Classes alone are great, but why not utilize multiple streams of income in your studio? Here's how Mud Hut built memberships, private events, and walk-ins into one connected system, and why thinking of them as separate offerings is the mistake to avoid.

From a backyard shed to $900K in revenue in three years. The real lessons behind growing Mud Hut Pottery Studio, for fellow studio owners.

You have a great week. Ideas are flowing. You can see exactly what you want to build and what your next move needs to be. You feel like yourself again. And then Monday morning comes and the voice clears its throat. Who do you think you are? You haven't done this long enough. What if they realize you don't belong here? Just like that, the woman who was dreaming on Sunday disappears. That is imposter syndrome. And for women building businesses, it is expensive. Not just emotionally. It delays offers, waters down pricing, and keeps brilliant women circling the same idea for years because some voice told them they needed more proof before they were allowed to begin.

I have spent many years afraid of ending up like my mother. Here is where that fear actually came from, and what I have learned about telling it apart from reality.

She did not ask to leave. She left because a younger woman walked into her department and spent the next year making it clear, without ever saying so directly, that there was no room for someone like her anymore. Three decades of experience in that field, treated like a liability instead of an asset. I spoke to her recently. She is not bitter. She is building. The wealth of knowledge a woman carries after forty is not a consolation prize for getting older. It is the asset. And the organization that pushed her out the door? She took the most valuable thing in the building with her when she left.

Feeling trapped in the business you built? A business diagnostic for entrepreneurs reveals how to stop trading time for money and build a true empire.

I want to talk about a quiet kind of financial risk that most women do not see. It looks like stability. It looks like a great job or a business doing well. It looks like the regular paycheck, the reliable client, the Tuesday deposit. It is one income stream. And one income stream is the riskiest position you can be in. One hundred percent of your financial life is dependent on one source continuing. One decision by one boss. One slow quarter. One algorithm change. That is not safety. That is a one-legged stool. And when it goes, it goes fast.

Eleven years ago, I rented out a spare room in my house as a short-term rental. Not a property. Not a portfolio. A bedroom I already owned and the willingness to let strangers stay in my home. That is what investing in real estate looked like for me on day one. Not strategic. Not visionary. Survival. But here is the thing about action: it doesn't care why you took it. It only cares that you took it. Eight doors didn't start with a brave act. They started with one small move I made when money was tight and I needed it to work.

Almost every woman I coach is waiting for the wrong thing. To feel ready. To feel certain. To feel fearless enough to finally act. That moment is not coming. Not because she is broken, but because that is simply not how this works. Action leads. Confidence follows. I built a pottery studio from a backyard shed because the phone rang before construction finished. I built a real estate portfolio of eight doors starting with a spare bedroom. Neither one happened because I felt ready. They happened because I stopped waiting and took one small step that proved I could take the next.

At 29, I had four kids, an unexpected divorce, no degree, and no plan. I drove a forklift at Lowe's by day, worked as a teacher's aide by night, and rented out my daughters' bedroom to pay rent. That's the external story money told. But beneath it, I had another story: what money meant, who it was for, and who I had to be to have it. I didn't know I was telling it. That's how beliefs work, silent and constant, shaping your choices. I now run two businesses and own a real estate portfolio. It wasn't the bank account that changed first. It was the brain.

I found this photo recently. It's me, the summer of 1976, at Lake Perris with my family. I am holding on to a kiddie raft, grinning like I don't have a care in the world. I almost didn't post it. Because I know what was happening in that little girl's world that the camera couldn't see. The voice that told her she was too much trouble, too much to deal with, too much full stop, started early and got loud. This post is what I would go back and tell her. And what I want every woman carrying that same voice to hear today.

I was a new school administrator when I asked my superintendent to mentor me. He leaned in with the tone that signals he was about to give me something valuable. He told me that women in leadership make a mistake when they get loud and bold. Then he smiled and said, "Tricia, the best thing you can do is remember you are a woman. Be meek and mild." He meant it as a gift. It took me years to understand what he actually said: be quiet, be small, know your place. This post is about what that cost me, and what I did with it.

Last night I was dancing at a quinceañera. This morning I was hosting our Mother's Day Tea at Mud Hut. Tonight I am at my desk building my coaching business. This is what entrepreneurship actually looks like. Not the highlight reel. The whole day. You think you are not ready to start the business, launch the idea, make the move. But you have been managing the impossible for years. The job and the kids. The side hustle and the school pickups. The dream you keep carrying while you fold laundry at 10pm. You have been ready. You have been training for this your whole life.

I am writing this from the massage table. Hour one of my monthly appointment, the same one I keep on the calendar whether the month was easy or whether it broke me. The D in BOLD is Develop Wealth, and most women think that means deals, doors, and income streams. It does. But Develop Wealth is also about protecting the asset that produces all of it. You are that asset. If you burn her out, the whole portfolio stops compounding. There is no real estate strategy, no business model, no investment thesis that works without her. You are the most valuable thing in your portfolio. Start treating her that way.

Eleven years ago, I wrote a commercial. Not for Instagram. Not for a website. Not for anyone. I wrote it for me. I was a rookie salesperson, riddled with self-doubt, bumping my head against a ceiling that was clearly inside me, not outside. A 1959 book called The Magic of Thinking Big gave me the assignment: sell yourself to yourself. Write the commercial. Read it out loud. Every morning. In the mirror. I felt like a complete fraud doing it. By the end of that year, I had sold nearly two million dollars. Here is the exercise, and why it works.

There comes a moment in every bold woman's journey where the work changes. You believed it. You moved before you felt ready. You proved that action cures fear. And now you have something real on your hands, a business that exists, customers who are paying you, something bigger than you can run on instinct anymore. This is where most women aren't prepared. This is Launch and Lead. The scrappy energy that got you off the ground will not build you a real business that lasts. Structure will. Systems will. A CEO mindset will. You are not a hobbyist. Build like one.

I have been the top producer. I built a pottery studio from scratch in under three years. I have a real estate portfolio, a master's degree, twelve years in education, a decade in sales. And for a long time, I still walked into rooms underestimating what I had to offer. Still priced my time like I was asking for a favor. That is not a confidence problem. That is a belief problem. And it is one of the most expensive problems an entrepreneur can have. You cannot out-execute a broken belief system. The B comes first because without it, nothing else holds.

There is a lie that keeps capable women small, and almost no one names it out loud. The lie is that you are supposed to feel ready before you move. That confidence comes first. That the perfect moment is real and you should keep waiting for it. It doesn't work that way. Confidence isn't a permission slip you receive. It's a receipt you earn, and you only get it after the action. Mud Hut Pottery started in a shed in my backyard. Three years later it was doing $900,000 in revenue. The clarity came after the move. It always does.

I spent the better part of my career being excellent at building things for other people. Sales numbers. Client relationships. Revenue. And somewhere at the top of the org chart, someone else's net worth grew. I understood that was how employment worked. What I didn't reckon with was how long I had been doing it, and what I had been trading in the process. The day I sat across from a CEO and realized I understood his business better than he did, I stopped asking when I would leave. I already knew.

25 years ago, Tricia was a recently divorced stay-at-home mom with four kids. She had no education and no long-term plan for the future. Here is her story of how she went from despair to living the life most dream of.