I hit a wall after nearly a decade working in Corporate America. At first I thought the burnout was the result of a work environment that did not feel good to me, so I quit my job with the intention to create space for what I wanted to do next. Taking a break felt good, but I wasn’t finding motivation to return to the work I had been doing. Something that I knew to be true for a long time became too obvious to ignore anymore–big box retail is not good for this planet or for the people who populate it. Using my brain power to help enormous companies sell more, and make more money doing it wasn’t something I could do anymore.
That realization helped me over the first hurdle of making a change. It showed me what I didn’t want to do. It also opened up a much harder question–what do I want to do? At first, trying to answer that question was fun. I imagined myself in about 100 different careers, meandering very far from my homebase of business strategy and analytics. I read books, listened to podcasts, watched YouTube videos and generally ran wild on Google looking for answers. I encountered a handful of potential careers that almost felt right, but were just a few degrees off. Exhaustion and frustration had me questioning if I should just push down my ideals and return to the corporate world.
One night, talking to my wife about how we can focus more on shopping local, it dawned on me that for all the reasons it makes sense to shop local, it makes sense to work local. Moreover, I realized that I have hard-won skills that small, local businesses need as much, if not more, than their corporate competitors. That revelation started me down a path I am very happy to be on–building a small business of my own, in the interest of supporting and growing local small businesses. It is my firm belief that strong local economies are the answer to creating more abundance for everyone, and I am so grateful to be in a position of service.
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