I Spent 10 Days Convinced I’d Ruined Everything. Here’s What Actually Happened.

I’ve spent the last few weeks doing some pretty deep work on my brand—trying to figure out how everything I’ve built over 16 years actually fits together, and what that means for how I show up online going forward.

And honestly? It kind of kicked my butt—and if you’ve ever found yourself spiraling over a decision you can’t undo, you’ll probably relate to what happened next.

Because when you start asking yourself big questions, like “Who am I? and “What am I actually doing here?”… sometimes the answer isn’t what you expect. 

And sometimes the question itself reveals more than you thought it would.

And speaking of that mission—for the last month or so, really since the beginning of the year, I’ve been doing a lot of behind the scenes, internal sort of work, to get really clear on what that actually means. 

When Trying to Get Clear Makes Everything Feel Murkier

What it looks like. How it all comes together.

Which sounds like it should be pretty simple, right? 

I mean, I’ve been doing this whole online business thing for 16 years. I’ve built multiple brands, written books, launched programs, coached thousands of women. 

You’d think by now I’d have a clean, clear answer to the question “So what do you do?”

But what I quickly realized, when I really started digging in and sat down to work on some brand clarity stuff—just trying to articulate my purpose, my through line, how everything connects—it wasn’t simple at all.

It actually felt really hard. And kind of destabilizing.

Not because I didn’t know what I was doing. But because I couldn’t figure out how to explain it anymore. Not just to other people—to myself.

And the more I tried to bring it all together, the more I started questioning whether I’d been doing it right all along.

Like… what if the reason it feels murky is because I actually screwed it up? 

What if I should have stayed focused on one thing? What if all these pivots and evolutions weren’t strategic—they were just me being super scattered and a little bit flaky?

And that question—”What if I’’ve messed it up, what if I’ve screwed up my whole business, and as a result, what if I’ve screwed up my whole life?”—that’s what sent me down a bit of a spiral.

So that’s where I’ve been. And that’s what I want to talk about today.

Not because I have it all figured out. 

But because I think I finally figured out what I was getting wrong.

And honestly, while what I want to talk about today is related to my business, I think that feeling of questioning your life choices or feeling like we’ve messed up or missed the boat or made some big mistakes that now we can’t fix isn’t really limited to business.

It can happen with any part of our life. Career choices. Parenting choices. Who we marry. Friendships and relationships. Investments. Where we choose to live.

At any given moment, you’re making any number of choices and decisions, and the nature of those choices puts you on a path. And sometimes you don’t realize until later that maybe you were on the wrong path.

But you can’t go backwards. None of us can.

And that’s the hard part about life. Learning how to move forward, even when you start questioning where you’ve been.

But I’m probably getting ahead of myself, so let me back up and tell you what happened.

Why the Online Business Landscape Forced Me to Stop and Reassess

For the last six months or so, my team and I have been making some pretty significant changes in our business.

It’s something I’ve talked about quite a bit, both on this podcast and with my business clients—the fact that the online marketplace has changed a lot, and that we are now in what a lot of people are calling a Trust Recession—a time where trust is scarce, and people are burned out by internet marketing and AI content, and just overall a lot more skeptical and therefore slower to buy.

And so we’ve been adapting our business model to account for this market shift–installing something I call the Daily Sales Flywheel, and creating more opportunities for authentic connection with our customers and prospective customers, through trust building offers and more live trainings and coaching, and direct outreach.

And that part has actually been really amazing. I feel SO much more connected to my customers than I have in a really long time, because I’m literally talking to them almost every day, in one way or another, whether it’s on live calls and trainings or inside our communities or via email and text messages and DMs.

And the feedback that I’ve been receiving is also pretty amazing. That connection is making a difference for my customers. They’re getting more out of my programs than ever before. They’re seeing results. And they’re telling me about it. And that’s awesome, because ultimately that’s what I want, right? To actually help people achieve their goals so they can create a life and business they love.

So what’s the problem then?

Well, what I started noticing is that a lot of people were confused about all the different things that I do.

Which I guess isn’t all that surprising, because I do a LOT of things. I have a lot of different brands and different programs. I’ve been doing this for 16 years. And I’ve created a lot of different things. Living Well Spending Less®. Elite Blog Academy®, which became Ruth Soukup Business™. Do It Scared®. Thinlicious™. The Living Well Planner®. All these different brands, different audiences, different focuses.

And so people would find their way into one program, but then, because a lot of my customers are in many of my different programs, they would hear people talking about something else, a different program, and ask, “what’s this?” “what’s TAS?” “What’s DSI?”

And it made me realize that while all this time I’ve been busy building all of these separate brands, and that while they’ve always been connected under the umbrella of my main company, Ruth Soukup Omnimedia, I’ve haven’t really done a very good job of defining or focusing on my personal Ruth Soukup brand.

Like it’s just kind of there, as the umbrella that ties everything together. But it wasn’t very clear what Ruth Soukup is really all about. I’ve never defined it. Because I guess I’ve never really focused on building or defining my personal brand.

Does that even make sense?

Because honestly, even though it’s actually an essential piece of my business, I have an almost visceral reaction to the idea of having a “personal brand.”

Like what does that even mean?

I don’t want to be an influencer. I’ve never wanted to be an influencer. I don’t care about being famous. I just want my business to thrive and to continue to help people.

But something I know to be true. Something I’ve taught my business clients for years is that confused people don’t convert.

And so through all of this work, I sort of realized that my own resistance to leaning in to my personal brand was actually leading to a lot of confusion, which wasn’t good.

And so at the beginning of the year, I realized it was time to do some deep work on my personal brand. 

Because the truth is, even though I’ve been building businesses for a long time, I’ve also evolved a lot. 

And I think ultimately, for my own sense of confidence and clarity, I just needed to sit down and really think about how it all fits together. What my overarching purpose is. How I want to show up. What I’m actually here to help people with.

Sounds reasonable, right?

Except when I started doing that work, something unexpected happened.

The Business Self-Doubt I Didn’t See Coming

Instead of feeling more clear and confident, I hit a wall of business self-doubt I wasn’t expecting.

Because as I was going through everything I’ve built and created over the years, I started noticing all the places where I didn’t follow my own advice.

You know what I tell my business clients, right? Stay focused. Pick a niche. Don’t start multiple businesses. Don’t dilute your brand. Lean in to one thing and do it really really well.

And I’m a good business coach. I give really good advice. I’m right when I tell them that.

But all that advice I can so clearly give to other people—knowing it’s the right advice—I have not followed in my own life.

And so I started asking myself these questions. What if I had just stayed super focused on one thing? Where would I be now? What if I hadn’t started Thinlicious™? What if I hadn’t shut down Living Well Spending Less® as my main brand? What if I’d just picked one lane and committed?

And underneath all of those questions was this other, quieter question: 

What if the reason I’m not further along than I am, what if the reason I’m not more successful is because I’ve been all over the place?

Because I realize that while I’m probably a little bit biased, I actually think my stuff—my books, my programs, my products, my frameworks—are really good.

Better than a lot of stuff that’s out there. Maybe even better than a lot of the so-called big thought leaders out there, who are frankly sometimes peddling utter crap, which bugs me.

And yet… I’m not one of them.

I’m not the household name. I’m not the one with the massive visibility and the huge revenue and the scale that matches what I know I’m capable of.

And it’s not to say I haven’t been successful. Objectively, I know that I have. I’ve made millions of dollars and have had hundreds of thousands of customers. I’ve written multiple bestselling books and made the New York Times list and I’ve given a TED talk.

But the last few years have been harder. And when things get hard, that’s when you start questioning all of your choices.

And in that moment, sitting there doing this brand work, I started wondering if that was my fault. If my scatteredness—or what looked like scatteredness—had diluted everything.

And I’m not going to lie. I started spiraling.

Questioning everything. Looking back at my life and business over the last 16 years and wondering if I had just f#@*ed everything up. Wondering what it was all for. What was even the point? 

What the Doom Loop Actually Feels Like From the Inside

I was in a doom loop, big time.

And it didn’t help that there were a few business setbacks that happened in January that just got me feeling really discouraged. And on top of that, on the home front, I was dealing with some major frustrations with my teenagers. Because let’s face it. Teenagers are not always awesome.

But it all just had me spiraling and doubting myself and wondering whether I had basically screwed up my entire life.

And of course that basically just killed all of my motivation. Because why even try if it’s all just pointless?

 So I did let myself wallow for longer than I probably should have–it was a least a week, maybe even 10 days of despair.

And that is NOT normal for me.

Normally my rule, when I get frustrated or upset or discouraged is “You get one day. One day to wallow.” But tomorrow is a new day.

But this was a big spiral, and I needed more than one day.

But finally I was like, “okay this is not working and it’s not healthy.”

So I decided to pull out one of my favorite tools–the Resistance Repair.

I’ve actually talked about this in a previous podcast episode, so if you’re interested you can go back and listen to that one, but basically Resistance Repair is a process that helps you take a step back and examine your thinking, a way to look at the thoughts that are leading to emotions that are leading to actions, and find a way to change your thoughts.

It’s something I teach in my Ignite Your Best Year Yet program and in my Flourish program, and it is super super powerful.

But going through the process helped me see that all these thoughts were just thoughts. And they weren’t necessarily true.

So I chose to start practicing some new thoughts. 

I get to choose how I show up today.

This is not the end of my story.

I am a woman who figures things out.

Bloom where you are.

And then I got refocused on my brand goal.

But here’s what’s interesting. 

What 16 Years of “Scattered” Work Actually Had in Common

As I kept working through this, with a much improved mindset, I could actually see the through line in all the work I’ve done over the last 16 years.

Like, when I looked back at everything I’ve done, it wasn’t random.

I started with Living Well Spending Less® because I was a stay-at-home mom trying to figure out how to manage my home and my money. I was creating systems for myself—and then sharing them.

Then as my business grew, I got really interested in the behind-the-scenes of business. The strategy. The systems. How to make a message stick. And that became Elite Blog Academy® and eventually my business coaching.

Then I started noticing this pattern—fear showing up for everyone, in every area. And that’s what led to Do It Scared®. The book. The research. The podcast. The TEDx Talk.

And then when I went on my own health journey and figured out a system that actually worked for me, that became Thinlicious™.

So when I look at it, I can see it. Home systems, business systems, Systems for improving your mindset and pushing past fear, health systems. There’s a connection. 

Obviously there’s a connection—it’s all me. But there’s a deeper connection. It’s all SYSTEMS. Systems are my superpower.

But I also know how it could look from the outside.

It looks like I can’t make up my mind. It looks like I’m flaky. It looks like I’m chasing shiny objects.

And honestly, from a straight business strategy perspective, it probably was a mistake.

If I’d just picked one thing and gone all in, I’d probably be further along. More successful. More visible. More… something.

But here’s what I had to sit with. And this is the part that hurt.

How to redefine success: start by asking whose definition you’re actually using.

When I say “I should be more successful,” whose definition of success am I even using?

Because the truth is, I had my shot at that kind of success.

Back in 2019, when Do It Scared® came out, I was on that path. The book was a bestseller. I did a TEDx talk. I was getting media attention. I was traveling constantly, networking, in masterminds, doing all the things you’re supposed to do to become a “Really Big Deal” on the internet.

And I was miserable.

I was stressed out all. the. time. My health was terrible. I was gaining weight. Getting sick constantly. My husband and I were drifting apart. I was leaving my family all the time.

And my husband kept asking me, “Honey, what do you want? What are you working toward? Because I don’t think you even know.”

And he was right.

I kept saying “I want to win.” And he kept asking, “Okay, but what is winning?”

I didn’t have an answer.

So I did the hard work to redefine success on my own terms—and I chose my marriage, my kids, my health, my actual life. That was my definition of winning.

We bought our dream property. I rebuilt my relationship with my husband—and now we’re closer than we’ve ever been. I have deep friendships. I spend time with people I love. I don’t travel. I don’t want to be on stages. I don’t want to be on TV. I don’t want to post my life all over social media.

I set my life up the way I actually wanted it.

And for the most part, aside from my 10 day doom spiral in January, I actually do feel like I’m winning at life most of the time.

But here’s the tension.

When business gets hard—when a launch doesn’t go the way I planned, when sales dip, when January doesn’t cooperate—that old scorecard creeps back in.

And I start wondering: Did I miss my shot? Did I screw it all up? Am I making a huge mistake?

Because even though I know intellectually that I don’t want that life, there’s still a part of me that measures my worth by revenue coming in.

When I can see sales, I feel calm. I feel in control. I feel like, okay, this is working, I’m okay.

And when they’re not coming in as consistently as I want, I wobble. I start questioning everything.

And what I realized, sitting with all of this, is that I’ve been looking for external proof that the last 16 years mattered.

Like, if the revenue isn’t there, if the visibility isn’t there, if I’m not “further along”—then what was the point?

But then I asked myself a different question.

If the business went away tomorrow—not my wisdom, not my experience, not who I’ve become, but the revenue engine itself—what would still be unmistakably different about my life because of the last 16 years?

And at first, honestly, I didn’t have a good answer. I was too close to the fear.

But then I thought about the woman I was before all of this.

The woman who, in college, went through a severe depression. Who became suicidal. Who attempted suicide multiple times. Who lost the will to live. Who took two and a half years to even begin to recover.

That woman could not handle what I handle now.

The Real Return on 16 Years of Building: Resilience

The setbacks I’ve dealt with in the last 16 years as a business owner? They’re so much harder than anything I faced back then. And yet I don’t stay down anymore.

I have tools. I have systems. I have the Resistance Repair Framework. I know how to recalibrate. I know how to keep going.

I’m resilient in a way I wasn’t before.

And that didn’t happen by accident.

It happened because I spent 16 years deliberately building systems and mindset practices that could hold hard things.

So if that’s true—if the real outcome of all this work is who I’ve become—then why do I still need the revenue and the visibility to validate that it mattered?

I don’t have a clean answer to that. I’m still sitting with it.

But here’s what I do know.

When I finally let myself stop trying to justify all the different things I’ve done, and I just looked at what actually connects them, this is what I saw:

I teach systems.

That’s what I do. That’s what I’ve always done.

Systems for your home. Systems for your time. Systems for your business. Systems for your health.

And I help women implement those systems—which means I also have to address the mindset and resistance that makes follow-through so hard.

Because you can have the best system in the world, but if you can’t stick with it, it doesn’t matter.

And here’s why that matters specifically for women.

Our lives are not one-dimensional.

You can’t be a kick-ass business owner if your home feels like chaos and you feel like you’re failing as a mom.

You can’t do anything well if you don’t feel good in your body or you’re exhausted all the time.

You can’t pursue big goals if you’re constantly battling imposter syndrome and fear.

It all connects.

And for a long time, I thought the problem was that I was interested in too many things. That I should have just picked one and stuck with it.

Not Scattered. Integrated. (And Why That Distinction Changes Everything)

But what I finally realized is that I’m not scattered.

I’m integrated.

A life you love is not one-dimensional. And the women I serve aren’t one-dimensional either. That’s why so many of them are in multiple programs across multiple brands.

Because yes, they want to grow their business, but they also care about being healthy, and they also want to feel capable and in control at home.

Just like I do.

And once I saw that—once I really let that be true—everything shifted.

I gave myself permission to stop fragmenting my work to fit some external expectation of what a “real” business is supposed to look like.

I’m done keeping everything in separate containers.

I’m the common thread. And I’m okay with that now.

It’s not about ego. It’s not about putting myself at the center for the sake of attention.

It’s about integration. It’s about finally letting my work live under one roof in a way that actually makes sense.

What Overcoming Imposter Syndrome Actually Looks Like in Practice

And part of that means I’m making some changes to how I show up online.

I’m prioritizing depth over noise.

I’m moving my (t)RuthBombs newsletter to Substack, because I want a platform that’s actually built for real writing and real connection—not just another thing competing for attention in an inbox.

I’m keeping this podcast, but I’m changing the format, just a little bit. Less “here are five steps to fix this problem” and more “let me tell you what I’ve been thinking about and why it matters.”

I’m showing up less on Instagram, because honestly, the shallowness of that platform exhausts me. But what I will be sharing there is glimpses of how I make all of these systems work in my own life.

I want to go deep. I want to build trust. I want to show up like the mentor and friend I actually am—not perform some polished version of myself.

And I’m okay if that means slower growth. I’m okay if that means I’m never the household name.

Because I remembered what winning actually looks like for me.

And it’s not the scorecard I was using before.

So here’s what I want to leave you with.

If you’re reading this and you too have been beating yourself up because you feel like you made the wrong choice at some point, or because you feel like you should be further along by now…

Because here’s the thing I keep coming back to.

I don’t know if I’ll ever fully stop wondering if I should have done it differently. I think that’s just part of being human—especially when you’re building something.

But I do know this: the work I’ve done for the last 16 years has made me more resilient, more capable, more clear about what actually matters.

And that counts.

So where do we go from here?

Well, I’m going to keep showing up here on this podcast, as often as I can.

And I’m making some changes to how I show up elsewhere too—because I want to go deeper, not wider.

If you want to come with me on that, I’d love to have you.

You can subscribe to my newsletter over on Substack. That’s where I’m going to be sharing more of the behind-the-scenes, the real conversations, the systems and the mess and the mindset work all together.

If this resonated with you, I’d love it if you’d share it with someone who needs to hear it.

Thanks for being here.

Related Episodes: 

Why You Self-Sabotage—And How to Fix It in 10 Minutes

Life Will Punch You in the Mouth. Here’s What You Do Next.

You’ll Never Have Time for Your Goals Until You Stop Doing This One Thing

The Life Advice I Wish Someone Had Given Me 20 Years Ago

FAQ