102. The Hidden Cost of Waiting to Feel Ready
Have you ever thought to yourself, “I’ll start once I feel ready”? Maybe you’re waiting for more clarity, more confidence, or more time. But what if the real cost of waiting isn’t just time, but your progress and momentum?
In this episode, I dive into the hidden cost of waiting to feel ready and how staying in the “waiting space” keeps you stuck. We often believe that readiness looks like confidence and certainty, but the reality is that those things come after we start taking action. I show you how waiting to feel ready keeps you from making progress, and what small steps you can take today to start moving forward.
You’ll also hear how taking action before you feel ready can help you build the confidence and clarity you’re waiting for, and how this shift can unlock new momentum for you and your business. If you’ve been stuck in the “waiting space,” this conversation will show you how to break free and move forward now.
Ready for clarity and a simple action plan to get your business started? Schedule a free 1-hour consultation with me here!
What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
The hidden cost of waiting to feel ready and how it’s keeping you stuck.
Why confidence and clarity come from action, not from waiting.
How to recognize when you’re stuck in the “waiting space.”
Why taking action, even when it feels messy, can unlock new momentum.
The small steps you can take today to move forward, even if you don’t feel ready.
Listen to the Full Episode:
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Episodes Related to The Hidden Cost of Waiting to Feel Ready:
25. Reparenting: Find Joy as a Parent and Energy for Your Business with Crystal Haitsma
96. How Starting a Business as a Mom Can Give Your Family More, Not Less
101. What It Actually Looks Like to Start Before You Feel Ready
Full Episode Transcript:
This is episode 102 of the How to Quit Your Job podcast. And I've been thinking a lot about how long we sit on ideas. How something can live in our heads for months, even years before we actually do anything about it. And if you've been in that space where you keep thinking about starting something, you keep thinking about building a business, but you haven't taken that first step yet, or maybe the next step, we're going to change that with today's conversation.
Welcome to How to Quit Your Job, the podcast for moms ready to ditch the nine-to-five and build a life and business they love. I’m your host, Jenna Rykiel. Let’s go.
Hi mom friends. Today I want to talk to all the moms out there who can't stop thinking about starting a business but haven't actually started yet. What I want to do today is really talk about something that I don't think we recognize or call out enough, and it's the space in between wanting something more and actually going after that thing, actually starting. Because a lot of us live there in this in-between space for a really long time. We think about it, we analyze it, we revisit it over and over again, and we don't always realize that this in-between space, this waiting place, is doing more harm than good.
What I see over and over again is that by the time a mom talks to me, she's already been thinking about starting a business for a long time, for months, oftentimes even years. And these moms will say something like, I've been thinking about this for a while, or I've always wanted to create something of my own, or I've always seen myself as an entrepreneur.
And what I know and what I've seen and witnessed is that every single time, once they start, they wish they would have started sooner. Because what they realize after they start is that they were capable all along. They see themselves as capable, and confidence builds once they get started. They often wait because they want to feel more confident, more ready, more capable.
I've been in this boat before, which I'll talk about in a couple of minutes, but that confidence doesn't come before they start. It comes because they started. When we start, we're doing things we never did before, and it creates opportunities for learning and growth and getting to know more about ourselves. But it's so easy to put off starting for so many reasons. And we have a lot of good reasons.
We love waiting. We love researching. We love deciding whether something is a good idea or not before we even start. And I know this well. I am a waiter, not at a restaurant anymore, but I am a waiter for sure. I'm getting better as I have more and more evidence that waiting to feel ready for something holds me back and gets in the way of my personal and business growth. I can now look back in hindsight and really see the cost of waiting.
I was in corporate for over a decade, and at least six of those years, which I've talked about before, I had this feeling that there was something more for me, but I didn't know where to start, so I waited. I waited to figure out my idea. I waited to figure out my niche. I waited to figure out my website. I waited because I wanted to feel more ready, more clear, more confident before starting. And all of that waiting really felt responsible. It felt like I was being thoughtful and mitigating risk.
But what I see now is that I wasn't actually figuring things out while I was waiting. I was actually delaying figuring those things out because you figure things out by starting, by moving, by doing, by taking small steps, by trying things. We can only figure out so much by thinking. There's only so much value that thinking can add to a decision, and then it does more harm than good.
My grandfather, who died when I was still pretty young, I was in middle school, but I have so many great memories of him, he used to say, you think long, you think wrong. And of course, in middle school, that meant absolutely nothing to me. But now, as an adult who is constantly pulled into overthinking and overanalyzing, I see the wisdom in that saying.
When we are overthinking, and when we think long, as my pop-pop would say, we actually overanalyze and start focusing on the thoughts that are based on fear and worry. Then our actions are driven by that part of the thinking. So we think long, we think wrong, because when we're just thinking without doing, we're not really learning anything.
I'm not saying we have to be fast decision-makers on big life transitions and decisions. But if you're like me and you use thinking and waiting as an obstacle to starting, starting things that you really want, starting to create change, starting to create action, we're delaying ourselves from actually figuring things out. And there's ultimately a cost to waiting.
It makes me think of the book, Oh, the Places You'll Go. There's a page about the waiting place where people are just waiting, waiting for something to happen, waiting for the right time, waiting for things to feel different. And the more I think about it, that's exactly where so many of us are when it comes to starting something new. We're in the waiting place, waiting to feel ready, waiting for clarity, waiting to know it's going to work, but nothing really changes there. We just stay waiting in that loop, thinking about it instead of moving and figuring things out.
So when we're waiting, there's a cost to our growth because for as long as we're not starting, we're also not learning, we're not evolving, we're not getting better. Being in that waiting place in so many areas of my life has cost me so much. Even today, I still fall victim to that waiting place, and I can always look back in hindsight and see the cost, only after I actually take action and move.
So aside from what I shared in waiting to start my own business, I waited at least six years before truly taking action, which, by the way, I never really got to a place where I felt ready, necessarily. It was just the misery of staying became too heavy and uncomfortable, and I was almost forced to figure out the business stuff. But never actually fully felt ready to step into entrepreneurship. It was just taking action before I felt ready and building off of the momentum.
But aside from that, I still see patterns where I've waited to move, I've waited to take action, I've waited to commit, and it has cost me so much. I'm working with a coach right now. Like I've mentioned before, I'm always working with a coach, but I'm actually working with two coaches right now.
And one of those coaches, I actually had on the podcast in November 2020 in episode 25. We're at episode 102, so this was quite a long time ago. Her and I met, and we recorded the episode actually in summer of 2024. The episode went live in November, and I waited until June 2025 to set up a consultation with her. And then I waited another seven months before actually starting coaching with her this past January.
I'm five months into that year-long partnership, and the things I've learned and the ways I've grown have been so eye-opening and exciting. I initially hired her because I needed help with my relationship with my oldest son, Adley, who is three and a half. And if you go back and check out episode 25, you'll see that she is a parenting coach. So I wanted help with my relationship with my oldest son. We just bump heads a lot in a lot of ways, and I just wanted help.
The progress we've made in these past few months has made me so grateful, but also makes me feel a little bit sad. I think to myself, what if I had hired her in August 2024 when I was first introduced to her work and it sounded interesting and like something I could use from the beginning? What if I would have hired her then? How would that have changed my relationship with Adley for the better? He would have been two instead of three and a half when we're figuring these things out. How would that have been extra support that was so needed when I had my second son in September of that year?
So maybe instead of 2025 being filled with clashes between Adley and I and lots of tears and lots of venting, it could have been a lot of really fun memories and connection, a lot less tears, a lot less banging my head up against the wall.
The other coach I'm working with, I've been working with for the last year, and she's more of a business-focused coach. And even that coach, I've been in her world for over five years. It took me five years to make a move. I loved her stuff but kept telling myself that I wasn't ready. I worked with other coaches and got other business support that I don't regret at all.
But now that I'm in her program and working with her after lurking for five years, I realize the cost to my business and my identity as an entrepreneur. Because had I had this type of support five years ago when I first learned about her work, I would have an even greater impact right now.
So I share these things to say like, I get it. If you are in the waiting place, I am someone who can sit in that waiting space for a long time. And this isn't me shaming anyone who is in that space at all. I definitely don't shame myself at all either. I reflect back from a place of trying to grow and learn from my past to inform how I want to do things better or more effective in the future.
And hands down, as I've gotten faster at making decisions, as I've gotten better at moving and taking action before I really feel ready, I've seen how powerful it is to actually move, to start, to try. It's better to try and something not work out or try and something to fail than to wait and gain nothing.
And whether that's something you're testing and starting a business, whether that's testing out or trying out support from a coach or a program that you want to learn from, anything new that you decide to start or try means you're moving, and that's the powerful piece. Because even just a few months of action and moving, you grow more than you do in years of thinking.
Two moms reached out to me recently, both saying, okay, Jenna, now I'm ready. Both of them had been in my world for over a year. They both knew my work very closely, and they were both waiting for the right time. And I'm so glad that they have come to me, and now is the right time, and they're going to get started with support and started with their business and taking action and creating change.
But it made me think, what if they were actually ready a year ago? What if they were ready, they just didn't really know it? They were waiting for a certain feeling that never came, but they were actually more ready than they thought. Like, what could have changed in that year? What could they have built? What could they have learned if they just believed they were ready?
Readiness is not scientific. It's not objective. It's not a yes or no question, right? Readiness ebbs and flows depending on the day. It evolves as we take more action. So readiness itself is not a good measure of whether or not we take action. Readiness actually holds us back because if we're waiting for readiness, we're waiting for something that's so intangible and inconsistent, I'd say. And if that thing we're waiting for, that feeling or that clarity or that readiness, whatever it is, if it doesn't come for a few months, a few years, or if it doesn't come ever, we're losing time that we could have been learning and growing through trying and starting. Because the impact of starting, even a little earlier, is actually massive.
So again, there's a cost to waiting, a cost to your growth, a cost to your impact, a cost to your life. So what if you're ready now and you just don't know it yet? What if you're ready to take action, you're ready to start that business, you're ready to try, but you just don't know it yet? What would you do differently if you decided you were ready to move even if you didn't feel ready? How would your life be different if you stepped out of the waiting place and started moving towards building something of your own?
I want you to also think about for yourself, what is the cost of not starting? What does your life look like in six months if nothing changes? What does it feel like to be in the same position, doing the same things six months from now or even a year from now?
Because the unfortunate thing about the waiting place, when we are waiting for the right time, when we are waiting to feel ready, when we are waiting for a sign that we should get started, when you stay where you are, you don't stay neutral. You slowly lose trust with yourself. You build resentment, you feel more stuck, and then it's harder to get unstuck. You get more and more evidence that you can't do something because you continue to prove that you haven't done it yet.
But when you start, even in a small way, everything shifts. You start learning, you start growing, you start gaining clarity. You truly are able to ride the wave of momentum to keep going. And all of that comes from one decision, the decision to start, not when you feel ready, but right now.
Because once you recognize that you've been in this waiting place that I've talked about, you also get to decide what you want to do with that. You can keep waiting, you can keep thinking, you can keep analyzing, and keep hoping that someday it will feel easier or clearer, or you'll feel more ready. Or you can decide that you're done waiting to feel ready and you're willing to start figuring it out as you go.
Last week, I talked about what starting before you feel ready actually looks like. I gave really powerful examples from my own business and the businesses that my clients have started and built. And if you're catching this live, tomorrow, April 30th, I'll be hosting a webinar that goes even deeper into this topic. We'll walk through why you might not feel ready and what's actually going on. We're going to talk about what creates confidence and clarity and how to start moving, especially if you still feel unsure.
If you're not catching this live and you missed out on that opportunity, that's okay. Be sure to follow the podcast because I'm always offering these new opportunities to take steps in your business that feel doable, but also that help create momentum.
So what I want you to do from here is I really want you to think to yourself, am I in that waiting place? Am I waiting for a certain sign, a certain feeling, a moment of clarity? And what if I am more ready than I think? What if I can learn more by deciding to take action and move and start to bring this idea to life than I would if I just stayed thinking and waiting?
And then I would love for you to go take one step, one small step, whether that is listening to another episode of this podcast to get even more inspiration and ideas on what those steps could be. Maybe that's reaching out to somebody in your network and talking about your ideas. Maybe that's having an honest conversation with your partner or loved ones about what it might look like for you to start your own business.
Whatever that step is for you, I know that there are actions that you can take today that you are waiting to take. For whatever reason you're waiting, I want you to consider deciding that you are ready right now.
Also, keep listening. Have the courage to start and remember that you don't have to do this all alone. There are so many resources and avenues for support out there. Follow the podcast. It's a weekly coach in your pocket, in your ear. Binge one through 100 if you haven't listened to them already, and I will see you next week for 103.
Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of How to Quit Your Job: A Mom’s Guide to Creating a Life and Business You Love. If you want to learn more about how I can help you stop making excuses and start making moves, head on over to www.jenna.coach. I’ll see you next week.
Welcome to How to Quit Your Job, the podcast for moms ready to ditch the nine-to-five and build a life and business they love. I’m your host, Jenna Rykiel. Let’s go.
Hi mom friends. Today I want to talk to all the moms out there who can't stop thinking about starting a business but haven't actually started yet. What I want to do today is really talk about something that I don't think we recognize or call out enough, and it's the space in between wanting something more and actually going after that thing, actually starting. Because a lot of us live there in this in-between space for a really long time. We think about it, we analyze it, we revisit it over and over again, and we don't always realize that this in-between space, this waiting place, is doing more harm than good.
What I see over and over again is that by the time a mom talks to me, she's already been thinking about starting a business for a long time, for months, oftentimes even years. And these moms will say something like, I've been thinking about this for a while, or I've always wanted to create something of my own, or I've always seen myself as an entrepreneur.
And what I know and what I've seen and witnessed is that every single time, once they start, they wish they would have started sooner. Because what they realize after they start is that they were capable all along. They see themselves as capable, and confidence builds once they get started. They often wait because they want to feel more confident, more ready, more capable.
I've been in this boat before, which I'll talk about in a couple of minutes, but that confidence doesn't come before they start. It comes because they started. When we start, we're doing things we never did before, and it creates opportunities for learning and growth and getting to know more about ourselves. But it's so easy to put off starting for so many reasons. And we have a lot of good reasons.
We love waiting. We love researching. We love deciding whether something is a good idea or not before we even start. And I know this well. I am a waiter, not at a restaurant anymore, but I am a waiter for sure. I'm getting better as I have more and more evidence that waiting to feel ready for something holds me back and gets in the way of my personal and business growth. I can now look back in hindsight and really see the cost of waiting.
I was in corporate for over a decade, and at least six of those years, which I've talked about before, I had this feeling that there was something more for me, but I didn't know where to start, so I waited. I waited to figure out my idea. I waited to figure out my niche. I waited to figure out my website. I waited because I wanted to feel more ready, more clear, more confident before starting. And all of that waiting really felt responsible. It felt like I was being thoughtful and mitigating risk.
But what I see now is that I wasn't actually figuring things out while I was waiting. I was actually delaying figuring those things out because you figure things out by starting, by moving, by doing, by taking small steps, by trying things. We can only figure out so much by thinking. There's only so much value that thinking can add to a decision, and then it does more harm than good.
My grandfather, who died when I was still pretty young, I was in middle school, but I have so many great memories of him, he used to say, you think long, you think wrong. And of course, in middle school, that meant absolutely nothing to me. But now, as an adult who is constantly pulled into overthinking and overanalyzing, I see the wisdom in that saying.
When we are overthinking, and when we think long, as my pop-pop would say, we actually overanalyze and start focusing on the thoughts that are based on fear and worry. Then our actions are driven by that part of the thinking. So we think long, we think wrong, because when we're just thinking without doing, we're not really learning anything.
I'm not saying we have to be fast decision-makers on big life transitions and decisions. But if you're like me and you use thinking and waiting as an obstacle to starting, starting things that you really want, starting to create change, starting to create action, we're delaying ourselves from actually figuring things out. And there's ultimately a cost to waiting.
It makes me think of the book, Oh, the Places You'll Go. There's a page about the waiting place where people are just waiting, waiting for something to happen, waiting for the right time, waiting for things to feel different. And the more I think about it, that's exactly where so many of us are when it comes to starting something new. We're in the waiting place, waiting to feel ready, waiting for clarity, waiting to know it's going to work, but nothing really changes there. We just stay waiting in that loop, thinking about it instead of moving and figuring things out.
So when we're waiting, there's a cost to our growth because for as long as we're not starting, we're also not learning, we're not evolving, we're not getting better. Being in that waiting place in so many areas of my life has cost me so much. Even today, I still fall victim to that waiting place, and I can always look back in hindsight and see the cost, only after I actually take action and move.
So aside from what I shared in waiting to start my own business, I waited at least six years before truly taking action, which, by the way, I never really got to a place where I felt ready, necessarily. It was just the misery of staying became too heavy and uncomfortable, and I was almost forced to figure out the business stuff. But never actually fully felt ready to step into entrepreneurship. It was just taking action before I felt ready and building off of the momentum.
But aside from that, I still see patterns where I've waited to move, I've waited to take action, I've waited to commit, and it has cost me so much. I'm working with a coach right now. Like I've mentioned before, I'm always working with a coach, but I'm actually working with two coaches right now.
And one of those coaches, I actually had on the podcast in November 2020 in episode 25. We're at episode 102, so this was quite a long time ago. Her and I met, and we recorded the episode actually in summer of 2024. The episode went live in November, and I waited until June 2025 to set up a consultation with her. And then I waited another seven months before actually starting coaching with her this past January.
I'm five months into that year-long partnership, and the things I've learned and the ways I've grown have been so eye-opening and exciting. I initially hired her because I needed help with my relationship with my oldest son, Adley, who is three and a half. And if you go back and check out episode 25, you'll see that she is a parenting coach. So I wanted help with my relationship with my oldest son. We just bump heads a lot in a lot of ways, and I just wanted help.
The progress we've made in these past few months has made me so grateful, but also makes me feel a little bit sad. I think to myself, what if I had hired her in August 2024 when I was first introduced to her work and it sounded interesting and like something I could use from the beginning? What if I would have hired her then? How would that have changed my relationship with Adley for the better? He would have been two instead of three and a half when we're figuring these things out. How would that have been extra support that was so needed when I had my second son in September of that year?
So maybe instead of 2025 being filled with clashes between Adley and I and lots of tears and lots of venting, it could have been a lot of really fun memories and connection, a lot less tears, a lot less banging my head up against the wall.
The other coach I'm working with, I've been working with for the last year, and she's more of a business-focused coach. And even that coach, I've been in her world for over five years. It took me five years to make a move. I loved her stuff but kept telling myself that I wasn't ready. I worked with other coaches and got other business support that I don't regret at all.
But now that I'm in her program and working with her after lurking for five years, I realize the cost to my business and my identity as an entrepreneur. Because had I had this type of support five years ago when I first learned about her work, I would have an even greater impact right now.
So I share these things to say like, I get it. If you are in the waiting place, I am someone who can sit in that waiting space for a long time. And this isn't me shaming anyone who is in that space at all. I definitely don't shame myself at all either. I reflect back from a place of trying to grow and learn from my past to inform how I want to do things better or more effective in the future.
And hands down, as I've gotten faster at making decisions, as I've gotten better at moving and taking action before I really feel ready, I've seen how powerful it is to actually move, to start, to try. It's better to try and something not work out or try and something to fail than to wait and gain nothing.
And whether that's something you're testing and starting a business, whether that's testing out or trying out support from a coach or a program that you want to learn from, anything new that you decide to start or try means you're moving, and that's the powerful piece. Because even just a few months of action and moving, you grow more than you do in years of thinking.
Two moms reached out to me recently, both saying, okay, Jenna, now I'm ready. Both of them had been in my world for over a year. They both knew my work very closely, and they were both waiting for the right time. And I'm so glad that they have come to me, and now is the right time, and they're going to get started with support and started with their business and taking action and creating change.
But it made me think, what if they were actually ready a year ago? What if they were ready, they just didn't really know it? They were waiting for a certain feeling that never came, but they were actually more ready than they thought. Like, what could have changed in that year? What could they have built? What could they have learned if they just believed they were ready?
Readiness is not scientific. It's not objective. It's not a yes or no question, right? Readiness ebbs and flows depending on the day. It evolves as we take more action. So readiness itself is not a good measure of whether or not we take action. Readiness actually holds us back because if we're waiting for readiness, we're waiting for something that's so intangible and inconsistent, I'd say. And if that thing we're waiting for, that feeling or that clarity or that readiness, whatever it is, if it doesn't come for a few months, a few years, or if it doesn't come ever, we're losing time that we could have been learning and growing through trying and starting. Because the impact of starting, even a little earlier, is actually massive.
So again, there's a cost to waiting, a cost to your growth, a cost to your impact, a cost to your life. So what if you're ready now and you just don't know it yet? What if you're ready to take action, you're ready to start that business, you're ready to try, but you just don't know it yet? What would you do differently if you decided you were ready to move even if you didn't feel ready? How would your life be different if you stepped out of the waiting place and started moving towards building something of your own?
I want you to also think about for yourself, what is the cost of not starting? What does your life look like in six months if nothing changes? What does it feel like to be in the same position, doing the same things six months from now or even a year from now?
Because the unfortunate thing about the waiting place, when we are waiting for the right time, when we are waiting to feel ready, when we are waiting for a sign that we should get started, when you stay where you are, you don't stay neutral. You slowly lose trust with yourself. You build resentment, you feel more stuck, and then it's harder to get unstuck. You get more and more evidence that you can't do something because you continue to prove that you haven't done it yet.
But when you start, even in a small way, everything shifts. You start learning, you start growing, you start gaining clarity. You truly are able to ride the wave of momentum to keep going. And all of that comes from one decision, the decision to start, not when you feel ready, but right now.
Because once you recognize that you've been in this waiting place that I've talked about, you also get to decide what you want to do with that. You can keep waiting, you can keep thinking, you can keep analyzing, and keep hoping that someday it will feel easier or clearer, or you'll feel more ready. Or you can decide that you're done waiting to feel ready and you're willing to start figuring it out as you go.
Last week, I talked about what starting before you feel ready actually looks like. I gave really powerful examples from my own business and the businesses that my clients have started and built. And if you're catching this live, tomorrow, April 30th, I'll be hosting a webinar that goes even deeper into this topic. We'll walk through why you might not feel ready and what's actually going on. We're going to talk about what creates confidence and clarity and how to start moving, especially if you still feel unsure.
If you're not catching this live and you missed out on that opportunity, that's okay. Be sure to follow the podcast because I'm always offering these new opportunities to take steps in your business that feel doable, but also that help create momentum.
So what I want you to do from here is I really want you to think to yourself, am I in that waiting place? Am I waiting for a certain sign, a certain feeling, a moment of clarity? And what if I am more ready than I think? What if I can learn more by deciding to take action and move and start to bring this idea to life than I would if I just stayed thinking and waiting?
And then I would love for you to go take one step, one small step, whether that is listening to another episode of this podcast to get even more inspiration and ideas on what those steps could be. Maybe that's reaching out to somebody in your network and talking about your ideas. Maybe that's having an honest conversation with your partner or loved ones about what it might look like for you to start your own business.
Whatever that step is for you, I know that there are actions that you can take today that you are waiting to take. For whatever reason you're waiting, I want you to consider deciding that you are ready right now.
Also, keep listening. Have the courage to start and remember that you don't have to do this all alone. There are so many resources and avenues for support out there. Follow the podcast. It's a weekly coach in your pocket, in your ear. Binge one through 100 if you haven't listened to them already, and I will see you next week for 103.
Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of How to Quit Your Job: A Mom’s Guide to Creating a Life and Business You Love. If you want to learn more about how I can help you stop making excuses and start making moves, head on over to www.jenna.coach. I’ll see you next week.
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