Hey {{First Name | there}},

Yesterday, I sent out two proposals for strategic fractional consulting work. Just one of these contracts would bring in more money per month that my last full-time tech job did per month.

For a fraction of the hours.

Nothing is signed yet — you’re getting the honest behind the scenes scoop here. But I'm not waiting for the signature to tell you this story, because the signature isn't the point. The path that got me here is the point.

Let’s start the story two summers ago, when I left my tech job.

I’ve talked about this season and decision a lot. But I’m going to broaden the lens, or, at least, show a different angle of it today. Because if I don’t, then chances are you will assume: oh, Jennifer has great connections and a network in the tech space and so was just easily able to spin up this opportunity when she needed it.

Or something like that.

And the reality of how this has unfolded is so much better, and more mysterious, than that.

When I made the decision to leave my job (to stay home with my kids), it was not an easy decision. Though it was a clear one.

I was filled with self-doubt. Real, identity-level self-doubt. Maybe there's something wrong with me. Maybe I can't handle being a working mom. Maybe everyone else has figured this out and I'm the one who can't stop feeling the friction.

The other factor was I had a clear-eyed look at the real stakes to my career. AI was just taking off. It was clear it was going to reshape everything. I felt the chances were high that if I left, I would miss out on an important wave and never regain relevancy.

I saw the stakes. I weighed their impact.

I made the trade anyway.

Not romantically. Not blindly. But because I looked clearly at the cost, and decided I was willing to pay it.

Would I rather maintain relevancy in the tech field? Or relevancy with myself, my family?

Put in those simple terms, the choice was clear.

Because the alternative was staying in something that wasn't working for me and justifying it because it was “safe.”

Side note: My friend Jess and I have been discussing the desire/pressure to value safety and security over all else a lot on the podcast recently. You may enjoy listening if this resonates.

I want to be specific about what the past two years actually looked like, because it matters.

The first year was motherhood. Fully, completely. We traveled as a family during my husband’s sabbatical, and later pursued the opportunity that would eventually lead us to move across the country.

I had built a coaching program that worked around my family’s needs (I launched it before I left my job so knew I had some recurring income). I had made a financial agreement with myself to my family: a specific amount I needed to pay my family from my business every month, inside very specific time constraints — this $$ was my ticket to being able to leave my job in the first place.

Then I added a small contract writing job that wasn't even in tech — it was just enough to meet my monthly minimum while I was present with my kids. I discovered what I was capable of inside real limits, including how to live “enough is enough” rather than always reaching for more. I began to learn what capacity actually means.

The second year, this past school year, has been stabilization. Regulation. We moved across the country.

Our New Mexico house sat on the market for seven months — so from September through January I lived in a kind of low-grade financial precariousness, never quite knowing if I'd have to make the trade back to full-time.

I did a lot of somatic work that season. Staying regulated. Staying in my body. Slowly imagining what might come next. Building things that felt alive, not things that would keep me relevant.

There was no striving for consulting work. In fact, I had grown comfortable with the idea of it no longer being part of the picture. Which is exactly why it's worth telling you how it arrived.

Here's what I did do: in January, when the house finally went under contract and I could feel the steadiness returning, I set an intention. A specific number. What I wanted to pay myself from my business by June.

I set it, with some level of confidence it was achievable. I had contract revenue and coaching revenue and I imagined expanding both of those.

But by the end of January, all of my consistent income came to a halt.

In the same month I’d set the intention to make MORE money, the contract work stopped because of a RIF, coaching income stopped as I wrapped up my engagements, there was nothing coming in.

For the first time since I'd left my job.

Curious, huh?

Thankfully, our house closed. The money came into our account. I thought: okay. A little more time.

And instead of scrambling, I used the money clarity framework I'd been developing — Make the Money Math Math — to actually look at it. Not to panic. To see.

I ran the scenarios. Full speed into coaching? I looked at it honestly and the volume, the selling, the calendar full of clients. My body said no. Not forever. Just not this season. The tradeoff was wrong. The math wasn't just financial. It was about the energy trade.

So I didn't force it.

Here's what I did instead: I followed what was alive.

This is when the prompt to create Make the Money Math Math as an offer for others came to me. So I followed that. I built the program, launched the offer. The feedback I have received from people who have jumped in is amazing. Like this quote: “I was able to reach a level of clarity I’ve never been able to access before.”

Next, it was Move & Make Art Studio that came to me.

Then, Jess and I launched our podcast, Creative Current.

None of these mapped directly to the income I needed. They weren’t developed through strategic planning. But the vision was there. The alignment was there. And I had learned enough to trust in that. To trust my own capacity, my own knowing, and the wisdom that comes from looking directly at things instead of away from them.

So I took action in alignment with my creative energy, and lived with the discomfort of financial uncertainty a bit longer.

In cadence with my steps forward in my creative work, doors started opening for me in the consulting realm.

Rooms I’ve never had access to before invited my presence.

I started showing up in conversations I hadn't been in before. With decision-makers who saw my strategy, not just my output. The consulting work started coming toward me.

And I was ready for it — not despite the season I'd just lived through, but because of it.

The boundaries I'm holding around this consulting work. The prices I'm charging. The confidence I'm bringing into these rooms. That doesn't come from nowhere. It comes from two years of knowing what else my life is for — and refusing to trade it away for a contract that would disrupt the rhythm I'd worked so hard to build.

That's where the power comes from.

I hold all of my power.

That flip feels amazing to live in.

I set an intention in January for what I wanted to pay myself in June.

Then everything stopped.

Then the creative work arrived, and I followed it.

Then the consulting arrived, and I was ready.

And now I'm looking at numbers that exceed what I made per month at a job I left because I trusted my intuition.

I know some of you are sitting with a pull you've been protecting yourself from.

I'm not here to tell you what to do with it. Your tradeoffs are real. I'm not going to pretend otherwise.

But I'll ask you what I had to ask myself: have you actually looked at it? Not just the anxiety spiel, but the real version. The actual cost, the actual tradeoff, the actual life on the other side?

Because fog is where fear lives.

Clarity is where decisions get made.

Decisions made with integrity is the heart of creative foresight.

Warmly,
Jennifer

Creative Current is the podcast I just launched with my friend and creative partner, Jess Schimm. We talk open-book style about our relationship with creativity and all it brings up in our lives. I love it so much. I trust you will too.

P.S. Want to encourage someone in your life whose taking creative risks? Share this email with them. It’s an encouragement to me, too!

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