Confessions From Pausing a Financially Thriving Business

In 2024-2025 my financial education business experienced significant growth and visibility, which is why my next decision surprised a lot of people.

Last fall I made the decision to pause group financial education programs and 1:1 financial counseling indefinitely, executing that decision this January (promptly removing ~80% of my business revenue).

When I first starting thinking about shutting down my business I thought I was dealing with burnout. But when I finally created enough space to ruminate, I realized that I had built a business I didn’t actually want.

When I started my business in 2021, my mission and drive was simple: be the catalyst to help more women gain security, safety, and independence through jargon and judgment-free financial education. That has never changed and that’s why I’m still here and will still be educating, just in a different way.

At the same time, my corporate career was coming to a natural end. Growth opportunities had plateaued and despite looking for opportunities and some lovely introductions, nothing felt like a fit.

Personally, I had gained enough financial stability to comfortably branch out on my own and had spent my last two years in corporate working on my business on the weekends. I was creating decent content, building an audience, growing an email list, and learning how digital funnels actually work.

Compared to most new online entrepreneurs, I had real advantages. A decade of experience in digital marketing. Financial modeling and budgeting savvy. Public speaking experience. Capital to invest. A solid network. I was ready.

And yet, it didn’t take long before I started to feel a growing dissonance between what I was here to build and what success in the online space looked like.

I’ll share more in next week’s post about what the online coaching and course space gets wrong about money, but some of the things I admittedly got sucked into were vanity metrics of hitting “$X revenue months” and I even succumbed to launching a revenue model I deep down knew I didn’t want.

That distortion slowly started to pull me away from the original reasons I started. I never wavered on the mission and my desire to help women take control of their money never faltered. But the more successful I became by “online industry standards”, the more I felt disconnected from my business, constantly on edge about my progress, and generally discontent. From the outside, everything looked great but on the inside I was aggressively pushing aside a question I didn’t want to answer, “Do I actually want the business I’m building?”

Before I had enough awareness to honestly ask myself that question, I tried everything. I changed my schedule so I only took calls when I wanted. I started being incredibly selective with the clients I worked with, turning down people on a regular basis leaving me with a roster of clients I would be genuinely honored to be friends with in real life. I adjusted my marketing strategy so I could spend less time on social media. I hired a shark of a fractional COO who I also hope will be my friend for life (love you Jen.)

Nothing worked.

Giving some grace to myself, 2025 was a difficult year for personal reasons outside of business which made it tricky to determine if my business was truly the cause of my general malaise.

But as the magic of fall settled in New England and my personal life had stabilized, the problem in my business came into focus.

The issue wasn’t workload.
It wasn’t clients.
It wasn’t boundaries.

It was the model itself.

The incentives were wrong.

The structure rewarded visibility and output over thoughtful depth and impact. It subtly encouraged constant performance—launching, scaling, posting, proving and I found myself hesitating to say and write about things that didn’t directly improve the performance of my business.

And the irony is that I had built financial independence precisely so I would have options about how I worked and what I worked on. And yet, without realizing it, I had recreated a version of work I didn’t actually want.

Don’t get me wrong, it was all worth it.

The skills I learned.

The people I met.

The confidence I built.

I am a changed person because of that chapter. A better one. But change also gives you the opportunity and dare I say, the responsibility to choose again.

So I’m getting back to basics. This year, I’ll be focusing on providing the most helpful writing, content, and information I can—work designed to help you build real agency over your money and your life.

And the exciting news is that I’ve also stepped into a new opportunity with a very cool business owned by a friend I’ve worked with before—someone I deeply respect, who builds thoughtfully, and who leads like a human. That role gives me stability, perspective, and the freedom to let this work return to what it’s always been at its best: passion, impact, and honesty.

More on all of that soon.

For now, I’m glad you’re here.