When it first occurred to Porterfield to found a business, she began looking for direction. She asked herself questions like, “What am I good at? Where have I gotten results? What do people ask me about all the time?” she says.

Once she narrowed in on social media, Porterfield put together a four-part “runway,” or exit strategy from her 9-to-5:

• “I had to choose my exit date,” she says. “I knew that if I didn’t choose an exit date, I was never leaving.” She decided on six months and put it on a Post-it note on her mirror where she could see it every day.

• “I had to look at my finances,” she says. She calculated how much money she actually needed to pay all of her bills, then figured how many jobs she’d have to take within the new business to cover her expenses.

• “I made sure that I told only three people,” she says: her husband, her mom and her best friend. “When you tell too many people of your dreams, they’re going to tell you all the reasons why you shouldn’t do it.”

• Finally, even while still at her day job, she dove in. She learned about her new business by finding resources about it like podcasts, books or calling anyone who could help. Then she dove into the actual work on mornings and weekends “just to get my feet wet and bring a little money in,” she says. She also wanted to test the viability of the business.

“When I got to the six months, I left even though I didn’t have as much money in the bank as I wanted, even though I was still terrified and not sure how I was going to make this work,” she says. “I wanted to stay committed to myself.”

While running her social media business, Porterfield started experimenting with another way to help people run theirs ― creating a course teaching them how to do it.

She spent about $3,000 on the first course and sold it for $297. “And at the end of my little launch, I made $267,” she says, not even enough to cover one unit. “I cried for an entire week,” she says. Eventually, she went back to the drawing board and launched a second course, then a third. She continued to build her repertoire and quit the original social media gig in 2011.

After running her digital courses for nine years, she realized there was one thing people kept asking: “How are you creating those digital courses?” she says. That’s when she had the idea for Digital Course Academy, which includes video lessons, PDF guides and live Q&As.

“It was the biggest launch I’d ever done. The best feedback I’ve ever gotten. And the testimonials started rolling in.” She’s been selling it for just under $2,000 and teaching it ever since.