The Audacity to Become

The Story of How I Built My Business

God, I don’t know. I’ve tried to write about starting my business so many times, but it’s always felt muddled in my mind. Maybe it’s because of the time that it was. I was somewhere between 24 and 25 — so unaware of what was going on around me, and yet so hyper-aware of everything happening inside. I’m still a bit this way. But I’ve learned how to lift my head up, and that I actually want to.

If I had to pinpoint a beginning, it would be Jennifer.

Jennifer was a longtime friend of mine. She was five years older than me and had been working as a wedding planner and floral designer for the past ten years. Event Hollow was her idea — a business to make the wedding planning process easier for both couples and vendors.

When she first told me about it, I was a bartender, living at home, feeling stuck and unsure of what I wanted my career to be. She had sent me material to look over — mockups, design concepts, brand ideas. I’d tell her which ones felt stronger, tweak the wording. She liked my feedback. And that felt good. Then, one afternoon, she asked, “Would you want to do this together?”

A giant grin spread wide across my face.

Finally, something exciting to do with myself. My career! My life!

And so I resolvedly said yes.

But to make it happen, we needed money. Real money. Which meant figuring out our "in" to Silicon Valley.

The only way I knew how to do that was through a man I had met while bartending at the country club. I knew that he (let’s call him Bill) was a venture capitalist. Though at the time, I had no idea what that even meant, we hoped he could help somehow. So, I asked for a meeting. He agreed.

As Jennifer and I pulled into the parking lot of a Peet’s Coffee, my heart hammered in my chest. We wondered aloud if he might invest in our company on the spot. We really thought that if he just knew what we were working on, he’d want in immediately.

But what happened was probably even better.

"Do you have what it takes?" he asked us right off the bat.

"Of course," we said, nodding in unison, though I could feel the hesitation in my voice.

"Most people don’t," he replied. "They say they do, but they don’t." He leaned back in his chair, sunglasses hiding his eyes. We were hanging onto every word.

"It takes tenacity. Persistence. And moxie. You’ve gotta have moxie."

I swallowed hard, wondering if he could sense my uneasiness. On the way home, I Googled what moxie meant.

→ Force of character, determination, or nerve.

I feared I didn’t have it. But I knew that Jennifer – talking animatedly with her hands as she mapped out our future – did.

As it turned out, that meeting with Bill was worth $25,000 and a ticket into the accelerator program. Our first big break.

And so it began: building the brand piece by piece, calculating projections and crafting a go-to-market strategy as we pitched to investors. I saw Jennifer fight for her place at the table, and I admired her for it. But I never felt qualified enough to sit beside her.

I was fresh out of college with no real-life work experience. I felt like a little sidekick following Jennifer from meeting to meeting, nodding my head, trying to throw in a few smart words every so often so people would think I had a pulse.

I began studying the founders who were successful — the ones whose companies everyone wanted a piece of. They projected their voices to the back of the room. They told stories. They made people believe. And after a year in startup land, I knew something for certain:

Very few people knew how to do this. But the ones who did — went far.

I wanted to do that.

I had a working knowledge of social media. Millennials, after all, grew up on the internet. We were coding MySpace profiles at thirteen and joined Facebook when it launched. I had built a blog called The Soul Collect, so I knew how to design a website, write copy, create something from nothing. Sort of.

I also loved social media and I wanted an excuse to dive deeper into it. I also wondered if what felt like a side quest – a fun and creative adventure that made the startup grind less of a trudge – could be my “in.” My way to contribute and feel more confident as a co-founder. A way for me to be competent rather than perform competence.

In just 10 months, I grew my Instagram to nearly 10,000 followers. I learned how to write emails people actually opened. I studied SEO and got my personal website: annavatuone.com to rank. I became fascinated with what made someone stop scrolling.

The better I got at it, the more I realized I was more passionate about building my own brand than Event Hollow — an endeavor that, understandably, required much more from me.

I had to accept that.

I had to leave Event Hollow and pour my energy into what truly fueled me.

When I stepped away from startup land, I wasn’t entirely sure what I was going to do next. But I knew how to build my brand. And I figured it wouldn’t be too much of a long shot if I helped others build theirs, too.

So, that’s what I did.

And almost six years later, I’m still doing it.

If you go to my LinkedIn profile, you’ll see my title: Personal Brand Strategist. That was one of the first things I updated when I decided to start my business. I put it in my bio before I had ever worked with a single client.

I think by that point, I just knew what I wanted, and was naive enough to have the audacity to try.

Looking back, I think about that first meeting with Bill at Peet’s Coffee. How he leaned back in his chair, and asked, Do you have what it takes?

At the time, I thought he meant the capacity to grind. And maybe he did. But I think the real question — the one I hadn’t asked myself yet — was:

Do you have what it takes to create something from nothing?

To persist even if nobody else can see what you see?
To leave a role that isn’t right for you?
To claim a role that is?
To believe in a version of yourself that doesn’t exist?

To stop performing and to start becoming.

I didn’t have an answer back then. But I do now.

And maybe that’s what moxie really is.