Your Guarantee

We accept uncertainty when the path is familiar. It is only when we choose something different that we start asking for guarantees.

At 33, I went back to university. There was nothing particularly unusual about the decision. In many ways, it was exactly the kind of decision people understand. I was furthering my education, adding another qualification to my name and, ultimately, continuing the climb up the corporate ladder.

I paid the fees, did the work, met the deadlines and kept moving towards the piece of paper waiting at the end. Eventually, I wore the black graduation robe and the square hat, stood for the photographs and held the qualification I had worked for.

No one asked me whether it was guaranteed to work.

No one asked whether I would earn the money back. No one wanted proof that the degree would lead to a promotion, a higher salary or a more fulfilling career. There was no guarantee that the extra years of study would create the future I imagined when I enrolled, and yet I never questioned the value of doing it. Neither did most of the people around me.

A university education is a form of risk we have collectively agreed to respect. We understand the investment, accept the delayed return and recognise that the qualification itself does not guarantee an outcome. Still, we consider the pursuit worthwhile.

Midway through that degree, I started an online business. I have never used the degree. The business, however, changed the direction of my life.

There is something I still find fascinating about that. Some of the people close to me celebrated the piece of paper from the university more than they celebrated the piece of paper containing my registered business name. One represented years of study and thousands of dollars spent on a future that was dependent on another employer determining my value within their organisation. The other represented the beginning of the future the children and I are now living.

One impressed people. The other was questioned.

The Risks We Have Been Taught to Respect

We are not nearly as rational about risk as we like to believe. We are comfortable with certain forms of uncertainty because they are familiar. A university degree does not guarantee a career. A mortgage does not guarantee a property will increase in value. A traditional business does not guarantee customers will walk through the door. A corporate career does not guarantee security, fulfilment or even continued employment.

Still, these paths are socially understood. They come with familiar language, recognisable milestones and the reassurance of seeing other people make the same decisions. Even when the outcome is uncertain, the path itself feels legitimate and safe.

An online business can feel different. Not necessarily because it carries more uncertainty, but because the uncertainty is more visible. There may be no office building, no impressive title and no traditional ladder showing you where you stand. There is no institution conferring credibility upon you before you begin.

You have to move before the world agrees with you.

For many people, that is the uncomfortable part. The question I hear in conversations is often some version of: Can you guarantee this will work? I understand the question. When someone is considering whether to start an online business, particularly after years spent in a career with a regular salary, predictable structures and a clearly defined role, certainty is deeply appealing.

But certainty has never been the price of admission to a meaningful life. We simply ask for it more loudly when we are standing at the edge of something unfamiliar, even when we actively sought it out because the path we were on no longer felt aligned.

The Wait-and-See Business

Over the years, I have watched women approach opportunity in very different ways. Some see the value, make a decision and go all in. This does not mean they have no fear or doubt; it means they have decided those feelings will not be given responsibility for the direction of their life. This was me.

Others begin with what I think of as the wait-and-see method. They start the business but remain emotionally perched on the fence, giving a little time, a little energy and a little belief while waiting for the business to prove itself before they fully commit.

The difficulty is that a business cannot really show you what it can become while you are still deciding whether you are in it. This is true far beyond online business. Relationships, leadership, sport, creativity and personal growth all ask something similar of us. There comes a point when observation has to become participation. You cannot experience the depth of the water with one foot still on the shore.

Then there are those who dip a toe in for another reason entirely. They are not really testing whether the business works; they are testing whether success is available to them through it. A woman can look at the evidence that other people have built successful online businesses and still wonder whether she could do the same. She can understand the model, see the opportunity and recognise the potential while remaining uncertain about her own place within it.

The doubt is no longer about the business. It has become personal.

If I Guaranteed Your First Two Sales

Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I could remove one small piece of uncertainty altogether. If I said: your first two sales are guaranteed.

I do not think everyone would respond in the same way.

The woman who saw the value from the beginning and dived in may barely change at all. She was already moving, not because she was certain of the outcome, but because she had decided the opportunity was worth finding out.

The woman sitting on the fence might finally choose a side. Perhaps the guarantee would be enough for her to stop watching the business from a safe distance and begin immersing herself in the momentum of building something.

For the woman who started with a wait-and-see approach, knowing the first two sales were coming might change the way she behaved while she waited. She might give the business more of her attention, more time to develop and more room to become something before asking it to prove itself.

And then there is the woman who never really doubted the business at all. She has seen the results, understands the model and knows success exists within it. Perhaps she already understands that creating something of her own may ultimately offer more control over her future than depending on another person or organisation to determine her opportunities.

She is wondering whether that success exists for her.

For her, two guaranteed sales might mean something entirely different. They might offer temporary relief from the question she has been carrying: Can I do this too?

That is where the idea of a guarantee becomes interesting to me, because the same two sales could mean something different to every woman. Evidence to one. Momentum to another. Permission to someone else. And almost nothing to the woman who had already decided to begin.

The guarantee does not tell us much about the business. It tells us what each of us needed before we were willing to move.

But there is still the question of what happens after the second sale. The guarantee ends, the business continues, and whatever you believed about yourself before those two results has not necessarily disappeared simply because they arrived.

Perhaps that is why success cannot really be handed to us in the form we think we want it. A result can reassure us for a moment, show us what is possible and even change the way we see ourselves. But eventually, we still have to decide what we believe we are capable of creating next.

What We Are Really Asking For

We speak about success as though it is an event waiting to happen to us. The promotion arrives. The client says yes. The business takes off. The right person notices us. The timing finally works. This can make success feel strangely external, as though our role is to position ourselves correctly and wait for proof that we have been chosen.

Building a business taught me something different. Success is rarely one big moment. More often, it is the accumulation of skills that initially feel uncomfortable and eventually become part of who you are.

You learn to communicate and follow through. You learn to keep going when the immediate evidence is quiet, to make decisions without polling everyone around you and to separate a disappointing result from your identity. You choose yourself.

Confidence is not always something you need before taking action. Often, it is what remains after you have taken action enough times to trust yourself. None of this can be guaranteed, but it can be learned.

I did not need my first result to prove that success would always come easily. I needed it to show me that I could learn how to create a result, and then learn how to create one again. Those are very different forms of confidence. One depends on circumstances continuing to cooperate; the other belongs to you.

The Future We Allow Ourselves to Imagine

There is another layer to all of this that has very little to do with business. For some people, the possibility of failure is frightening. For others, success is equally confronting.

Failure allows life to remain familiar. It may be disappointing, but it does not necessarily ask you to become someone new. Success can change your relationships, your identity, your income, your routines and the way other people see you. It can require you to outgrow the version of yourself that everyone has become comfortable with, including yourself.

For a woman who has spent years being responsible, practical and sensible, imagining a bigger future can feel almost indulgent. This is particularly true for mothers, women rebuilding after divorce, professionals who have spent decades being rewarded for reliability, and high performers who know how to succeed inside structures created by someone else.

We become very good at carrying what is expected of us. Creating something of our own asks a different question: what do you want?

Not what is realistic according to your current circumstances, what makes sense to people who have chosen a different life, or what you can justify with a qualification, a job title or an institution behind you. What do you actually want your future to hold?

That can be a surprisingly difficult question to answer.

Emotional wealth is not built by removing all uncertainty from life. It is built by developing enough self-trust to move through uncertainty without abandoning yourself. That does not mean reckless decisions or blind optimism. It means learning the difference between discernment and fear, doing the research, understanding the opportunity, asking intelligent questions and then recognising the point at which more information is no longer the thing you are waiting for.

Sometimes, what we are waiting for is permission to believe that the life we want could belong to us. And sometimes, we were never waiting for permission at all. We had already decided to move.

What If It Was?

So, what if success was guaranteed?

The answer will be different depending on who you are. Perhaps nothing would change because you were always going to dive in. Perhaps you would finally step off the fence and choose a side. Perhaps you would stop watching and give yourself fully to the process of building. Perhaps you would no longer need the business to prove itself before you allowed yourself to believe in it.

Or perhaps the business was never the thing you doubted.

Success is not guaranteed. It was not guaranteed when I enrolled at university at 33, when I paid thousands of dollars for each subject, or when I started a business midway through that degree.

The difference was never certainty. It was what I was willing to believe had value before the outcome arrived.

The degree came with a path the world recognised; the business required me to recognise the path for myself.

Years later, one piece of paper sits unused. The other became the foundation of our future.

So maybe the question is not simply whether an online business will work. Perhaps it is worth noticing what you are actually waiting for: more information, more evidence, a safer moment, permission, proof that the opportunity works, or proof that success could belong to you.

We accept the uncertainty of earning a degree without knowing where it will lead, even though much of what happens next may depend on someone else deciding to employ us, promote us or determine our value within their organisation. Yet we often ask for greater certainty from the path where we have far more influence over what happens next.

Once you know what you are really waiting for, you may discover that the answer was never a guarantee.

xx

Subscribe for more essays on emotional wealth, intentional living and building a life and business designed to redefine your time.