There was a point in my career where I was almost six figures in debt.
I don’t say that often. It’s not a fun number to write down.
For a while, I looked for something to blame.
Clients. Competitors. The economy.
Some of that was real. External things can hit you hard.
But when I was finally honest with myself, the explanation looked very different. It wasn’t a list of things that happened to me. It was a list of things I hadn’t done.
I didn’t do the uncomfortable outreach.
I didn’t follow up.
I didn’t reconnect with past clients often enough.
I didn’t prepare properly for calls.
I didn’t communicate clearly.
I didn’t set boundaries.
Every one of those was mine.
Admitting that felt worse than any amount of blaming. It was also the only thing that helped. You can’t fix the economy, and you can’t fix how a client pays. But every line on that list was something I could start doing the next morning.
Blame feels like relief.
It just moves the problem somewhere you can’t reach it.
Owning it puts it back in your hands.
I still make mistakes, like everyone does. But I try to spend my energy on the part I can actually change, because nobody else is going to build this business for me.
Nobody’s going to build yours either.
– Moritz
Tiny tactical tip:
Write your own list tonight. Leave out what went wrong this year and write down what you didn’t do. Only include things you could start tomorrow. Then pick one line and do it before Friday.