How to Know When It’s Time to Go for It in Business

For years, my coworkers at the law firm knew me for one thing, and it wasn’t my legal work. It was the fresh fettuccine I’d bring in, the recipes I couldn’t stop talking about.

“Why are you even here?” they’d ask, half joking.

I knew the answer, even if I wasn’t ready to say it out loud. Practicing law was never going to be my thing. I just didn’t know yet what would take its place.

It took five years, a lot of saving, and careful planning before I finally stopped being the girl known for cooking and started becoming the one who did it for a living.

The Leap Didn’t Look Like Success

I walked out of that law firm for the last time on a sweltering Friday afternoon in August. I remember tugging at my collar and wondering if any of this would actually work.

All I could picture was leaving law to become a health coach. I didn’t have a bigger plan than that, because I didn’t yet know what else was possible for me.

Leaving the “stability” of a corporate career was terrifying enough on its own. My backup plan, if the health coaching business didn’t work, was slumping back to the law firm, embarrassed.

The health coaching business didn’t work out. It wasn’t my thing either.

For a minute, that felt like the whole story falling apart. Wasn’t this supposed to be my one big move?

The Real Lesson Wasn’t the First Leap

Here’s what I didn’t expect: once I’d taken that first leap, taking another one felt possible in a way it never had before.

That’s how I ended up building a legal templates business for online entrepreneurs, a business that, years later, has become something I couldn’t have imagined for myself back in that law firm hallway.

I’ll never tell you to quit your job and just “go for it,” because everything working out perfectly was never the moral of my story. My first big leap wasn’t even the right one.

But if you’re holding yourself back because you can’t perfectly picture the outcome, that’s not actually a reason to wait.

What Actually Changed Everything

Leaving the law firm mattered. But the bigger shift, the one that actually led somewhere, was staying open to the possibility of more, even after my first attempt didn’t pan out.

It wasn’t the decision itself that changed everything. It was being willing to keep going after the first plan failed.

You deserve to build the thing people ask you about, the thing that lights you up the way fettuccine lit me up in a courtroom hallway. Maybe your first attempt gets you there. Maybe it just points you toward what will.

Either way, that’s reason enough to go for it.