How to cope with the loneliness of starting a baby class business

How to cope with the loneliness of starting a baby class business when no one around you understands yet

No one warns you how lonely this part can feel.

When I first decided I was going to start my own classes I used to get up early at the weekend before the rest of the house woke up because it was the only quiet time I could think of. I would sit in my dressing gown with my notebook and often cry. Not because I didn’t want to do it but because I did so much and I was trying to do it alone with no one to ask and no one to tell me it was normal.

On top of that there was the quiet sting that I didn't feel I was being taken seriously. My husband was amazing (my boys were too tiny to understand) and my mum even invested money in my plan, enough to pay the composer who wrote and recorded my hello and goodbye song because she had started her own business from nothing and knew my idea had potential and would make me happy.  Outside that bubble it was either polite smiles or thinly-veiled belittling. Friends spoke as if I had found a nice little distraction to keep me occupied and most of the wider family treated it like a hobby. I had walked away from a career, the suits and the salary, so to them it looked like I had stepped down in ambition. In retrospect I think my decision unsettled people because it forced them to look at their own choices and they just couldn’t see (or didn't want to see) the opportunities like I did.

Meanwhile, I was feeling the emotional weight on my own. I dithered over tiny decisions for weeks because every decision felt like a test. I felt guilty spending money on something that wasn’t yet “real”. I procrastinated not because I was lazy but because I was terrified of getting it wrong and wasting money we didn’t really have.

People rarely say this out loud but loneliness is part of the price you pay when you choose to build something that does not exist yet. You are asking yourself to believe in an abstract concept before there is any proof.

And then one day I got my 'proof', my validation.  After my first ever class I walked through town with my eldest and his friend and bought them both a book to celebrate because I had earned the money that morning, yep I handed over the exact notes.

I remember thinking I did it, I earned that money, me and it felt good, really good. 

If you are in that early morning stage now you are not doing it wrong. You are in the initiation phase,  the part before anyone else can see what you are building. The loneliness is not permanent. It is simply the bit before the evidence arrives.

Are you in that quiet early phase now or do you already have your first quiet “I did it” moment tucked away somewhere?