Why I Quit My Job Without a Plan
I quit my job.
That’s right, as of today I no longer have a full-time job!
This is a huge change for me, my family, and my business, so I wanted to share all of the details with you.
I’m sharing why I left my business for a full-time job in 2021 in the first place, burnout and stress, miscarriage, how my priorities have changed, what’s next, and answering your biggest questions from TikTok and Instagram!
Why I Quit My Job Without a Plan:
Why I left my business for a full-time job in 2021 in the first place
Over a year ago, last January in 2021, I had my daughter Kelly and a lot changed for me.
I felt like I needed more structure. I wanted to step away from the stress of being a business owner. I was no longer in a place where serving a ton of clients in a high ticket group program made sense for what my life was looking like, so I needed to step away.
So I actually took a job as vice president of operations for a online digital marketing company, all remote, managing 10 to 20 employees, depending on the time of year. And it was a very high level job working with the CEO and other leaders in the company to help make strategic decisions, both for the business, as well as improving the lives of the team members.
And I really loved the job. Loved my coworkers. We're all still on really great terms, but ultimately. After a year, the job was just no longer what was best for me and my family. So in this video, I'm gonna share a little bit more about what that means. What's next and share a little bit more of how we got here.
Like I said, I was really enjoying this job when I had Kelly and I was ready for a little bit more structure and I wanted to have better boundaries. This job is exactly what I needed.
And I actually started out part-time, which was perfect, but I am a workaholic by nature and I've always gotten a lot of fulfillment and satisfaction and personal self worth through work. And so I found myself wanting more and more. So we eventually transitioned to full time. We increased our nanny to full time. And by the end of last year, I realized I was in this place where this was a big job, a lot of responsibilities.
Burnout and stress
There's a lot of emotional burden and mental burden outside of just the actual responsibilities of the work. I felt like I had been doing a pretty good job of emotional boundaries and keeping that contained. But in the very beginning of 2022, that all came to a head for me. I don't really know what triggered it, but all of the sudden I was just burned out and it wasn't like there's a ton of dramatic stuff happening.
I think it was just a compounding effect of having a really emotionally draining job, which is nothing against the company or the job just for me, I'm a Pisces, I'm sensitive. I carry emotions. And so being in leadership really always stretched me in that way, which I think was good. But between being a parent and the emotional mental burden of a full-time job with very real, stressful responsibilities, impactful, important decisions being made, it just started to feel like a lot.
And so at the beginning of this year, it was just feeling heavy. And I wasn't quite sure if I just needed to take more time off or improve my emotional boundaries. I was not necessarily thinking I was going to step away from the job, but I was just realizing that something was misaligned and I was trying to figure out what that was.
My sixth miscarriage
It was around this time that I started realizing this and starting to process what this would mean and what changes needed to happen, that Johnny and I decided we were ready to grow our family. We had a lot of miscarriages before we had Kelly. So we had no idea what have no idea what it's going to take to grow our family, but we wanted to start the journey.
So we decided to do that in, and then my very first month off of the pill, we got pregnant. And as someone who's had recurrent miscarriages, I am very familiar with the goal of finding hopeful optimism without putting too much emotional stock into it, because you never know what's gonna happen. And I thought I was doing an okay job of that, but it turns out I didn't, because we did have a miscarriage.
It was actually my sixth miscarriage, which I have not shared this anywhere yet. But we had my sixth miscarriage in February and that devastated me more than I expected it to, like I said, I thought I had been keeping the emotions contained, but I guess I wasn't, I didn't realize how excited I was to be pregnant again, to make Kelly a big sister to grow our family.
And so when we had that early miscarriage, it just like rocked my foundations a bit more than I would've expected. When I look back at the last couple of years, we had our very first miscarriage in January of 2019. That was an evolutionary event for me, that changed who I am at the core of my being. And then that one changed me then having Kelly changed me. And then something about this most recent miscarriage, even though it was not as traumatic as other ones I've had, it changed me again and was a really big priority reset for me.
Something about this miscarriage just really made me look at my life. Look how I was spending my time. Look at what I knew was a priority for me and where my time was going in comparison to that. And just have a reality check that where my time was going was not accurately reflecting, not only my priorities and values, but also my desires.
Just those desires for your life that maybe you don't always know if you'll be able to fulfill. But when I was getting really honest during this transformation, I just knew what I wanted for my life. What I felt like my family needed was not a me being stressed out and drained by a full-time job.
And it just surprised me but I think it was this compounding effect of starting to feel this burnout or exhaustion or fatigue setting in plus having this emotional upheaval of the miscarriage, plus this big priority, reset all of this culminating into the realization that I needed to quit my job.
I know not everyone can make that choice. I'm very fortunate and privileged to be able to, and I am grateful for that and excited to be able to take advantage of that.
So that is some of what led to the decision of me stepping away from my full-time job. Before I start talking about what is next, let me pull up my phone and answer some questions that I got, because I think that'll help guide the what's next conversation.
Am I going back to my business?
One question is, so are you going back to your own business now? And the answer is yes and also, no, because I am not trying to step into being a full-time entrepreneur again. I am stepping into this transition actually planning on working 10 hours a week on my business. Maybe less, maybe more. I feel like I haven't even had a chance to really make a plan, which is so unlike me.
And I'm actually excited to spend the next couple of days now that I am done with my full-time job. I don't know if I mentioned this earlier or not, but this is my first Monday not having a job anymore. So now that I have time this week to actually process all of this, because it happened quickly, I'm excited to figure out how much time I wanna spend on my business and what I want that to look like and sit in this transformation and this transition for a little bit longer before I have any grand plan, but where I'm at right now is a shift to spending more time on my personal life.
And that includes spending more time with Kelly. Reducing her childcare to part-time so that I can spend more time with her and do swimming lessons and gymnastics, as well as, go to the zoo and run errands together and just spend more time with her.
As well as spending more time on our home. And I don't even necessarily just mean day to day chores, but we bought our home, moved in, had Kelly and have basically done nothing. We never really decorated. We. Never organized. There's no systems in our home right now, and it's really disruptive for all of us. I'm there all day.
Kelly's there all day. Home is really important to our family. And right now things just pile up and it's shoved in a closet and our pantries overflowing, and it's really chaotic.
And I love decorating and organizing. I just never felt like I had the energy or enthusiasm to spend my time there because I was so drained from work and parenting. So I'm really excited to actually have the energy and enthusiasm and time to do some of these household projects that I've always wanted to do and take you along with me.
So my focus is absolutely gonna be more on Kelly and our home and self care more than anything else. Those are my new priorities, but I do love creating content. I love having a business. I like creating some more passive products. I love doing one-on-one coaching and consulting. So that's the part. I don't have a full plan around yet.
I do wanna continue to do at least one YouTube video a week. I wanna continue to show up on TikTok daily. Like I have been and let the rest unfold. I don't have to put a lot out of pressure on myself right now to generate a certain amount of revenue from the business, which is amazing. But I know myself and I know I have a couple of consulting clients in the works and I like business. So I think that will be something I definitely work on, but it's gonna be very different than how it was in the past. It'll be a couple of hours a day at most. I also wanna work with some brands and do some brand sponsored content, but for brands I love and use every day. So there's just a lot of options and things I'm gonna be exploring on the business front.
I do wanna say thank you so much for all of the wonderful support and positive comments. I got both on Instagram and TikTok. It really means a lot to me because going back and forth from full-time job to a full-time entrepreneur to full-time job, to this new thing, can make you feel or make me feel a little insecure or self conscious.
And so just knowing that you guys are there, cheering me on really does mean a lot.
What was it like going from employee to entrepreneur to employee to entrepreneur again?
And that actually leads really nicely into one of the questions I got, which was that whole journey. And so what has it been like going from entrepreneur to employee back to entrepreneur thought processes, pros and cons, et cetera?
I think this is a really fun question because I haven't had a chance to even really talk about this to journey of entrepreneur, to employee, to entrepreneur. And it's a really interesting one. I will say that I absolutely loved transitioning into an employee role after having Kelly and being in the postpartum phase.
Because I know for me as an entrepreneur, I tend to be a workaholic. I tend to have a hard time stepping away. And that was something I was really struggling with postpartum was how to do business, but do it differently. And I felt like my business was set up where that was difficult. I had employees and I was running an ongoing, high ticket group coaching program where I needed to be supporting clients year round in a really high touch high level way. And that was just not something I was able to do postpartum. I really was not able to be in that head space and to show up and serve in the way that my clients deserved and that my employees deserved. And so transitioning to employee was perfect for that phase of life. As a first time mom, for me, I know that not every one will feel that way, but that was my experience.
And it was wonderful. I felt such a relief in being able to wipe the slate clean for my business, to be honest, even though there was a lot of anxiety and worry and people pleasing fears around that, it was nice to be able to make that transition and transition into something with more structure, clear boundaries, simpler responsibilities. Any entrepreneur knows you wear a lot of hats as the CEO, as the content creator as the entrepreneur.
So being able to step into a role with less hats was so helpful for me mentally. I definitely felt like I improved my work life balance as an employee, compared to how it was as an entrepreneur. I also loved being a part of a larger organization and company that had not only more financial resources than my own company had but more like human resources.
It was really fun to go from a really small team of one to two people, to a team of 10 to 20 people. I got to build a lot of relationships. I loved interacting with people on a daily basis and it was really fun. So that was perfect for me and for the past year. And I would say the pros were community more resources, more focused, better work life balance. I also feel like the cons for me were just a loss of time freedom, even in the best company where we had the best flex hours. It was as good as it could have been when it comes to having a flexible full-time job, but ultimately I did feel like I had a hard time doing appointments when I wanted to, or taking Kelly to certain classes like this gymnastics class I wanna do is Monday at 10:00 AM. That was impossible. And sometimes wanting to wrap up work early, but not being able to, or being on, five hours of zoom calls a day.
Sometimes it just was starting to feel draining. And so I think coming from being an entrepreneur to that was still difficult and was a difficult transition, especially as a first time mom and having childcare, it was like I only had childcare for enough hours for my job. So there was no childcare without it going towards my job. And that was something I was really struggling to navigate by the end and feeling a little constrained by it. And I think another con for me personally, was just the complexities of a larger organization. This is true in any business, the more money you're making, the more team members you have, there's just inherent complexities that can occur.
And I started to get a little nostalgic, just the simpler days of being a solopreneur. It's definitely a grass is always greener. Thing. One is not better than the other, but I found myself just wanting simplicity and yearning for that time freedom and the simplicity back. So those are some of the pros and cons for me.
I can't speak to the transition of going back to being an entrepreneur yet, because this is basically day one. I will say so far, I do feel really at peace with the decision. I feel really relieved. I feel also like I'm back in that new entrepreneur space of figuring out how to spend my time, especially because my goal is not to spend it all on business.
So there's almost this new element I never really focused on in the past, which is okay what's the small, biggest ROI, most fun thing I can do for business and package that into a really small amount of time. And then how do I spend my time, like literally this morning, I was like, I could go to the gym or run errands or I could sleep in or I could journal.
And I was like, oh wow, it's amazing. But you have to figure out your own rhythm. So I'm excited to figure out that rhythm. I'm excited to see what that looks like. I can't speak to it yet it though, but I would love to share updates here on the channel as I redefine my weekly schedule and what this looks like for me and my family.
Am I going back to coaching?
Another question was, are you going to dive back into your coaching business? I spoke to this a little bit earlier, but I don't know yet. I really liked doing one-on-one coaching. I like doing one-on-one consulting. I don't have any intention of doing any type of group coaching right now. I think that's just a higher time commitment than I'm currently wanting to do.
Whereas maybe a course with a once a month call or one to two one on one clients, those feel very manageable for me, but I'm not gonna be rushing that at all. So that's definitely something I will be seeing how I feel over the next couple weeks before making any type of commitment.
So my plan is to focus first on finding this new rhythm of personal and a small amount of content creation. See how I'm feeling a couple weeks from now, and then make a bit more of an informed decision on if I wanna do any coaching beyond that.
How did my boss handle it?
Another question I got was how did your boss handle this? And I'm so grateful to have such a great relationship with the CEO of the last company. I've worked with her on an off since 2015. She's a dear friend of mine now. And I was able to really just have honest conversations with her, leading up to the decision, as well as over the couple of the weeks of the transition.
She was nothing but supportive and understanding, and it was just a beautiful transition and exit from the company. I couldn't have asked for a better experience.
Potential content shift?
This one's not so much a question, but a comment I got on TikTok that I really appreciated where they said, congratulations, been following you for years and am happy about this potential shift in content would love to hear more about home organization, parenting kids, schedules, et cetera. And I really appreciate this comment because that's actually the direction I see my channel and my business going into, it's going to always talk about the things I'm passionate about.
Like productivity and time management, self care, , motivation goal setting. All of that is always gonna be a part of what I talk about because I'm so passionate about it. I do wanna share more of this new era of life, where I'm sharing, not only the home organization and decorating projects I'm doing. Sharing more about Kelly and our favorite products or her schedule or the milestones or day in the life vlogs, things like that. So I don't have, a set plan, I think since I'm always gonna be a content creator and entrepreneur, I'll continue to talk about certain apps and systems and services that are saving me time, making my life easier as this mom slash content creator.
So we'll see. But it's not gonna necessarily feel like a. Huge shift from what I've been doing the past couple of weeks, but it almost just feels like a bit of an expansion where I can talk about more personal stuff and share more of my personal life on a day to day basis.
What is something I’ve felt since quitting that was unexpected?
Another question was what is something you felt that you weren't expecting since quitting? Great question. I think for me, it's just this lightness. I feel so relieved and that's not to say anything bad about the job itself, but I just think, I feel relieved and at peace and calm and excited and hopeful about this next phase of life. And also just curious. I don't have a plan as I've said. And so I feel very curious and open to doing life in a different way. I think I feel a little bit more of an identity crisis than I expected, because I'm not a stay at home mom, I'm an entrepreneur, but like I'm an entrepreneur who's trying to do 10 hours or less.
And what does that at all mean and I keep wanting to put myself in a box, which is my biggest constraint all the time. I always run into that. It's the perfectionist tendency in me to wanna have a perfectly figured out plan and box to put things in. And that's just not the way life works. And so I'm really trying to not, I'll get stuck in that habit.
I'm very thankful to have some good friends that I Voxer with, who are entrepreneurs, who are also my friends who are continuing to remind me that I don't have to have it all figured out right now. And this is a wonderful opportunity to just creatively explore and see where things go. Yeah, those are all the emotions I've been feeling lately.
So that's kind of the big update. I also turned 32 last week while all of this was happening. So it's been an interesting 2022 so far. I definitely at new year's did not anticipate that I'd be here mid-March having quit my job and already had my last day.. So who knows what the rest of the year will hold?
I'm excited to share more about my personal life, about motherhood and home organization. In addition to all of the things I already love talking about, like self-care and motivation and productivity and planning.
