[wise eDYNASTY WORDS]: Ch. 1 - From the Edge of the Cliff to a Wiser Way to Build Online
FROM THE EDGE OF THE CLIFF TO A WISER WAY TO BUILD ONLINE
WISELY SHARE…
What happened when years of business experience collided with the reality of building online - and the question that eventually changed everything I would build.
There is an enormous difference between having a business idea and having everything you need to turn that idea into a business that can actually work online.
I didn’t fully appreciate how enormous that difference was until I needed to cross it myself.
And strangely enough, I didn’t arrive there knowing nothing about business.
Quite the opposite.
I Knew Business. But I Had Never Had to Build THIS Business.
For years, I had traveled internationally, working with and advising major corporations and operating inside complex business environments.
I loved business.
I loved understanding how all the pieces worked together – the strategy, systems, structures, processes, numbers, evaluation + decisions that could make a business work better.
I had spent years looking at businesses, solving problems and helping make important business decisions.
Eventually, life asked me to solve a very different business problem.
My own.
🌧️ The Night Something Had to Change
I was living near Amsterdam at the time.
One rainy evening, I was on my way to a business dinner when my daughter called.
The nanny had left.
My two little girls were home alone.
And this wasn’t simply one disastrous evening.
She was our fifth nanny that year.
That night brought something I had been wrestling with into very sharp focus.
The life I had worked so hard to build was no longer working for the life I wanted to live.
But I didn’t want to stop working.
Quite the opposite.
I loved meaningful, challenging work.
I had worked hard for my education + experience. I wanted to use them. I wanted to solve problems. I wanted to build something valuable. I wanted to earn a wonderful income doing it.
And I wanted to be there for my family.
I wanted greater freedom over where + how I worked.
I wanted to build something of my own.
And I didn’t want those things to exist on opposite sides of my life.
Not someday.
Not after the children were grown.
Not after I’d finally earned enough freedom.
I wanted to create work that could become part of a wonderfully lived life.
I wanted to:
Work While Living.
So I began looking toward the opportunity I could already see emerging online.
Surely, I Thought, I Can Figure This Out.
People were building businesses from home.
They were selling products + services online.
They were reaching customers far beyond their own cities and countries.
They were creating businesses that could work very differently from the traditional businesses I had known.
And I knew business.
So I thought:
Surely, I can figure this out.
I knew what I wanted my business to make possible.
I knew I wanted to work for myself, do something I loved + build a wonderful income.
And I knew businesses were succeeding online.
So I began looking at what it would actually take to build one successfully for myself.
That was when I discovered the cliff.
👠 Standing at the Edge of the Cliff
In the first Wise eDynasty Session accompanying this story, I describe myself standing at the outer edge of a cliff in six-inch stilettos.
It’s a playful image.
But it captures remarkably well how the opportunity looked to me at the time.
Because from where I stood, I could see the other side.
I could see people building successful online businesses.
I could see freedom.
I could see opportunity.
I could see the possibility of creating something meaningful + profitable that could work differently with life.
The destination wasn’t the problem.
The enormous gap between where I stood and getting there was.
Because having an idea – even a wonderful one – wasn’t the same as having a business capable of actually working online.
There was technology to understand.
There was infrastructure to put in place.
There were products or services to present + sell.
There was marketing.
There were customers, transactions + experiences to manage.
There were systems that somehow needed to work together.
There were strategies to understand, decisions to make + costs to consider.
And before you could make wise decisions about any of it, you somehow needed to know which pieces you needed in the first place.
That was my cliff.
It wasn’t a lack of ambition.
It wasn’t a lack of willingness to work.
And it certainly wasn’t because I knew nothing about business.
It was the distance between:
I know what I want to build.
and
I have everything I need to actually build it.
🎥 Meet Me at the Edge of the Cliff
Come stand at the edge of the cliff with me – six-inch stilettos optional. 
In this first Wise eDynasty Session, I take you a little further into that moment + the opportunity I could see waiting on the other side.
Prefer to listen or watch somewhere else? [Listen to the Audio Edition 
]. Or, Watch on Facebook or LinkedIn.
Then I Started Asking a Different Question
I could have approached the problem one piece at a time.
Find a website.
Choose some software.
Take a course.
Hire someone.
Add another tool when I discovered I needed it.
And then another.
But my years in business had taught me to look at problems differently.
I wanted to understand the whole picture.
What does an online business actually need?
What makes the successful ones work?
Which pieces belong together?
What is essential from the beginning?
What can wait?
What could be simpler?
What could work together instead of separately?
And how could an individual entrepreneur possibly make all of those decisions wisely without the departments, specialists, resources + infrastructure available to a major corporation?
The deeper I looked, the more questions came bubbling up.
But beneath them all, something else was beginning to take shape.
Not another question.
A conviction.
Surely, there has to be a wiser way to do this.
I didn’t know then where that conviction would lead.
I didn’t know how much I would discover, how many things I would try, or how many lessons I would learn along the way.
But one thing I knew for certain.
I wasn’t going to stop until I found that wiser way.
And that is where this story really begins.
Every business begins somewhere.
And every meaningful business journey is built through the ideas we explore, the decisions we make, the lessons we carry forward + the Wise Steps we take next.
So before you go, I’d love to leave you with one Wise question of your own:
What is on the other side of the cliff for YOU?
What is the business – or the life that business could help make possible – that you can already begin to see from where you are standing today?
You don’t have to know exactly how you’ll get there yet.
You don’t have to solve everything at once.
Sometimes the next Wise Step is simply becoming clearer about where you want to go.
Hold onto that picture.
Keep exploring. Keep learning. Keep building.
And when you’re ready, come back.
[FINAL RECURRING WISE CLOSING LINE — TO BE PERFECTED + LOCKED] With
Love And Hope For Your Wisest Success,
Angela van Hoeven
Wise Mama, Wife, Founder, CEO, & Creator of eDynasties
Angela van Hoeven
Wise Mama, Wife, Founder, CEO, & Creator of eDynasties
Wisely Inspire & Giggle