How I Wrote the Should I Quit Journal

December 23, 2025

In the spring of 2024, I came up with an idea for my first physical product, which I called the "Should I Quit?" journal. It was a little funny joke. Too absurd to be real. "What if," I thought to myself, "I created a journal for people who were on the verge of quitting their jobs?" It would be like a spiritual guide to the dark night of figuring out what to do next in your career. "Maybe I could call it the Should I Quit journal," I chuckled.

I took pieces of 8.5 x 11 paper, cut it up into rectangles because I was too lazy to go buy index cards, and started sketching out my ideas. Here's a photo of the first initial plan.

It so happens that we were on a staycation in Eugene, Oregon for spring break, so I had a few uninterrupted days where I could just keep sketching and writing. This was really key. This was also after I had sent out a few proposals to agents and publishers for a book called Career Wounds, and I wasn't hearing anything back. OK, if they don't want to publish me the traditional way, I can just make stuff myself. This was me taking back my power a little bit.

Here's the first prototype. The cover was laminated and printed on heavy cardstock from Michael's, which kept jamming my printer. The kraft sticker was also from Michael's. I did a run to Office Depot for the paper. I remember the lamination machine taking a while, probably 2 minutes per cover, but I just thought, who cares, it's not like I'm going to be making a lot of these.

This was the first binding machine that I bought off Amazon for about $80. I realized pretty quickly that it didn't work because you couldn't adjust the pins, so it was creating an extra hole at the end. But I told myself the first few copies would just have an extra hole, and hoped no one would notice. If I can just sell five copies, then I'll break even. That's all I wanted to do. Was sell five copies. See the pliers on the side? That's because the rings were too long and so I had to manually clip them. It was a total mess. I'd go to sleep thinking about how to fix those rings, and I woke up obsessing about them too.

I didn't have a huge following on TikTok, and I didn't have a YouTube channel yet. But with my 20,000 followers, I started to talk about the journal. See how I was still making content about big tech and Meta? I was figuring out my flow. I knew that making vids about Meta, Google, etc. were great for getting eyeballs, but there were so many tech bros in my comments, all fighting with me and each other, I felt nauseous. It was a little toxic. I was just still figuring everything out. I'd heard about TikTok Shop, seen it on my FYP, so I was like, you know what, I have nothing to lose. I have these few copies of these journals, what would happen if I just started to talk about them? I made a few videos and didn't think anything of it.

But in the beginning of the videos, I did promise that I was going to make a video per page of the journal, so even though my first five videos about the journal flopped (literally only a couple hundred views, no one cared), I kept going. "Well, I guess I am just going to finish this out and talk about the rest of these pages." So I made 28 videos because I said I would. Then, a couple of the videos (I think about 15 in), started popping off and going viral. Someone commented "I just ordered one," and I started freaking out because I checked the orders but didn't see anything come in. I didn't realize that TikTok doesn't email you with notifications when someone buys something, and they actually hold it in a "pending" section for one hour in case the buyer wants to cancel. An hour later, I got a ping on my phone - my first order! I documented that on TikTok ("omg I got an order, watch me pack it") which showed that I was really selling these things - and more and more people saw that video and started putting in orders.

You can see here there are only 11 sold, and someone says they ordered one, and I said, OMG great, I am running to the store to get more paper, LOL. And I really did. I remember my husband Brendan was out of town on a business trip so I had to bring the kids at like 8 pm to the Office Depot like a crazy person. I didn't know how much paper to buy, so I bought two reams which I thought was totally overkill (nowadays, I order about 20 reams at a time, hehe).

Something magical happened and the videos started popping off. Note: even if you feel silly, please keep making the videos. I am amazed that I have all these photos and screenshots, and it just makes me realize that I was frantically documenting it because a) this was the first time I'd ever sold a physical product to strangers, and b) I couldn't believe I was successful. People wanted it! What the hell was happening! Here's an insane screenshot of my phone logging the orders. I was getting a new order every ten minutes. Side note: Taylor Swift's TTPD came out at the same time, so I was streaming non-stop and making journals until midnight.

Here's what my home office looked like at the time. Just total madness. Oh, I think this was from a month or so later, because by this time I had upgraded my binding machine to one where you could adjust the pins and there wasn't an extra hole anymore, lol.

I didn't have anything figured out. I didn't even have a thermal label printer yet (note: if you are running a physical product business, buy one - it's one of the most affordable and useful products out there. They don't require ink and they just keep chugging along). At this point, I was being very extra on the packaging (see the shiny pink envelopes), and later on I switched to more eco-friendly recyclable packaging. It's okay to try things and then make adjustments later. I didn't even have plastic bins for my outgoing mail, these are literally shopping baskets from Kroger. Again, a mess, but a reminder of how fun it really was in the beginning!

As of writing this in December 2025, I've since sold thousands of copies, it still retains a 4.9 / 5.0 rating on TikTok Shop, and I was awarded one of the "most loved" products (which is a combination of user reviews, fast shipping times, and lowest returns). This may seem like an overnight success, but it wasn't. I have been career coaching since 2017, and have been trying to make physical products for YEARS. I tried ebooks, guides, free downloadables, everything under the sun, and nothing hit. I'm not kidding. In 2018, I had a free ebook called "How to Say No" on Facebook, and some troll commented under the post "no" and it hurt my feelings (also, it was kind of funny, but still, I've been eating shit for years). But I just kept trying and trying, and putting myself out there, making my work as visible as possible, grinding through the cringe.

Anyway I love this product. I love what it taught me. It allowed me to pivot my business and move more towards writing and content creation (scalable, which gives me time freedom), and do less one on one coaching. Now I'm hustling smart instead of just hustling.