From "I'm Not Good Enough" to "I'm Ready" — The Real Reason Female Entrepreneurs Stay Small

I used to make myself smaller than I already was.

Not just in business. In every room I walked into.

When people asked what I do and where I wanted to take my business — I stumbled. The words wouldn't come out properly. I talked myself down before anyone else had the chance to.

For a long time I thought it was nerves. Imposter syndrome. The usual things people say when they can't quite explain why they keep holding back.

But it was something deeper than that.

It started with "I'm not good enough."

That belief ran through everything. Through the years I spent as a hobby photographer never believing I could do it professionally. Through the job where I let someone tell me daily that I wasn't ready, wasn't skilled enough, wasn't there yet.

Through the networking events where I sat in rooms full of people and couldn't get a proper sentence out when they asked about my business.

I'm not good enough was so familiar it felt like the truth.

And then one day — slowly, imperfectly — it started to shift.

I heard something that changed everything.

Jen Sincero said that friends and family often don't support our businesses because they're comfortable with the version of us they already know.

And I sat with that for a long time.

Because I'd been taking their silence personally. Their lack of enthusiasm. The way some people seemed almost uncomfortable when I talked about what I was building.

But what if it wasn't about me at all?

What if seeing me grow was simply a reminder that they hadn't done the thing they'd always wanted to do for themselves?

That reframing didn't take the sting away completely. But it took the weight of it off my shoulders.

Their reaction was never mine to carry.

Then I noticed the pattern.

I saw it first in something completely unrelated to business.

Every time I started eating well and exercising — the moment I began to see results, the moment change became visible — I'd slip back. Reach for the snacks. Break the routine. Undo the progress almost deliberately.

And I recognised it immediately.

This is what I do with success.

The moment it becomes real — the moment I can actually see it happening — something in me pulls back. Returns to what's familiar. What's safe.

I wasn't afraid of failing.

I was afraid of succeeding.

Because success meant becoming someone new. And becoming someone new meant leaving the old version of myself behind — the patterns, the beliefs, the familiar smallness that had kept me safe for so long.

My nervous system didn't know how to be the successful version of me yet. So every time I got close — it brought me back.

But now I know.

And knowing changes everything.

Not overnight. Not perfectly. There are still days when the old beliefs surface — when I catch myself making myself smaller, talking myself down, pulling back just when things start to move.

But now I recognise it for what it is.

Not truth. Just an old pattern trying to protect me from something it doesn't understand yet.

I've had to go through specific phases to get here. Lessons I couldn't skip. Realisations that only came when I was ready for them.

And I'm still in the middle of it — still unlearning, still growing, still leaving old things behind.

But something has shifted.

I'm not waiting anymore. I'm not making myself smaller. I'm not sabotaging the version of myself that's trying to emerge.

I tell myself — and the universe — that I'm ready.

And for the first time, I actually believe it.

If any of this sounds familiar — I'd love to hear from you. Sometimes just recognising the pattern is the beginning of everything.

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I write these blogs because I want you to know the real me — not just the photographer, but the woman behind the camera. I hope somewhere in my story you find something that resonates with yours. I write these stories to show you how I became an entrepreneur in London. How I became a maternity and newborn photographer and telling the new family story through my lens.