26. Why You Keep Abandoning Your Ideas (And How to Actually Finish Something)

Do you have a graveyard of half-built businesses, abandoned Etsy shops, and courses you never finished? You are not alone, and more importantly, you are not broken.

In this episode, Jenny gets really honest about her own side business journey – from a $3,000 course she never completed, to Entrepreneurial Gals (a beautiful website with absolutely nothing to sell), to an Etsy jewelry shop, a Shopify store, a print-on-demand yarn accessories brand launched four days before Christmas, and everything in between. And then she breaks down the pattern underneath all of it – the loop that keeps so many second chapter women stuck in permanent restart mode.

This one is raw, funny, and very real. Because the problem was never the ideas. It was never giving one of them enough time.

In this episode you will learn:

• The five-step loop that keeps you abandoning ideas before they have a chance to work
• Why hitting resistance feels like the wrong idea – and why it almost never is
• What finally broke the cycle for Jenny (and what grew her account from 47 to 10,000 followers in four months)
• A simple 90-day framework to finally finish the thing you keep starting

If you are tired of the restart cycle, grab the free guide Done Starting Over in the show notes below. It will help you break the pattern and commit to the one idea that is actually worth your time.

⭐ LINKS & RESOURCES:

• 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

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

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

Transcript

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Okay, so true story. There is a folder on my laptop right now called Old Brands. Just like that. Old Brands. Plural. And ladies, that folder is so full I cannot even remember what's in half of it. There are logos in there, there are entire websites in there, there are sales pages I built and never showed a single human being. And for years I thought that folder was proof that I was bad at this. Turns out it was proof of something completely different. Hi ladies, and welcome back to the Bold Biz Podcast. I'm Jenny Lavalius, founder of the Bold Biz, and this is the show for second chapter women, women in their 40s, 50s, and 60s, and beyond, who are quietly or sometimes loudly, building something of their own. Today's episode is one I've been wanting to record for a long time. Because it's the most honest episode I think I've ever sat down to share with you. We're talking about the pattern of starting things and not finishing them. The graveyard of half-built dreams. The constant exhausting cycle of this is the one. And then a few weeks later, never mind, I think the next one is the one. And I'm gonna walk you through my own version of this story in real actual detail. Because I think it's gonna sound very familiar. And then we're gonna talk about why this pattern happens and what finally broke it for me. So grab a coffee, settle in, and let's get into it. Okay, so let me take you back to where this whole thing started for me. It was summer 2022. I had this feeling I wanted something more. I wanted some kind of side income. I wanted a project of my own. I wanted, honestly, a little bit of freedom that didn't depend on my day job. And the first thing I did, ladies, the very first thing, was I bought a $3,000 course. $3,000. It was all about private label rights products. This idea that there was this whole secret world of digital products that you could rebrand and resell as your own. The guys who sold the course made it sound like a quiet little gold mine that nobody else knew about. Spoiler alert, I did not finish the course. I never launched anything from it. $3,000 plus tax into the void. But that was just the start. That was the opening ceremony of what I now lovingly call my side business graveyard. That same summer, I started a company called Entrepreneurial Gals. I built a beautiful website, I spent so many hours on the design, the logo, the colors, the fonts. I wanted to help other women build a side business of their own. There was just one small problem. I had never built one myself. I had no idea what I was doing. None. And I knew nothing about digital marketing. And I will never forget, I show the website to a friend, and she looked at it and said, Oh Jenny, this is so pretty. But what do you actually offer? I had no answer. No offer, no product, no coaching package, no lead magnet, not even a PDF to sell. Just a really pretty website. So I closed it down and I felt deflated and a little embarrassed, honestly. Then I looked into Instagram theme pages because I thought maybe I could be faceless, you know? Maybe I could just run a moody, aesthetic account from behind a logo and quietly make money on the side without anyone seeing me. Because that was the other thing, ladies. I was terrified of being seen online, terrified of the trolls, terrified of putting myself out there and failing publicly. So anything faceless sounded amazing to me. I never actually launched the theme pages I had in mind. It just lived in the back of my mind as a what if. Then I started an Etsy shop, digital products, made a few designs, listed them, got zero sales in a few weeks, and closed it down. Then in December 2022, I stumbled onto a free five-day series by Bob Proctor on YouTube. And honestly, that one shifted something deep inside me. It was the first time I really considered the idea that I was the limit, that my own fear was the thing in the way. Not the market, not the algorithm, not my age, me. And it gave me a little burst of energy. So obviously, what did I do with that energy? I bought more courses, of course. I bought a master resale rights course called Lipo. Learn and Earn Profits Online. I bought another one called Simply Passive. I think I bought a third one, whose name I have honestly forgotten. They were all the big hype in 2022 and 2023, so I went through them. I learned a ton about digital marketing, which was actually very useful. But I made zero sales of these courses. And I just kept spending money on courses that were leading me nowhere. Then I started another Etsy shop. This one was called Wilhelmina Jewelry, print-on-demand jewelry. Cute name, cute idea, gave up after a few weeks, zero sales. Then I got really into Amazon KDP. I was going to do coloring books, puzzle books, mazes. Again, Faceless, again, I never published a single one. So in the spring of 2023, I took a break from the side business hamster wheel and self-published a book that I'd wanted to write since I was 20 years old. The book is called Mitan and Moni, and it's the story of my mom and my aunt and their Hollywood fashion business in the 1960s. That book coming out was genuinely a dream come true. I barely broke even on it though, financially, but emotionally, it was huge. I am so proud of it, and I'm so proud of myself for completing something from start to finish. At the same time that I was working on the book, I also took a Mind Valley Life Coaching certification course. So you could say my plate was pretty full at that time. I was going to be a life coach. That was the new plan after the book came out. Very expensive, never launched a single coaching offer. Then I took the summer off because I was completely fried. Then in early 2024, I started another Shopify store. This one called Bold PLR Shop. I sold digital product templates, Canva templates, things other people could rebrand and resell. The store was gorgeous. I loved working on it, loved listing products, ran a tiny ed campaign, zero sales, closed it down. But here's the interesting part. I took that brand and I rebranded it into the bold biz. I launched it on Instagram in March 2024. I loved the name. I loved the energy. I posted on and off for the rest of the year, and by the end of 2024, I had a grand total of 47 followers. 47, ladies. Then in the winter of 2024, I started another Shopify store. Knit and Not Co. Mugs, totes, t-shirts for yarn lovers. Now here's the part that makes me laugh. I do not knit, I do not crochet. I have never made a single yarn anything in my entire life. My mom and my aunt do though, which is what inspired me to start it. But I was running a brand for a hobby I did not personally have. I made one or two sales to people who knew me, ran a few ads, I had no idea how to optimize. And then, you guessed it, closed it down. And ladies, this was just the highlight reel. I am skipping things here. I am genuinely omitting things because I can't remember them all. So if you're listening to this and you're starting to laugh or wince, or maybe quietly thinking about the folder on your own computer, full of logos and abandoned ideas, just know this. You are talking to someone who has been there loudly, repeatedly, expensively. And what I want to do for the rest of this episode is tell you what I finally figured out. Because it took me three years and a small fortune to see it, and I don't want it to take you that long. Okay, so once I was honest with myself about all of these, and that took a while, ladies, I had to ask the hard question. Why? Why did I keep doing this? Because here's what I noticed when I look back at the list. The ideas were not bad. A print-on-demand store can absolutely work. A digital products business can absolutely work. A coaching offer can absolutely work. Other people are making real money in every single one of these niches right now. So the problem was not the ideas. The problem was me. Or more accurately, the problem was the loop I was running over and over without seeing it. Let me name the loop for you, because once I named it, I could not unsee it. And I have a feeling some of you are about to have that same moment. Step one, the spark. A new idea shows up. And not just any idea, the idea, the one. Your brain lights up. You can already see the brand, the website, the income. You feel awake for the first time in months. This part feels incredible. Step two, the honeymoon. You go all in. You buy the domain, you design the logo, you research the platform, you build the pages. You tell someone in your life about it, and they nod politely because they've heard this speech before. You're flying. Step three, the resistance. And ladies, this is the killer. You hit a wall. Sometimes it's a technical wall. Sometimes it's a confidence wall, where you put your first thing out there and three people see it, and one of them is your mom. Sometimes it's a comparison wall, where you stumble onto someone in the same niche who's been at it for six years, and you feel suddenly very small. The specific wall does not matter. What matters is what your brain does next. Step four, the reframe. Instead of saying this is hard, you say this is wrong. Instead of thinking, I'm struggling, you think this must not be my thing. Instead of recognizing that you have hit the exact spot where every business gets hard, you decide the problem must be the idea itself. And step five, the fresh start. You quietly close the tab, you stop opening the project, you move on. And within a few weeks, a new idea shows up. And it lights up your brain, and you think, ooh, this is the one, this is the one. And the loop starts over again. Spark, honeymoon, resistance, reframe, fresh start. Over and over and over. And here's what I want you to really hear. Because it took me a long time to feel this. Every time you run that loop, you are not just abandoning a project. You're training your brain that this is what you do. You're building a track record with yourself. A track record of not finishing things. And the more times you run that loop, the harder it gets to believe yourself the next time you start something. Your enthusiasm starts to feel suspicious to you. You start doubting yourself before you even begin. That is the real cost. Not the wasted Shopify subscription, not the unused course, the slow erosion of trust between you and you. As Seth Godin has this little book called The Dip. And his whole point is so simple. Every meaningful project has a hard middle stretch. The honeymoon ends, the payoff has not arrived yet, and you are just in the messy middle. He says the people who succeed are not the ones who avoid the dip, they are the ones who recognize it when they are in it. Because the dip looks like failure, but it's actually the price of admission. So when you hit resistance and you tell yourself, this must be the wrong idea, what you're actually doing, ladies, is mistaking the dip for a dead end every single time. I know this because that is exactly what I did. With entrepreneurial gals, with Vilhelmina jewelry, with bold PLR shop, with Nit and Not Co. I mistook the dip for a dead end, scrapped the idea and went looking for a fresh, exciting one, which obviously had its own dip waiting for me just a few weeks later. So let me tell you what finally changed. In November 2025, I started this podcast, the one you're listening to right now, and it was the first time in three years that I felt deep in my body that this is the right path. Not because the podcast was perfect. It was not, and it is still not. The first episodes are clunky, my cold opens were too long, my pacing was off, the sound was bad. I had no real strategy. It was the right path because I finally decided to stop running the loop. I made a quiet decision with myself. I said, I am not going to scrap this one. I don't care how slow it grows. I don't care if no one downloads it. I don't care how exposed I feel. I'm going to keep going. And here is the wild part, ladies. The very next month, in January 2026, I started a Swedish brand just to experiment. And ironically, that small Swedish brand, that side project, is the one where I have actually started making real sales for the first time in my whole side business journey. Not because that idea was magically better than any of the other ones, but because I finally stayed. I finally let one of my ideas have time to grow. And it's not even that the Swedish brand is some genius idea of digital marketing experience that I had picked up from every failed course and every abandoned project. All those Lipo and Simply Passive courses, all of those Shopify stores I built and closed, all of the websites I designed and walked away from, all of the ads that I tried running, none of it was wasted. It all became the foundation for what is finally working right now. So here is the truth I want you to hold on to. And I want you to write this down somewhere you can. It's that you never gave one of them enough time. Read that again slowly. It's not that your ideas are bad, it's that you never give one of them enough time. Because here's what I learned, both from doing this myself and from watching the second chapter Women in Our Community Do It. Almost nothing in business works in the time frame you expect. Almost nothing does. James Clear, who wrote Atomic Habits, has this idea I think about constantly. He talks about how results compound. But the first stretch always feels disappointing because you're doing the work and not yet seeing the proof. He calls it the valley of disappointment. The work is invisible for a while, and then suddenly it's not. So when you quit at month two, because you can't see the results yet, you are quitting in the exact spot where the compounding has not started showing up yet. The seeds are in the ground, you just cannot see them growing yet. And ladies, here is the part I want to be really honest about. Because I think a lot of women in midlife carry this and we don't talk about it enough. A lot of us were raised on the idea that if something doesn't come easily, it's not for us. That natural talent matters most, that struggle means we're doing the wrong thing. And that quiet little belief will sabotage every single business idea you ever have. Because nothing worth building feels easy in the middle. Nothing. Mel Robbins talks about how the moment you feel resistance is actually the moment your brain is trying to protect you from change. Not from danger, from change. And their brains hate change. They will literally invent reasons for you to stop, dressed up as wisdom. Oh, this is not aligned. Ooh, the market is too saturated. Ooh, I should pivot. Sometimes those reasons are real. Sometimes a pivot is the right call. But more often than we want to admit, those reasons are just our brain looking for an exit from the discomfort of doing something hard and unfamiliar. So if you're sitting there right now thinking, oh God, that is me, take a breath. Because the fact that you see the pattern is the entire turning point. You cannot fix what you cannot see. But once you see it, the whole game changes. Okay, so practically, what do we do with all of this? I want to give you something concrete, because I know how this goes. You will listen to this episode, feel really fired up, nod along, screenshot something, and then by Thursday you'll be drifting back into the loop. So let's not let that happen. Here's a tiny framework I want you to try. It's not fancy, and that is the point. 1. Pick one project. Just one. And ladies, listen, the one I want you to pick is probably the one you've started the most times. The one that keeps coming back. The one your brain keeps circling back to even when you try to walk away. That is usually the right one. Your subconscious is telling you something. Two, give it one season. 90 days. Not forever, just 90 days. Put it on your calendar, mark the end date. That is your decision day. Not today, not next week, day 91. Until then, you're not allowed to quit. You are also not allowed to add a second project on top of it. One thing, one season. Three, define what consistent looks like and keep it embarrassingly small. Way smaller than you think. We are not talking about going full time on this. We're talking about can you do one small action three times a week? Just one small thing. Tiny, consistent, boring. That is the recipe. Boring consistency wins. Number four. When the resistance hits, and it will hit, recognize it for what it is. Not a sign that you picked the wrong thing. A sign that you've arrived at the dip. Which is exactly where everyone who has built anything has stood. You are not lost, you're right on schedule. Number five, get support. And I don't mean cheerleading, I mean actual support from people doing the same kind of work, who would genuinely call you out when you start hunting for an exit, and who will remind you of what you said you wanted before the resistance showed up. Because here's the truth, ladies, you will not break this pattern alone. I did not break it alone. Nobody breaks it alone. We're wired to drift back to the familiar. And the familiar for us, the familiar for so many of us, is starting over. So we need people around us who hold us accountable and steady. When our brain starts whispering, maybe the next idea will be easier. It will not. Trust me, it will not. Now if any of this hits you in the chest a little bit, I made something specifically for you. It's called Done Starting Over. It's a free guide that walks you through exactly how to break the restart cycle, how to recognize which idea is actually worth committing to, how to spot the resistance moments before they take you out. And how to build a kind of consistency that does not require you to suddenly become a completely different person. It's free, it's short, and honestly, it's the thing I wish someone had handed me back in 2022. When I was spending $3,000 on a course I never finished. You can grab it in the show notes below the episode. Just scroll down, tap the link, and it will land straight in your inbox. And ladies, please, if this episode resonated, share it with one other woman who needs to hear it. The friend who keeps texting you about her new business idea every six weeks. The sister who keeps reinventing herself. This is the conversation we do not have enough of. Let's have it loudly. Alright, before I let you go, I want you to hear this for me. One second chapter woman to another. Your side business graveyard does not define you. Mine does not define me either. The fact that you've started a hundred things and finished none of them does not mean you can't finish. It means you have been practicing the beginning. You're very good at beginnings. Now we're gonna teach you the middle part. And once you learn the middle, the whole thing changes. I am living proof of that. So pick the idea. Set 90 days, show up small, stay in the dip, and keep going long enough for the compounding to find you. That is the whole game. Stay bold, ladies.