People always want to know how I built a seven-figure business. They usually expect a story about strategy, timing, and smart decisions.
The real story is messier than that.
It Started With a Kit in the Back of a Car
I was a mobile beauty therapist. My entire business was a kit, a phone, and a network of clients I had built one appointment at a time. There was no office, no team, no business plan. Just me, showing up, doing good work, and slowly building something from nothing.
For a long time that was enough. But I could see what was possible. A fixed location. A team. A brand that meant something. I started working toward that even when it didn't make financial sense on paper.
The Garage Studio Phase
Before the salon there was a garage conversion. My first fixed premises was not glamorous. But it was mine, and it taught me everything about running a physical location: managing the space, managing bookings, managing client expectations, and managing myself.
That phase was the most important education I ever had. Harder than any formal training, more useful than any course. I made mistakes that cost me money and I made decisions that compounded over time into something real.
Building the Seven-Figure Salon
The salon came next. The beautiful space. The team. The awards. The revenue that crossed into the territory I had once thought was reserved for other people, not me.
It was everything I had worked toward. And I won't pretend it wasn't extraordinary, because it was.
But I also won't pretend it was easy or that I had it all figured out. I was working harder than I ever had, managing people I wasn't always equipped to manage, and trying to keep a business growing while navigating the personal chaos that comes with building something at scale.
The business was successful. I was stretched thin in ways I hadn't fully acknowledged.
The Decision to Sell
I sold the salon, and it was the right decision. Not because the business wasn't working, but because the life I was living inside it wasn't the one I wanted to keep building.
This is something most business content refuses to talk about: sometimes the most successful thing you can do is walk away from something that is working in order to build something that actually fits your life.
The exit was not easy. But it was intentional.
Starting Over
Starting over after a seven-figure exit sounds like a privilege, and in some ways it is. But it comes with its own particular kind of pressure. The expectation, including from yourself, that what comes next should be bigger, better, more impressive.
I decided to build differently this time. More aligned with my values. More sustainable. More intentional about what I was creating and for whom.
That reset is what led to everything I am building now, including The Messy Middle, the ebook where I document the real lessons from the whole journey so that other founders don't have to figure it all out the hard way.
What the Journey Actually Taught Me
The biggest thing I learned across all of it: the business you build will reflect exactly what you believe about yourself. Raise your prices. Back your ideas. Build for the life you want, not the business that looks good from the outside.
The skills, the resilience, and the specific experience of building from scratch are not things you can shortcut. But you can absolutely shortcut the mistakes.
The full story, including the mistakes I wish I had avoided and the decisions I would make again, is in The Messy Middle. 150+ pages of honest business insight for startup founders and entrepreneurs.