I turned 30 in November 2025; my business turns 8 on March 31, 2026. Taylor Eggleton and her alter ego Origami Graphics are both hitting big milestones.
And as we’ve come of age and had the birthday cakes, I’ve done a lot of thinking about how far I’ve progressed in my life and in my business. Results are now clear, and I can see how some of my “sensible” early business decisions have actually hurt my growth. What’s worse, I often see clients in the early stages of business – and in loads of different industries – making the same mistakes that I did.
So here are a few lessons I’d give my 22-year-old self – if I had a business time machine. Strap in.
(Quick disclaimer: this blog post talks about personal experience and shouldn’t be considered financial advice. Chat to a business coach or financial advisor about your thoughts, then come up with a plan that feels good to you.)
Lesson 1: Take the risk. Stop holding back.
I’ve only just realised that playing it safe has hurt my business for years.
The data says that women are conservative in business while men tend to take bigger risks. Women are less likely to start their own businesses in the first place, and are also less likely to take big financial risks if they do start a business.
I founded Origami Graphics as a university-age entrepreneur who had no idea what she was doing. As a result, I assumed my business was a glorified hobby and was going to fail – to protect myself from the disappointment if it did. With no idea where to start, I was starting Etsy stores, finding easy web builders, and Googling “how to do taxes” in the back of my parents’ car. Young entrepreneurs don’t have a strong foundation of knowledge or expertise to start on, so the only real perspective we get is society’s talk about how risky it all is. A common theme is how 50% of small businesses don’t survive past 5 years.
That percentage of failure kept ringing in my young little head from 2018 to 2022. I made all my decisions conservatively, kept my budget for advertising as low as I could get away with, DIY’d everything, and aggressively saved money instead of spending it. Pricing also started out way too low ($25 per hour – yep, seriously). Sadly, I see current clients who are starting their first businesses doing all of these things too. And I get it! I simply assumed that pricing competitively AF and having a bunch of sales, was what I’d have to do to get anyone to hire me.
I was wrong.
Not only has my business survived to Year 8, it has grown every year. I’m currently priced at six times my starting hourly rate, and am busier than ever. And on top of that, I now believe that my conservative approach to business and pricing has actively harmed my income-earning potential and set me back years. This is because there was no reason for me to be so risk-averse – I was a digital business owner with zero staff and almost no overheads, for goodness sake – and it meant I was growing at a snail’s pace while my friends leapt up the corporate career ladder and started making six-figure salaries. Meanwhile, in growing so slowly, I struggled to pay myself. I couldn’t make investments or realistically save for a house, and I was embarrassed at my low salary all through my twenties.
Yes, it was a safe way to conduct my work as a business newbie. Yes, I still got awesome benefits like working-while-travelling due to business ownership. And yes! I can pivot to start being bolder now that my income is so much more secure.
But we’re eight years down the line and I feel I could be in a better financial position (assets, investments, superannuation, growth) if I’d been more optimistic at the very beginning. Here’s what I catch myself thinking: why didn’t I take bigger risks when I was still living at home and not paying rent? Why wasn’t I making bold investments in marketing and social media when I was so young and had a safety net? Why didn’t I take out a small business loan to speed things up, when I had a proven history of growth? Only 50% of businesses make it to five years… but why did I assume it couldn’t be me?
(It was! I made it! And other women – like Aussie, Kayla Itsines – scale to million-dollar empires in their twenties. It is so possible, and it can be you.)
So, this what I’d tell my 22-year-old self (and anyone else just starting out): Assume you’ll get good results. Yeah, sure, have a backup plan if your business does fail. But for goodness sake, stop assuming the bad outcome – it’s colouring your decisions in a way that seriously holds you back financially. Act like a finance bro, who feels confident and bright and like he’s got the world at his feet. He’s not assuming he’s going to fail – in fact, he’s probably a bit TOO confident – and while it is higher risk, he makes leaps in his job as a result of asking for exactly what he wants. Stick your confidence on, and do business properly – from the start. I wish I did.
Lesson 2: Raise your expenses, or you could stall your growth.
Now. Hey. Look. I don’t want you spending money you don’t have. So if you’re in a precarious financial position, put that wallet away for now.
But you’ll seldom make money without spending money. I suspect a few women-owned small businesses are stagnating because their owners aren’t investing properly.
I got coffee with another female designer in December. She said her annual revenue had been stuck around the $40,000 mark for years – and while this is REALLY low for skilled earnings, it’s also quite average for sole traders who are running little businesses (especially women, who reportedly pay themselves 1.5x less than men as sole traders. Howdy, Gender Pay Gap).
I asked her some questions to suss out what was happening, then gave her some unexpected advice:
“You might need to raise your expenses.”
Sounds completely the opposite of what you should be doing if you’re struggling with income, right?
But failing to buy the software, marketing, tools, office space, and educational resources you need as a business owner can really completely prevent you from growing. It’s like buying a houseplant, but deciding to leave the watering can on the shelf cause it’s “too expensive”.
Withholding business investment keeps you stuck in one place, clinging to the rare jobs that come through, and praying for more – instead of feeling confident another will come through your planned, paid, prepared funnel. Staying at home and cutting costs also keeps you isolated, meaning that you’re less likely to meet and network with other business owners (and potential clients). The panic of not getting work encourages you to underprice, so the vicious cycle compounds and continues. You also don’t charge enough money to be able to put some back into your business – instead, you need to use it to buy groceries and pay rent. Growth stalls, and your income stays inconsistent and unpredictable.
The final kick in the guts? When you finally get to June 30, you look back and see your superannuation fund has had zero contributions for another financial year. Don’t even get me started on this one, ladies – our super already suffers because we typically stay home to care for kids.
So how do we fix this pattern?
In my experience, yearly expenditure has been directly proportionate to revenue. I got stuck at the $100,000 revenue mark for a few years. But now, I’ve invested in casual design help – and am already tracking closer to $200k. It’s been a $35,000 increase in expenses this year, which does feel crazy – but do the math. It’s paid off by nearly doubling my invoiced total for projects. I’m also more reliable because someone’s always there to cover me, and it’s generated regular income for my subcontractors. That’s great news for the Australian economy!
I’m now making a plan for the 2026/27 financial year. It’s looking like I’m going to have a budget of $80,000 for the next 12 months. That is sixteen times what I spent in 2019 while I was starting out as a uni student. It’s a small house deposit. It’s a luxury sedan paid outright. This is not lost on me. It feels like an insane amount of money for one person to drop in a single year, and my salaried friends and family #cantrelate.
But you’re not an employee. So why would you expect your business expenses to stay the same as you make more money? It doesn’t make sense! Pinching pennies is likely to cost you growth. Even in the early stages, a big-but-sensible upfront investment can speed up your progress and make your business viable faster. This is especially true for people who are in a partnership or company (so have double or triple the spending power compared to a sole trader). It’s also true if you’re selling a product or a course rather than a service. You need to invest properly in developing a quality product before you can expect anyone to buy it – ’cause if you look DIY, customers will be able to tell. I can guarantee they’re not going to shell out big dollars for a DIY-looking course.
To use an analogy – I can guarantee that Bad Bunny didn’t get the Super Bowl Halftime Show, Album of the Year at the Grammy’s, and millions of dollars in brand deals this year by publishing a mediocre, sloppy, and underfunded record. Debi Tirar Mas Photos is tight.
You don’t have to spend your life savings to grow your business, either. Business finance is available and common, and you can seek professional financial advice to make a well-educated next move.
So go back and buy that watering can right now.
Lesson 3: It’s hard to recover from underpricing yourself.
I’m starting to feel like we should all be forced to take a business course before we get into entrepreneurship. I see too many new female small business owners who do not understand how to price their offerings. This hurts them, and has ripple effects on entire industries.
I’ll take a stab and say this comes from our socialisation as people pleasers. We-no-likey when someone tells us we’re too expensive, or being greedy, or being unreasonable. God forbid a woman be unreasonable!
But underpricing is toxic. It doesn’t even benefit clients, because it affects your quality of service; I learnt this the hard way last year. For business owners, financial comfort disappears and your offering looks cheap and poor-quality because of its budget price tag. Misaligned customers come in, you invite disrespect, and you’re uncontactable ’cause you’re working with too many people to make ends meet. Should I keep listing the negatives?
The other day, I saw an Instagram ad by a brand-new designer. She was offering a logo and website design package for like $1500. As a seasoned graphic and web designer, I know for a fact that web hosting alone costs between $150 and $350 per year, depending on who you go with. I’d also just dropped $3k to get an assistant to redesign my own website – just design – without building anything at all. So, crunching the numbers, the wage this new designer would take home was absolutely inadequate for the amount of work she’d be doing.
Speedily, I commented, “hey girl, I think your prices are at least 75% too cheap”.
Overstepping? Saintly? Neither, actually. Underpricing doesn’t just hurt you. Pricing too low pulls down the average rate for your profession and cheapens your entire industry. It doesn’t matter what your job is – it gives customers incorrect expectations of what they should get. From a client’s perspective, it also makes it hard to know what’s reasonable to pay. They might be happy now, but they won’t be when you realise you can’t cover your costs and have to raise your prices through the roof. Customers, in any industry, are generally happier starting with a reasonable upfront rate that stays the same for a while. Starting with one price, then being told it’s about to go up 500% next year, is not kind – it’s a bait-and-switch.
I think I’m priced well, but my work inbox is still at 140 unread emails right now. I’m a busy woman who needs to spend my time designing! I don’t want to be filtering through 50 poor-quality enquiries! These kinds of people likely don’t intend to pay me well, and will argue at whatever my quote is anyway. So what’s the point? I’d rather spend time delivering awesome results for my current clients, at a higher rate. Overwhelm with poor-quality prospects is what happens when you’re priced too low.
Overwhelm also happens when you start out priced too low and then have to gradually raise your rates. This can have seriously detrimental effects on your clients… as the quality of your output starts to suffer because you’re managing too much. I wish I was more sensible from 2018 – because higher prices all this time would have nurtured mutual respect, indicated professional confidence, and promoted swifter business growth. In particular, I wish I’d raised my prices before I got so overwhelmed last year that my service quality slipped. It’s so hard to recover from that – because who agrees to pay more when the quality of a business has gotten worse?
So do your research before setting your prices, and don’t just copy or try to undercut the cheapest deal. By jacking your rates up – perhaps even just a bit higher than you think is right, accounting for Being Female and Doubting Yourself – I think you’ll be closer to the mark. You’ll attract a pool of better-quality, better-priced clients, you’ll be in a better position to deal with emergencies, and you won’t have to do so much bloody admin. Oh – and you’ll have enough money to top up your super every year.
Yes, you will get less work. That’s a good thing. You want quality leads for a higher price. Quality over quantity – we all know this.