🧂From side hustle to $750K: 5 lessons from a mom entrepreneur

Picture this: You're a new mom with a baby under one, a toddler under four, working a demanding 9–5 job, and dreaming of building your own business. Your only free time? Sunday afternoons, when the in-laws can help with the kids.

Sound impossible? That's exactly where I found myself early last year. Today, my business has crossed $750K in total revenue, and I want to share the five crucial lessons that made this transformation possible.

When I started on X (Twitter) with just 200 followers, I had no idea what I was doing. I posted thoughtful content to my 200 inactive followers, cold DMed people I found interesting, and followed every large account I could find. Nothing worked. Literally nothing.

My first earnings? A modest $35. But that small win—as tiny as it was—sparked something bigger. It was proof that strangers would actually pay me for my work. That $35 became the foundation for a journey that took me from struggling side hustles to a thriving business earning over $300K in 2024 and crossing $500K in 2025.

The path wasn't linear, and it certainly wasn't easy. I failed more times than I care to count. But the lessons I learned along the way—often through painful mistakes and late-night realizations—changed everything. Here's what I wish I had known from the beginning.

Lesson 1: Try Before You're Ready—Don't Wait

I used to think I needed everything perfectly aligned before I could start: the perfect business plan, the perfect schedule, the perfect amount of savings. I was waiting for that mythical moment when I'd have enough time, enough knowledge, and enough confidence.

But here's the thing about being a mom with an impossible schedule: that perfect moment never comes. Your baby will always need you at inconvenient times. Your toddler will always have a meltdown right when you're about to have a breakthrough idea. There will always be another excuse.

So I started anyway. While working my 9–5 for the past ten years, I spent nights and weekends trying different side projects—hand-drawn greeting cards, kids' drawings, YouTube tutorials, design teaching. Most failed spectacularly. I remember spending weeks creating an entire course that exactly three people bought. I launched greeting card designs that I didn’t even want to deliver when people ordered online—the profit margin was too low to motivate me.

But here's what I didn't realize at the time: each "failure" was actually building my skill stack. When I finally went full-time, I wasn't starting from zero. I had already learned what didn't work, which messages fell flat, and which pricing models were too aggressive or too timid. I had worked through the beginner mistakes on nights and weekends instead of making them when my family's financial security depended on my business.

The entrepreneur you'll become isn't the person you are today. You become that person by trying things before you're ready.

Pick one small business experiment you can start this week. Don't aim for perfection; aim for learning.

Lesson 2: Try Things You're Not Good At

Everyone told me to "follow my passion" and "do what you're good at." It sounds inspiring, doesn’t it? Stick to your strengths, lean into your natural talents, stay in your lane.

But here's the problem with that advice: I was already good at the creative side. I could design beautiful things, I understood color theory and composition, and I had an eye for aesthetics. Those skills felt safe and comfortable, like a warm blanket I could wrap myself in whenever things got tough.

The problem was, I could create the most stunning designs in the world, but if no one knew they existed, I'd still be broke.

My real weakness—the thing that kept me awake at night—was everything that came after creation. How do you find customers? How do you convince them to buy? How do you build systems that bring in revenue while you sleep? These felt like foreign languages I'd never learned to speak.

So I made a counterintuitive decision: after I became a full-time entrepreneur, I spent 80% of my learning time on the things I was terrible at. Distribution. Online marketing. Sales conversations. Building funnels. Understanding customer psychology. Writing copy that actually converted.

It was uncomfortable. I felt like a fraud posting on social media when I had no idea what I was doing. I cringed sending my first sales emails. I stumbled through pricing conversations, often charging too little because I was afraid of rejection.

But something magical happens when you deliberately practice your weak spots: you start to see the business puzzle differently. Instead of thinking, "I need to make something beautiful," I started thinking, "I need to solve someone's specific problem in a way they're willing to pay for."

As they say: "First-time founders build; second-time founders distribute." I learned to distribute before I even had something worth distributing.

Lesson 3: Build Your Team Before You Need Them

This lesson came out of pure desperation. My schedule was impossible—mornings and nights belonged to my babies, days belonged to my employer, and I had maybe one Sunday afternoon per week to work on my dreams.

I knew I couldn't do everything alone, but I also couldn't afford to hire anyone. So I got creative.

I started using my limited Sunday afternoons to help two designers with their portfolios and careers. Not because I had some grand strategy, but because I genuinely wanted to help. I'd review their work, share opportunities I found, and connect them with people in my network. Small gestures that took maybe an hour of my time but made a real difference in their lives.

In return—and this wasn’t explicitly negotiated, it just happened naturally—they started helping me with my personal projects. When I needed a logo, one of them would draft ideas. When I was stuck on a design concept, they'd brainstorm with me.

What started as two people became five, then eight. At our peak, we had twelve designers in this informal collective. We weren’t a company. We weren’t even a formal group. We were just people helping each other get better at what we loved.

I tried to formalize this into a mentorship program at one point, but my mom schedule made deep, one-on-one relationships impossible to scale. What I didn't realize was that this loose, collaborative approach was actually more powerful than any formal structure I could have created.

When my business finally took off and I needed to scale quickly, two of these designers didn’t hesitate to join me full-time. They already knew how I worked, understood my standards, and believed in what we were building together. I didn’t have to start from scratch with strangers—I had a team that had been growing alongside me for months.

This taught me something crucial: networking isn’t about collecting contacts or trading business cards. It's about creating genuine value for others long before you need anything in return.

Lesson 4: Prioritize Creativity Over Busy Work

For months, I thought being a good entrepreneur meant being busy all the time. The moment I sat down at my computer, I'd dive straight into the "urgent" stuff: responding to social media comments, answering emails, updating spreadsheets, posting content, managing my team’s questions.

My heart would race with the satisfaction of checking things off my list. Look how productive I am! Look how quickly I'm getting through these tasks!

Then, around mid-afternoon, when I had finally cleared most of the immediate fires, I'd try to sit down and work on the big-picture stuff: strategy, writing, planning future products, thinking deeply about where the business should go next.

But by then, something strange would happen. I'd stare at a blank page and nothing would come. My brain felt like a wrung-out sponge. The creative spark that had been there in the morning—before I'd checked my phone, before I'd seen all the notifications, before I'd put out all the little fires—was completely gone.

So I'd give up and go back to the busy work. More emails to answer. More posts to schedule. More tasks that felt productive but weren’t moving the needle forward.

I thought this was just how business worked: you do the urgent stuff first, then tackle the important stuff with whatever energy is left over.

But here's what I learned: creativity doesn't wait for you. Inspiration doesn't stick around while you clear your inbox. Strategic thinking requires your freshest, most focused mental energy—not the scraps left over after you've spent your best hours on other people's priorities.

Now I protect my morning hours like a mama bear protects her cubs. No social media. No email. No Slack messages. No exceptions. That’s when I write, plan, and think deeply about the future of my business.

The paradox? Since I started prioritizing the "non-urgent" creative work, my business has grown faster than ever. It turns out that one hour of clear strategic thinking is worth more than six hours of reactive busy work.

Block out your most productive hours for high-impact thinking work. Everything else is secondary.

Lesson 5: Your Health Is Your Business Foundation

After giving birth to my second baby, my body rebelled against me. I developed severe lower back problems that made everything painful—sitting, standing, even lying down. Some days, I couldn't get comfortable no matter what position I tried.

But I was terrified of slowing down. I had just started my business, I was trying to prove myself, and I was convinced that every minute not spent grinding was a minute that could cost me everything. I thought taking care of myself was a luxury I couldn't afford.

So I pushed through. I worked hunched over my laptop for hours, ignoring the shooting pain. I spent weekends getting massages and acupuncture treatments, treating my body like a broken machine that just needed quick fixes to keep running.

The stress was overwhelming. My body was constantly tense, my mind was always racing, and I felt like I was barely holding it all together. I told myself this was just the price of building something meaningful.

Then, at the beginning of 2025, I made a decision that felt scary at the time: I was going to prioritize taking care of myself, and everything else would be secondary.

I found a physical therapist and committed to seeing her three times a week. Not when it was convenient, not when I had extra time, but as a non-negotiable appointment that everything else had to work around. I was terrified my business would suffer. I worried that stepping away for a few hours each week would cause everything to fall apart.

The opposite happened.

Three weeks into physical therapy, my back pain disappeared. More importantly, my business didn’t just survive my absence—it thrived. In the first four months of 2025, I earned more than I had in all of 2024 combined.

Here's what I learned: when you step back and focus on building systems instead of grinding yourself into the ground, your business actually grows faster. When you're healthy and energized, you make better decisions. When you're not constantly in survival mode, you can think strategically about the future.

Taking care of yourself isn't selfish—it's the foundation everything else is built on.

Putting It Together

Today, my business generates consistent revenue while giving me the flexibility to be present for my family. But more than that, I've learned that building a business as a mom isn't about having more time—it's about being more strategic with the time you have.

The impossible schedule that once seemed like my biggest obstacle became my greatest teacher. When you only have a few hours a week to work on your dreams, you get really good at figuring out what actually matters. You stop wasting time on busy work that makes you feel productive but doesn’t move the needle. You start building systems that work without your constant oversight.

You learn to be ruthless about priorities because you have to be.

I used to think successful entrepreneurs were people who could work 80-hour weeks, who had unlimited energy and no other responsibilities. Now I know that some of the most effective entrepreneurs are the ones with the most constraints—because constraints force you to be creative, strategic, and efficient in ways that unlimited time and resources never could.

Your constraints aren't holding you back—they're teaching you how to build something sustainable.

You don't need perfect conditions to start building something meaningful. You don't need unlimited time, unlimited resources, or unlimited energy. You need to start before you're ready, focus on your weaknesses, build genuine relationships, protect your creative time, and take care of yourself along the way.

Summary

That’s it! Creatives often fail in business because they focus too much on perfecting their projects, stick rigidly to their rates, lack a clear focus, and get stuck in unscalable models. I hope you learned something through this newsletter and let me know what topics I can cover next!

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