one thing you learned the hard way? Share in the comments, I’d love to hear!
Post updated in 2026 with new information & updates.
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