Building It diary

If you’ve read my blog about how I began quitting my job as a stay-at-home mom you’ll know that I started with a remote-based, part-time personal stylist position. This afforded me a lot of flexibility. The downside was that I had added at least 15 hours a week of work to my plate, without taking anything else off. My older kids were in elementary school, and my youngest was just about two. So during his naps or late at night I would work. I began to feel a bit overwhelmed because a stay-at-home mom job is full-time plus. The mental and physical load is substantial, and while I was happy to make some additional income and have a creative outlet I was proud of, I knew I needed help. With the part-time income, it didn’t make sense to hire a sitter. The next step for me was to explore a full-time, salaried position for which I would have full-time childcare in place so I could really focus on work at work, and family at home. I may have been a little naive to think that those two worlds would live siloed and I could focus on one at a time. 

The steps I took to find my first full-time job after staying at home as a full-time mom for seven years were not handed to me in an instruction manual. It took a lot of blissful ignorance, which I credit to giving me the confidence to try. I found my LinkedIn credentials and logged back in. I started to reconnect with colleagues from years past. I sent InMail messages letting them know I’m job searching and would appreciate any support or connections they had. I sent emails and text messages and made phone calls. I sent out dozens upon dozens of resumes and filled out online job applications. I leaned on my friends who had continued to build their careers and soaked in any tips and advice they offered.. These women completely had my back, met me for coffee, provided referrals, and connected me to their business network. 

I went on many interviews and experienced a lot of rejection. While I sometimes felt knocked down, doubted my worth, I learned so much from that process. It was about 6 months from the day I committed to the job hunt and going back to work full time to when I started my first day of work. I finally landed a position at an amazing company that I was connected to by a friend and colleague from my past. She had just started working at this niche ad agency in Minneapolis and they were hiring for an Account Executive. This was a local, small business started by the CEO and CFO. The CEO and President were both heavily working in the business and were bad ass women. This place felt right. It was the perfect mix of fun, scrappiness (is that a word?) and hard work. I call it the master class in marketing and advertising because of the small size, you had the chance to learn a little bit of everything and that was so valuable to building my skill set. This company is so special to me, because they didn’t look at the seven year gap in my resume, they looked at what I had that you could not teach. A serious drive and work ethic. The company aligned with my values and when they say you are never in a room by mistake I understood what that meant.

I speak about the company in past tense, because after 5 amazing years, I felt that itch again. In those five years my kids grew five years older. I grew five years older. And I tried hard to shake this voice in my head but it only got louder. It said FREEDOM. I could never answer the question, what do you want to do? Where do you want to be in five years from now? Where do you see your career going? Those were impossible questions for me to answer. I just kept hearing FREEDOM shouting at me. 

So here I am, five and a half years after going after my dream and answering my own question of how I restart a career after being a stay-at-home mom for seven years, back to the start. I left my full time ad agency career and I’m back to the beginning.