Big Sis Briefing: Starting Before You Feel Ready
A long-time follower slid into my DMs this week. She’s a lawyer and she wants to start showing up online but she’s stuck at the scariest bit: the start.
Her question was “How did you begin? And how do you actually push through the fear of people judging you, or worse, flopping publicly?”
I get it. I have been saying for years that “done is better than perfect” and “feel the fear and do it anyway.” Those mantras are true, but they do not capture the full story of what it takes to live them out.
So let me tell you how it really started for me.
The First Public Experiment
Before The In-House Lawyer, I had a blog called Pearls and Protein and an Instagram page called The Lean Lawyer. It was 2016, I was training for a bodybuilding competition and documenting the whole process online.
Five days before the competition, I was so depleted I could barely climb the stairs. I remember sitting on the floor, exhausted, thinking there was no way I could keep going. I was eating very little and training like crazy. The only reason I did not quit was because I had made this journey public. People were following along. I had a sponsor. I could not bring myself to disappear because I do what I say I’m going to do.
It was intense. Physically, emotionally, mentally. Looking back, I wouldn’t recommend it unless you’ve got a rock-solid relationship with your body image and food, which I really didn’t. But it was my first taste of how visibility can pull you through. I fell in love with sharing and connecting online. Social media lit something up in me.
Leaving and Returning
After the competition, I pulled away from social media for a while. I needed a reset. But in 2019, I felt the pull again. I missed creating and the theatre kid in me was restless.
So I started The In House Lawyer. At first it was Canva graphics and long captions. I rarely showed my face. Lots of blog-style posts about things I wished I had known earlier in my in-house career. It was clunky and a little awkward but it was a start.
Hitting Publish in Lockdown
Then came early 2020. We were all locked down at home. I had more time than ever and I finally googled “how to start a podcast.” I recorded from my spare bedroom, hit publish and sat there with my heart racing. I thought: what if no one listens? But I pressed the button anyway.
That podcast became my way of hosting the party. Gary Vee once said that “you do not have to be the smartest voice in the room, you can be the one who creates the room”. That idea clicked for me. I invited guests I admired, and to my surprise, they said yes.
One of the most surreal full circle moments was interviewing Gary Vee’s own General Counsel. The man whose podcast first nudged me to start, and here I was, sitting down with his lawyer!
Starting From Zero Again
When TikTok came along, I rolled my eyes. Another platform. Another reset to zero. I already had a couple thousand Instagram followers, but on TikTok, my first videos got nothing. Zero likes. Maybe one stray comment.
I remember posting one clip that I thought was clever and watching it stall at 27 views. I wanted to delete it out of embarrassment. But I left it up. Because that is part of it too. It’s still there…
What About Judgment
People often ask if I worried about what others thought.
I am sure people were judging me. I am sure there were snarky comments behind my back. But I honestly cannot recall a single one ever landing in front of me, at least not in a professional setting. I’m happy to be proven wrong but I truly don’t remember any!
At that stage of my life, I felt a maturity and an inner knowing that this was the thing I needed to do and to be honest, what others thought was irrelevant. I was not seeking reassurance or permission. That is still true for me today.
I did not want to hold negativity but I also did not want to get high on my own supply of hype either. The only feedback I opened myself up to was the kind I could act on, like the sound quality, the editing or the type of guests that people wanted to hear from.
Beyond that, I kept focused on what I was building. What I could control. What other people think of us is always outside of our control (and is none of our damn business anyway).
That tunnel vision, not letting praise or criticism sway me, was how I got through the awkward beginning.
What I Learned About Starting
Okay, here is some cold hard truth:
Awkwardness is unavoidable. It is the toll that we all have to pay at the beginning of creating anything new. Do not overanalyse it. Just walk through it. Most won’t pay the toll and they won’t achieve their goal.
Anchor yourself to something bigger than fear. At first, my anchor was accountability. Later, it was the joy of creating. Now, it is the mission to make legal careers less lonely and build my own dream to show others that it can be done.
Do not measure your Chapter 1 against someone else’s Chapter 10. Every polished creator you admire once had a post that flopped. I’ve had more than I can count.
I once said on my own podcast: “Awkward is just evidence you are stretching into something new.” I still believe that.
Big Sis Pep Talk
If you are still reading this and you still want to show up online but you feel paralysed, I want you to hear me clearly.
Confidence is not a personality trait. It is not something you are either born with or without. Confidence is a skill. Like drafting a contract or running a dispute, it is learned through practice and repetition. You do not wake up one day with it. You build it in the doing.
Lawyers often tell me they will post once they feel confident. But I’m sorry to say, it does not work like that. The confidence comes after the posting and not before. You show up first, then you prove to yourself that you can. You start gathering evidence that you can do the thing and that is where the growth is.
Also, we need to redefine what success looks like here.
Success is not likes, followers or views. Those are just vanity metrics. They do not reflect the impact you are making and they certainly do not reflect your worth.
Success, in the early stages, is simply showing up. Writing the post. Recording the video. Hitting publish even if nobody watches. You are “successful” the moment you stop thinking about it and start doing it.
There might be weeks where it feels like you are speaking into a void. That is normal. That is not failure. Every creator you admire went through that stage. The ones who made it through were the ones who kept going. Who kept paying the toll. 98% don’t.
There is no magic formula. No hack. No perfect system. The only way through is consistency. Through action you will find your voice, your audience, your style. You will evolve. You will iterate. You will cringe at old work. You will redo, rewrite and adjust. That is the point. You fall in love with the journey and the journey becomes the way.
I am still doing this now, today.
Every week I am shifting, growing and showing up as I am on that day. And the next day, I will be slightly different. That is what makes this practice so powerful.
So, if you are waiting until you have the perfect words, the perfect brand or the perfect idea, you will be waiting forever. The perfect moment does not exist. The only thing that matters is that you start where you are and with what you have.
Your awkward beginning is enough.
Your messy first draft is enough.
You are enough.
Create.
Now.
Go.
✨
