Tending the Garden: What Most Newer Entrepreneurs (Like Myself) Get Wrong About Building a Business and Getting Clients

A couple of days ago, I announced via Instagram that I was (sort of) taking a break from social media—specifically Meta’s three major platforms. In short, I realized that social media needed me more than I needed social media. Also, I became so focused on sharing things and talking about my offers that I had lost sight of what was important to me, which is creating a legacy and leaving a substantial body of work behind.

Ironically, The Art of Capturing Phantoms: Definitive Edition was born from this same problem. At the time, I was posting regularly on a WordPress blog, but I had not been regularly writing fiction. So, I challenged myself to write a flash fiction piece every Friday for a good number of Fridays. Then, a few years later, I took the best short stories that I wrote and put them all in a single collection. That act of writing as resistance against social media has been one of the greatest gifts I ever gave to myself.

And now, I think I'm going to be doing the same thing. I need to put in the work and stop talking about it.

Some people who will read this or listen to this will mistake my words. They might take them to mean that I don't think I'm ready to be an author or a book coach. They might think that I don’t believe I’m confident or capable enough in what I’m doing to be able to sell it or market it to others. They might think that this break from social media means that I'll be pursuing yet another certification or taking another course.

However, that's not true. In fact, I recently quit my pursuit of UC San Diego's Copyediting Certificate because even though I initially enrolled in the program thinking that having a better grasp of grammar would help me land more freelance editing jobs, I remembered that I actually hate copyediting. It's not my strength, and it's not my passion. Sensitivity reading, developmental editing, and book coaching—All the big conceptual services are my passions and specialties, and I know that I’m good at them. I earned my certification in fiction book coaching from Author Accelerator in December 2024. Six months before that, I earned my MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction) from UC Riverside’s Palm Desert program. And before that, I sat in on actual acquisitions meetings during the Sourcebooks BIPOC Editorial Training Program, seeing dreams get crushed before my very eyes.

I know that I have put in the time, the hours, and the work that I need to do my chosen professions well. I have no doubt about that.

But no amount of creating funny Reels, sharing interesting Stories, posting long Threads, or trying to find new followers is going to help me do what’s actually important, and that’s putting in the work.

It’s planting the seeds. It’s watering them. It’s watching them grow and making sure that they get enough sunlight. It’s about making things and sharing your perspective on them rather than trying to sell something to somebody.

And this is where I think most newer entrepreneurs (like myself, at the time of writing this) get it wrong. They want to land new clients, but they don’t want to make sure that their messaging is clear. They want to make an extensive course instead of writing a 100-page book on the subject and sell it for less in a democratizing manner. They don’t want to practice what they preach because they, unknowingly or not, find themselves stuck in salesman mode.

I want to make things that matter. And then, I want to share them.

But so often, we mistakenly think it’s the other way around. We try to put the proverbial cart before the horse and wonder why we aren’t going anywhere. Heck, if you just want to go somewhere, why not just take the horse and leave the cart behind?

Okay, maybe I’m taking that metaphor a bit too far, but I hope you see the point of what I'm saying. First comes the learning, then comes the doing, and finally comes the sharing. In this case, I feel like I'm in the doing phase. I've learned just enough to attempt to create something new and put what I've learned into practice. Once I've done that for long enough, I'll share my findings in a blog post or maybe even a short video skit or something. That should be the flow of events, and it shouldn’t start with social media.

It's also very likely that I won't be on social media as much in the future. Trying to be everything, everywhere, all at once is exhausting for anybody, but especially so for neurodivergent folks like myself. We’ve always been drawn to deep work anyway, so might as well lean into it.

And if you're worried that I'm going on a social media break on Substack as well, I guess I kind of am. Like, I just recently reconfigured my posting frequency to a bimonthly schedule, but I think I'll be going into a “post-whenever-I-feel-like-it” frequency. It's not what most websites recommend, but I have to do what's right for me. I have to make sure that I'm not neglecting my garden in pursuit of the elusive dollar. Rather than spend my time chasing leads or hunting down clients, I'd much rather they come to me and visit my garden, where they can smell the roses or admire my bulbs of garlic.

In fact, some of my most recent clients didn’t come to me because of a post they saw on my Instagram, Facebook, or Threads. They found me from a blog post on my website and saw something in it that resonated with them enough to reach out to me.

Which is why it’s not a question of “How can I find more clients?” but rather a question of “How can more clients find me?”

In order for clients to find me, I have to make space for them to find me. I have to plant the acorn of a tree and let it grow tall enough so that it gives shade to the space around it, and so that way, a potential client can easily rest beside it and me. I have to be patient because waiting for an acorn to turn into a tree takes a very long time. However, the world tells me in so many ways to be impatient—to sell the shade of a tree that I have not yet planted, to be so loud and confident about my trees when a much quieter approach would be far more inviting.

For far too many times in my life, I have done things when I wasn't ready. I have pushed myself into situations and been pushed into situations that I should not have been in. I had thought that I was lazy or broken for not wanting to do these things when, in reality, I was out of alignment. From very early on, that is what I was taught to do as a Black female person. I thought that I was too emotional, too stubborn, too lazy, too tired, too everything when, in reality, I was just me.

I disrespected myself and my feelings because I was raised in a society that encouraged these harmful practices. I internalized them and am now doing the work of shedding them like autumn leaves to make way for the new growth to come. I will nurture this seed of self-respect for as long as it takes because that is what it deserves.

And when it finally blooms, I hope you’ll be there to see it.