I wasn’t in the mood to be hopeful that day.
That is probably the funniest part.
I wasn’t sitting there with a vision board open, candles burning, feeling particularly aligned with the universe, writing affirmations about abundance and pretending I had no idea how my bills were going to be paid.
No.
I was frustrated.
Properly frustrated.
The kind where you get tired of hearing yourself think.
Tired of trying to figure things out.
Tired of rebuilding things that you feel like you shouldn’t have had to rebuild in the first place.
Tired of looking at your business and thinking, “Okay, but how exactly are we supposed to make this work?”
And somewhere in the middle of that frustration, I remembered something I had said before.
I had dared the universe to show me how good it could get.
Not asked.
Dared.
There is a difference.
I had essentially said, Fine. You say you’ve got everything. You say there is abundance. You say things can work out. You say I should trust the process. Okay then. Show me.
And apparently, the universe had been waiting for me to shut up and make room.
Because shortly after that, I got three fully paid online orders overnight.
At once.
Three.
Paid.
Online.
From people who didn’t need to come to a physical shop, inspect everything, negotiate endlessly, ask whether I was a scammer, or hand me a deposit and promise to clear the balance later.
They saw the website.
They trusted it.
They paid.
And I just sat there staring at the orders.
Like…
“Oh.”
“So we’re doing this?”
The timing was almost comical.
Because if you knew what my business had been through lately, you would understand why those orders felt bigger than three orders.
I have been rebuilding.
Again.
I had lost almost 200 Google reviews after my business location became unavailable.
Almost 200.
Reviews that had taken years to accumulate.
Years of customers buying from me, experiencing the service, leaving feedback, building the little digital reputation that makes an online business feel legitimate.
Gone.
And because I operate primarily as an online gift shop, that wasn’t some tiny inconvenience.
It mattered.
Trust matters when you’re selling online.
Especially when you’re asking someone to send money to a business they can’t physically walk into.
People want to know:
Are you real?
Will my order arrive?
Can I trust you?
Is this business actually somewhere?
And suddenly, I had to rebuild the evidence.
The website.
The visibility.
Google Business.
The credibility.
The trust.
Again.
There was a part of me that wanted to sit down and mourn it.
“Seriously? After everything?”
But another part of me was getting increasingly tired of treating every setback like a funeral.
So I rebuilt.
Not perfectly.
Not with some elaborate master plan.
I just started putting things back together.
And then I did something that surprised even me.
I stopped trying so hard to control the outcome.
I decided to give it a leap of faith.
Whatever happens, happens.
I had done the overthinking.
I had considered every possible way things could go wrong.
I had imagined customers refusing to pay.
I had worried about trust.
I had worried about slow sales.
I had worried about the reviews.
I had worried about the next month.
I had worried about the busy season.
I had worried about practically everything there was to worry about.
And at some point I thought:
“You know what? I’m doing it anyway.”
And I have become increasingly intentional about how I run my business.
Sometimes I genuinely surprise myself.
Because the woman I am becoming doesn’t make the same decisions the old me would have made.
I’ve removed cash on delivery.
I’ve removed half payments.
And yes, I know.
For an online gift shop, especially in Kenya, that can feel like deliberately making things harder for yourself.
But I’ve gotten to a point where I have decided that not every customer is my customer.
If someone doesn’t want to pay upfront, they can leave.
And that sentence would have terrified an earlier version of me.
Because when you’re worried about sales, you start thinking every customer is precious.
You start bending.
Negotiating.
Accommodating.
Compromising.
“Maybe I should allow this.”
“Maybe I’ll lose the sale.”
“Maybe they’ll go somewhere else.”
“Maybe I should just accept the deposit.”
And before you know it, you’re running your business from fear of losing customers instead of confidence in what you’re building.
I’m not interested in that anymore.
I would rather have fewer customers who trust my business than build a business around chasing people who don’t.
And I don’t say that arrogantly.
I say it because I’ve finally started understanding the difference between being desperate for a sale and building a company.
Those are not the same thing.
Maybe that’s why the three orders hit me differently.
Because they weren’t just sales.
They were evidence.
Evidence that somebody can find my website.
Evidence that somebody can look at an online business that has been rebuilding its reputation and still say:
“Yes. I’ll trust you.”
Evidence that losing those reviews didn’t erase everything I had built.
Evidence that starting again doesn’t necessarily mean starting from zero.
And perhaps most importantly, evidence that sometimes you have to move before you have proof that moving will work.
That’s the part nobody talks about enough.
Faith is uncomfortable when you’re a business owner.
Because you want data.
You want certainty.
You want guarantees.
You want to know:
“If I do X, will I definitely get Y?”
But business doesn’t work like that.
Neither does life.
Sometimes you rebuild the website.
You fix the systems.
You improve the offer.
You make the decision.
You put yourself out there.
And then you wait.
And while you’re waiting, your brain starts screaming:
“What if nobody comes?”
And you have to answer:
“Then I’ll figure out what to do next.”
That has become one of the biggest shifts in me.
I don’t need certainty anymore.
I need enough courage to take the next step.
The old me wanted a guarantee before taking the leap.
The woman I’m becoming takes the leap and trusts herself to deal with whatever happens afterward.
That’s different.
Because when I say I took a leap of faith, I don’t mean I sat around doing nothing and expected the universe to drop money into my account.
I rebuilt.
I made the website better.
I worked on Google.
I kept showing up.
I kept creating.
I kept thinking about how to diversify.
I kept learning.
I kept making decisions that aligned with the business I actually want.
Then I said:
“Okay. I’ve done my part. Now let’s see what happens.”
And three paid orders showed up.
I laughed.
Because what else do you do when life responds to your challenge with receipts?
I think I have been learning a strange lesson about abundance.
Abundance isn’t always a huge cheque.
Sometimes it’s three orders arriving on a day when you were mentally preparing yourself for another disappointing day.
Sometimes it’s a customer you didn’t expect.
Sometimes it’s somebody paying without being chased.
Sometimes it’s realizing that a decision you were terrified to make hasn’t destroyed your business.
Sometimes it’s having enough courage to say:
“No, these are my terms.”
And being okay with whoever walks away.
Sometimes abundance is not getting more.
Sometimes it is becoming less afraid of having less.
That one has been particularly important for me.
Because fear makes you cling.
And clinging makes you compromise.
And compromise, when repeated enough, can quietly build a business you don’t even enjoy running.
I don’t want that.
I want a business that works for me too.
There is something oddly powerful about saying:
“If you don’t want to pay upfront, that’s okay.”
Not because I don’t want the sale.
Of course I want the sale.
I run a business.
I like money.
I would actually love for people to throw money at my business consistently.
But I am learning that wanting money doesn’t mean I have to abandon every standard I have just because I’m afraid of losing a customer.
That’s not abundance.
That’s scarcity wearing a business suit.
And I’ve worn that suit enough.
I’m taking it off.
Maybe that is what surprised me most about myself.
I am becoming intentional in ways that sometimes shock me.
I used to think being intentional meant having everything perfectly planned.
Now I think it means knowing what you’re no longer willing to tolerate.
It means knowing what kind of business you’re trying to build.
It means knowing what kind of customer experience you want.
It means knowing what you need financially.
It means being able to say no even when saying yes would bring immediate money.
It means understanding that one sale isn’t worth creating a system that will exhaust you later.
It means building something sustainable instead of constantly improvising your way through emergencies.
And maybe I’m finally getting there.
Not completely.
God, no.
I’m still me.
I still overthink.
I still have moments where I stare at numbers too long.
I still have days where one disappointing thing can make me question ten things that were perfectly fine yesterday.
But something has shifted.
I recover faster.
I make decisions faster.
I trust myself more.
And I’m less interested in negotiating with myself.
That day, after the three orders came in, I thought about the dare.
“Show me how good it can get.”
Maybe I expected some massive cosmic event.
Maybe I expected a huge breakthrough.
Instead, I got three orders.
And honestly?
That’s probably more meaningful.
Because the universe didn’t need to prove itself with fireworks.
It just needed to remind me:
Things can work.
Even after losing almost 200 reviews.
Even after rebuilding.
Even when customers are skeptical.
Even when the market is slow.
Even when you change your policies.
Even when you’re scared.
Even when you don’t know exactly what comes next.
Things can still work.
And now I want to be careful with this story.
Because I don’t want to turn it into one of those “I manifested three orders and therefore all you need to do is think positively” stories.
No.
I was working.
The website didn’t rebuild itself.
The business didn’t become trustworthy because I wished for it.
The orders didn’t come because I sat on my bed and repeated an affirmation 500 times.
I had to actually build something people could trust.
I had to put the business out there.
I had to make the offer.
I had to accept the possibility that someone would say no.
I had to make decisions.
I had to keep showing up.
Faith met action.
That’s the part I don’t want to lose.
Because sometimes we say we are waiting for a sign when what we really need to do is move.
Sometimes we ask the universe for proof while refusing to give ourselves a chance to create any.
Sometimes we want the door to open before we even walk toward it.
I walked toward mine.
It wasn’t fully open.
I went anyway.
And perhaps this is where I’m different now.
I’m not waiting for everything to be perfect before I act.
The reviews aren’t all back.
The business isn’t exactly where I want it.
The printer situation isn’t magically solved.
The money isn’t infinite.
There are still debts.
There are still slow periods.
There are still things I’m figuring out.
But I’m no longer interpreting unfinished as failed.
That’s huge for me.
Because I have spent a lot of time thinking:
“If this isn’t working yet, maybe it isn’t working at all.”
Now I’m learning to think:
“It isn’t finished yet.”
Those are completely different thoughts.
One makes you quit.
The other makes you continue.
I think the three orders came at the perfect time.
Not because I needed proof that I was destined for success.
But because I needed a reminder that my effort isn’t happening into a void.
Someone is watching.
Someone is buying.
Someone is trusting.
Someone is saying yes.
And maybe tomorrow will be slow again.
Fine.
I’ll still be here.
Maybe next week will be frustrating.
Fine.
I’ll still rebuild.
Maybe something else will break.
Fine.
I’ll figure it out.
Because I’ve finally realized something:
I don’t need my business to prove itself to me every single day.
I need to keep building it.
That’s it.
So yes, I dared the universe.
I was frustrated.
I was tired.
I was probably a little dramatic.
I basically said:
“You claim you have everything. Fine. Show me how good this can get.”
And then three people paid me.
Fully.
Online.
At once.
I sat there smiling at my screen.
And for a moment, I didn’t need to know what happens next.
I just let myself enjoy the evidence.
Maybe that’s the lesson.
Sometimes you ask life to show you how good it can get, and the answer doesn’t arrive as the entire dream.
It arrives as the first three receipts.
A tiny glimpse.
A little wink.
A reminder.
“See? You weren’t crazy for believing this could work.”
So I’m taking the hint.
I’m rebuilding.
I’m refining.
I’m raising my standards.
I’m trusting my decisions.
I’m letting the wrong customers walk away.
I’m making room for the right ones.
And I’m going to keep asking a slightly more dangerous question:
If this is what happened when I finally stopped being afraid and took the leap, what happens when I keep going?
I guess we’ll find out.
I dared the universe once.
I’m not sure I’m done daring it yet.
