It’s Funny What Leaving Your Job Will Allow You to Do

Leaving your job after spending years building a career isn't generally included on anyone's five-year strategic plan.

At least, it wasn't on mine.

There was definitely no bullet point that said:

Year 15: Unexpected career change. Experience minor existential crisis. Start LLC. Build website. Become entrepreneur.

Yet, here we are.

And as it turns out, having the plan you thought you were following suddenly change has a funny way of making you think about what you might build instead.

When Your Job Becomes Part of Who You Are

For a long time, I knew exactly what I was professionally.

I was a nonprofit professional. A fundraiser. An executive director. A CFRE.

I was the person who wrote the grant, planned the event, talked to the donor, answered the board question, worked on the budget, wrote the newsletter, managed the project, fixed whatever problem had appeared that day, and somehow knew where the extra extension cords were.

When you spend that many years building a career, your job title starts to become part of how you introduce yourself.

And then suddenly, I didn't have that title anymore.

Which was scary.

But also—and I'm allowed to say this now—a little freeing.

Because once I got past the initial "Well...now what?", I had to start thinking about what I actually wanted the answer to that question to be.

Your Skills Don't Belong to Your Job

This was probably one of the biggest things I had to remind myself.

I left a job. I didn't leave behind everything I had learned while doing it.

I still knew how to write a grant.

I still knew how to raise money and build relationships with donors.

I still knew how to plan an event, develop a project, create a marketing campaign, work with a board, build community partnerships, solve problems, organize chaos, and take someone's "I have this idea..." and start figuring out how to make it happen.

Those skills didn't belong to a job title.

They belonged to me.

And once I started looking at it that way, a different question started creeping in.

What if I took all of those things I know how to do and did them for more than one organization?

What if I built something of my own?

Apparently, you can take 15+ years of experience, file some paperwork with the State of Kansas, open a bank account, build a website, and call yourself a business owner.

Who knew?

The State of Kansas knew.

They also wanted a filing fee.

Enter Three Roots Creative

The idea started pretty simply.

There are a lot of nonprofits, small businesses, schools, and community organizations doing really good work without enough people or enough hours in the day to do everything they want to do.

I know because I've been on that side of the table.

I've looked at the grant deadline coming up while already having 47 other things that needed to be done.

I've watched good ideas get pushed to "someday" because no one had time to own them.

I've been in meetings where everyone agrees something is a great idea until somebody asks:

"Okay...who's going to do it?"

That's the gap I realized I could help fill.

Grant writing. Fundraising. Communications. Events. Strategy. Special projects. Or sometimes just taking a big, messy idea and helping someone figure out what comes next.

The things I'd been doing for years could become the foundation for something new.

And that's how Three Roots Creative started taking shape.

I Wouldn't Exactly Call an Unexpected Career Change a Gift

There's a temptation when you tell stories like this to wrap everything up nicely.

"Everything happens for a reason."

"It was the best thing that ever happened to me."

"It was a blessing in disguise."

I'm not going to do that.

Sometimes hard things are just hard.

Leaving a job you've invested years of your life into is hard. Having your plans change is hard. Trying to figure out what comes next when you thought you already knew is hard.

But I can also acknowledge that something unexpected happened because of it.

It created room for something new.

I started asking myself questions I probably wouldn't have asked otherwise.

What am I really good at?

What kind of work do I actually enjoy?

What do I want the next 15 years of my career to look like?

And maybe the biggest one:

What could I build if I gave myself permission to try?

I'm not sure I would have seriously asked that question if everything had continued according to plan.

So Now I'm a Business Owner

Which still feels a little strange to say.

I'm building a business.

I'm working.

I'm raising three girls.

I'm learning QuickBooks.

I'm learning Squarespace.

I'm figuring out business banking, taxes, pricing, marketing, contracts, insurance, and approximately 4,000 other things you're apparently supposed to know when you start an LLC.

Seriously, you file one piece of paperwork and suddenly you're supposed to understand accounting.

But underneath all of those new things is work I already know.

Helping people.

Solving problems.

Finding resources.

Building relationships.

Writing.

Planning.

Organizing.

And helping good ideas become something real.

That's the part that feels familiar.

The Three Little Reasons Behind the Name

The name Three Roots Creative is personal.

The "Three" represents my three daughters.

They are a huge part of why building something of my own feels important to me. They're watching me navigate a chapter I didn't plan, figure things out as I go, and take a chance on something new.

I'm not sure they'll fully understand what that means right now.

Mostly, they probably just know Mom is on her computer again.

But someday I hope they understand that plans can change.

You can be really good at the thing you've spent years doing and still find yourself starting something new.

And starting something new doesn't mean starting from nothing.

You bring everything you've learned with you.

That's where the "Roots" come in.

Three Roots is built on the experience, relationships, lessons, successes, mistakes, and communities that shaped the first 15+ years of my career.

For me, those roots also represent the things I've learned matter most when you're trying to build something meaningful:

Strategy. Resources. Community.

And the business is named, in part, for the three people who give me the best reason in the world to keep figuring out what comes next.

Definitely Not the Business Plan I Would Have Written

If you had asked me a year ago what I'd be doing today, I'm fairly confident "launching my own consulting business" would not have been the answer.

Life is funny that way.

Sometimes you choose a new direction.

And sometimes life changes the direction for you and you're left standing there thinking:

Well. I guess we're doing this now.

So that's what I'm doing.

I'm building Three Roots Creative one client, one project, one blog post, one lesson, and probably one QuickBooks question at a time.

Is everything figured out?

Absolutely not.

But I'm learning that maybe it doesn't have to be.

For someone who has spent much of her career helping other people figure out how to move their ideas forward, there's something pretty fitting about finally doing the same thing for myself.

I still wouldn't recommend a major, unexpected career change as a business-development strategy.

Zero stars. Very stressful.

But if there's one thing I've learned, it's that sometimes the thing that completely changes your plans also forces you to consider the plans you never gave yourself permission to make.

Three Roots Creative wasn't Plan A.

I'm becoming pretty excited to see where it goes anyway.