22. What If Your Side Business Doesn't Have to Be Your Forever Business?

What if the business you start today… isn’t the one you stick with forever?

In this episode of The Bold Biz Podcast, Jenny challenges one of the biggest fears that keeps women stuck before they even begin, the pressure to choose the “perfect” idea that will work long term.

Because when every decision feels permanent, it’s easy to stay stuck in overthinking, waiting, and not starting at all.

Jenny shares her own journey of starting and stopping multiple side businesses, what those “failures” actually taught her, and how those experiences led her to finally build something that feels aligned and sustainable.

💡 In this episode, we talk about:

• Why your first business is not supposed to be your forever business
• How “failed” ideas are actually valuable learning experiences
• The difference between quitting too early and pivoting wisely
• How to know when to keep going and when to change direction
• Why action, not thinking, leads you to the right idea
• How every attempt brings you closer to what truly fits

If you’ve been afraid of choosing the wrong idea or wasting time on something that might not work, this episode will help you see your journey in a completely different way.

⭐ LINKS & RESOURCES:

• Download Free Guide, The Idea Filter
https://www.theboldbiz.com/idea

• Download Free Guide, Done Starting Over
https://www.theboldbiz.com/doneoptin

• Join the FREE Bold Biz Collective (Skool Community)
https://www.skool.com/the-bold-biz-collective-5477/about

• Visit The Bold Biz Website
https://www.theboldbiz.com/

Transcript

Main Intro

SPEAKER_00 0:02

We treat choosing a side business like we're choosing a spouse. What if I pick wrong? What if I'm stuck with this forever? But here's the thing: it's not a marriage. It's more like dating. And your first business? That's just your expensive market research. Today I'm going to show you why starting something that might not be your forever business is actually the smartest move you can make. If you've ever felt like it's too late to start, or that everyone online is younger, louder, or somehow more confident than you, then you're in the right place. I'm Jenny Lavalius, a Swedish midlife graphic designer, mom of 12-year-old twins, and the founder of the Bold Biz, created to help second chapter women find online success. This podcast is about building confidence, creating freedom, and growing an online business in a way that feels aligned, sustainable, and true to who you are, especially in midlife. This is the Bold Biz Podcast. Let's dive in. Let me tell you about my graveyard of abandoned side businesses. Two Shopify stores, two Etsy stores, Instagram theme pages, affiliate marketing attempts, print-on-demand jewelry that nobody wanted, mugs with inspirational quotes that never sold. If failure was a resume line, I would be overqualified. But here's what's interesting. The business I'm building now, the Bold Biz, is actually the same idea I started with almost four years ago in the summer of 2022. Back then I called it entrepreneurial gals. The mission was the same though. Help women start side businesses. But I had a massive problem. A few months in, a friend looked at my website and asked a simple question. But what do you actually do, Jenny? What's your offer? I had no answer. And in that moment, I realized the hard truth. I couldn't build an offer on zero experience. I was a complete beginner, trying to teach other beginners who would take me seriously. So I reluctantly shut it down. At the time, it felt like a real failure, like I'd wasted months, like I'd picked the wrong idea and needed to start all over again with something else. But looking back now, I can see that it wasn't failure at all. It was education. Here's what nobody tells you about these so-called fail businesses. They're not failures, they're curriculum. My Shopify store taught me about product market fit. Turns out selling things I wasn't passionate about was exhausting and unsustainable. My Etsy Jewelry store taught me about saturated markets and the importance of differentiation. Being the 10,000th person selling the same thing doesn't work so well. Entrepreneurial Gauss taught me the most important lesson of all. You can't teach what you haven't learned yet. You need experience before you can create an offer people will actually pay for. But here's the thing. I couldn't have learned those lessons by thinking about them. I had to live them. Reed Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn, famously said, if you're not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched it too late. I take that even further. If you haven't tried and abandoned at least one business idea, you probably haven't learned what you actually need to build yet. Your first business isn't supposed to be perfect. It's supposed to teach you what the second one needs to be. Sarah Blakely, the founder of Spanx, talks about how her dad used to ask her at dinner, what did you fail at today? And if she didn't have an answer, he'd be disappointed. Because failure meant she was trying new things. That's the mindset shift we need in midlife. Every abandoned idea, every pivot, every failed attempt is just expensive market research. You're learning what works and what doesn't. You're figuring out what you're actually good at and what lights you up. And that research, it's priceless. Fast forward to January 2024. I started the Boldbiz Instagram account. A year later, in January 2025, I had 47 followers. 47. So I had a choice to make. Scrap it and try something else, or go all in. And this is where it gets interesting, because I'd tried enough other things by that point to recognize something important. I kept coming back to this idea. Even when it wasn't working. Even when I had 47 followers after a full year, I kept coming back. So I made a decision. I went all in. I committed to showing up consistently, creating content that actually helped women, building trust instead of chasing followers. Four months later, I had 15,000 followers. But here's the thing. The number didn't matter as much as the feeling. For the first time, I felt momentum, real momentum, that kind of tells you keep going, you're on the right path. And that momentum, I couldn't have created it without all those failed attempts that came before. Because now I knew what didn't work. I knew what to avoid. I knew what my audience actually needed. And all that expensive market research finally started paying off. Okay, so here's the question you're probably asking. Jenny, how do you know when to pivot versus when to push through? Because that's the hard part, right? You don't want to quit too early and miss the breakthrough. But you also don't want to waste years on the wrong thing. So here's what I've learned. There's a difference between an idea that's not working yet and an idea that's fundamentally wrong for you. Signs, it's time to pivot. You dread working on it when Sunday morning rolls around and the thought of spending three hours on your side business makes you want to stay in bed. That's a signal. Your business should energize you, not drain you. You're only doing it for money. If there's no passion, no deeper why, no mission beyond making income, it's going to be really hard to sustain in the long run. Especially when things start to get difficult. You can't answer the what do you do question. If someone asks what your business is about and you can't give a clear, confident answer, that's a red flag. Like my entrepreneurial gals moment, if you don't have an offer, you don't have a business. Signs it's time to push through. You keep coming back to it. Even when it's hard, even when you're not seeing results. If the idea keeps pulling at you, that's your gut telling you something important. Or you wake up thinking about it. Not in a stressful way, in an excited way. Like your brain can't help but generate ideas for how to make it better. People respond positively when you talk about it. This was huge for me. In August 2025, I finally started telling people about the bullbiz. It was really scary. I'd been building in secret for so long, but when I started sharing, the feedback was overwhelmingly positive. Women told me they needed exactly what I was building. And that gave me confidence to keep going. You're learning and growing. Even if the business isn't making money yet, if you're getting better at the skills, if you're building an audience, if you're creating momentum, that's progress. Don't quit during the growth phase. So here's the framework I use. Give it six months of consistent, focused effort, not scattered effort, not half-hearted effort, six months where you show up regularly and actually try. After six months, ask yourself, do I still want to wake up and work on this? Am I learning? Am I seeing any forward motion at all, even if it's small? If the answer is yes, keep going. If the answer is no to all three, it might be time to pivot. So how do I know the bull biz is the right one for me? It's not because I have some guarantee that it'll work. I don't. It's not because everything is easy or perfect. It's definitely not. It's because of three things. First, I wake up every day and go to bed every night thinking about it. In an excited way. My brain is constantly generating ideas. How can I help more women? What content do they need? How can I make this offer better? That obsession? That fire? That's the signal. Second, when I started telling people about it, and when I stopped building in secret and actually put myself out there, the response was incredible. Women told me they needed this. They needed help with the mindset side of building a business, not just the technical know-how. That validation and that confirmation that I'm solving a real problem for real women, that matters. And third, the more women I talk to, the more I realize that the mindset piece is the biggest hurdle, not the practical stuff. Most women can figure out how to set up an email list or create a funnel. YouTube exists. AI exists. But the confidence, the belief that they can actually do this, the permission to start before they're perfect. That's what they need. And that's what I'm uniquely positioned to give them, I hope. Because I've been there. I've fumbled through all of it. I've quit too early, I've pivoted too often, and I've doubted myself a thousand times. I can help them now because I've lived it myself. That's how you know you've found the right thing. Not because it's easy, but because you can't imagine not doing it. Here's what I want you to understand about being in midlife and trying different business ideas. This is your second chapter. And second chapters are always more interesting than first chapters. Because now you have context, you have confidence, you have wisdom. In your twenties, every decision felt permanent, every choice felt like it defined your entire future. But now you know better. You know that paths wind, the destinations change, that the journey is rarely what you expected at the start. So give yourself permission to try something that might not be your forever business. Because here's the secret. Your forever business will find you. But only if you're actually out there building something. You can't think your way to the right idea. You have to take action to get there. Every attempt teaches you something. Every pivot gives you clarity, and every so-called failure is just expensive market research. And eventually, if you keep going, if you keep trying, if you keep learning, you'll find the thing that makes you say, yes, this is it. This is what I'm supposed to be doing. And that's what I want for you. So here's my challenge for you. Stop waiting for the perfect forever idea to reveal itself. Pick something that interests you right now. Something that solves a problem you understand. Something that aligns with who you are today. Give it six months of real focused effort, and then evaluate. If you're not sure which idea to start with, I have a free guide called the idea filter. It will help you figure out which of your many ideas might be the best fit for you right now. And if you're tired of the endless start and stop cycle, if you've tried too many things and you're ready to actually commit to one, I have another guide called Done Starting Over. It will help you break that pattern and move forward with one idea. You can grab both in the show notes below the episode. Because here's the truth. The business you start today might not be your forever business, but it will teach you what you need to know to find the one that is. And that education, it's worth every minute you invest in it. Thank you so much for spending this time with me today. If this episode resonated, I'd love for you to follow the podcast, share it with your friend who might need it, or leave a review. It really helps more women find the show. And if you want to keep the conversation going, come find me on Instagram at the BoldBiz or join the BoldBiz Collective. All the links are in the show notes. Until next time, keep taking bold steps, even the small ones. Stay bold, ladies.