By Pippa Moyle
Pippa Moyle built a national women’s network with no plan, no capital, and no certainty. This honest, hilarious reflection on fear, freelancing, and figuring it out will leave you braver and more confident in your own messy path.
⚖️ DISCLAIMER (SMALL PRINT AS A DEEP NOTE)
This article contains personal reflections on self-employment, trauma, housing instability, and women’s health. It is intended for inspirational purposes only. If you are experiencing emotional distress or require support, please contact a licensed professional or reach out to a support organisation in your area.
The Confidence of Not Knowing What You’re Doing
I don’t know what I’m doing and I don’t know how I got here.
That’s the honest truth.
I’ve spent the last nine years building a community of 160,000 women across 25 communities across the UK. I’ve worked with thousands of volunteers, hundreds of businesses, and been responsible for thousands of events.
I’ve helped thousands of women find jobs, friends, business connections, travel companions, housemates, and things to do in the city. A far-too-high percentage of those thousands have found refuge and support from physical, sexual and emotional violence too.
How?
No idea.
I’m writing a book about it to try and figure it out. Though, it’ll help you more than it’ll help me. I have to keep moving forward – nine years ahead.
When I pitched this piece to Elif, she laughed. I imagine you also had a little giggle at the first sentence. Perhaps with a light nod that you feel that way too. It’s the same reaction I get when I answer the question:
“How did YOU build THAT?!”
Really, I have no idea.
It’s not an attempt to be humble – though my early beginnings told me that’s the only way to be a nice human. Nor is it a call for you to refuel my self esteem.
It’s the truth as I see it. The most liberating, comforting, confidence-soaring truth that there is.
Sometimes, it’s a truth that can cause a sense of panic; like when I became an employer for the first time and was suddenly responsible for another person’s livelihood. I left the PAYE life and ventured into self employment when I was 24. I’m not sure I’ve ever truly understood what a payslip was. Yet, there I was, giving payslips to other people.
It’s also a truth that creates exhilaration; like the first morning I woke up as a full-time self employed person. My schedule was my own. No more holiday forms, office rules, and overstimulating environments. No more turning down opportunities for the City Girl Network because I was on someone else’s time. No more daydreaming of working for myself. I didn’t know what I was doing, and that was the best feeling ever.
For context, I’d chosen to leave that stable PAYE job to give the City Girl Network a chance to thrive as a business. Brighton Girl was nearly a year old and it had already spun out into Edinburgh and Berlin. But, without any capital or business knowledge, the only way I could fund myself and the business was to be a digital marketing freelancer. I didn’t know how to do that, either.
Please don’t stop reading at this point and assume that the best way to move forward is to quit your job without a plan. That’s definitely not the lesson.
To be clear, I was 24 with no mortgage, children, pets or dependents, so the only person I was responsible for was myself. I was armed with the fearless naïvety of being in your early twenties; I had very little professional experience and just a month’s rent in savings.
That summer, I became homeless following a relationship breakdown, sofa surfed for three months because I was too broke for a houseshare deposit, and was being tested for both cervical and breast cancer. I had no idea what I was doing, where I was staying, and how to advocate for myself in the healthcare system.
Until, I did.
You see, with every experience comes a lesson on how to go through it. You may not have gotten it right at the time, but you can reflect on how to do it in the future. Like the time I tried to keep my knickers on for my first smear test.
“I’m testing your fanny, not your knicker fibre,” said the nurse, leading us both into hysterics.
I nearly wet myself from laughter in a smear test because I didn’t have the bravery to admit I was clueless.
Bravery. That’s the lesson.
Embrace the reality that you don’t know what you’re doing, and bravely seek answers.
When I say “I don’t know what I’m doing”, I’m really saying “I don’t know how to step forward”. Not from a strategic, “blue sky thinking” perspective – literally, one-foot-forward on tasks I’ve not tackled before. Those tasks, from setting up new automated email marketing campaigns to VAT registering your company, have the power to cripple me with self doubt.
But I’ve found great comfort in a one minute panic party saying
“F****K, I don’t know what I’m doing”
out loud (mostly to my dog), followed by swiftly working it out for myself.
A quick dramatic outburst sweeps away the self doubt and forces me to see my situation more clearly: I’m not a worthless pile of poop who has no business playing in these waters, I just have a problem to solve.
Step by step, microtask by microtask, internet by internet, voice note by voice note, I work through it until my next panic party – when the cycle repeats itself.
There’s an archaic, invisible, make-believe stigma in asking for help. Surely, if we’ve made the choice to follow our dreams then we should have all the answers? I don’t know which of the patriarchal overlords planted that seed into society, but it’s utterly bonkers.
You’re walking a path that hasn’t yet been paved. Of course we should be asking for directions.
It’s up to you how you ask. Personally, I take the approach of a quick internet check, then talking to a human in the know. I know that technology is enabling rapid sharing of complex information, but I’m still of the mindset that you learn more from human interaction. Even when you’re trying to understand how to implement AI into your business – actually, especially then.
I may not be able to pinpoint the story arc of the last nine years of my life, without the indulgence of writing the whole story down. But I can recognise that the foundations of my ever-evolving story are glued together with my innate capacity to face the things I don’t know. You could label that as resilience, or agility, or confidence.
I’d take all three and sprinkle it with a deeply rooted belief that I’ll always work it out, supported by nine years of evidence.
After all, life isn’t about knowing the answers,
it’s about finding them – one step at a time.