Why I Built My Business Around My Family

I built a multiple six-figure business within a couple of years of starting Her Big Leap after leaving corporate. I did it while raising two young boys. And the version of my life I’m living now, being present for my kids, moving meetings when they’re sick, chaperoning field trips without asking permission, is the reason I built it, not the reward I’m waiting for.

When I was in corporate, I was career-first. I didn’t have a family at that point. I was head down, moving to a new city with every promotion, giving everything I had to my career and not thinking much about what that meant for the rest of my life, because there wasn’t much rest of my life to account for.

The version of me who has built a business is a different person. I now have kids. I have a life I actually love and want to protect. And so when I built Her Big Leap, I built it the way I teach every client to build their business: focus on the life you want first, then build the business that supports that life.

Here’s what my week actually looks like.

From the outside, the hours might not look so different from a corporate schedule. My kids have school, and their structured days structure mine. I work while they’re in school. I’m there for drop offs and pickups.

When they’re home, the phone goes away. I’m not answering emails, not taking calls, not half-present at the dinner table with one eye on Slack. I’m there…fully. And when they go to bed, I can work again if I need to, but I’m not doing it out of obligation to a boss who’s watching whether my laptop is on.

The difference isn’t really in the hours. The difference is in the stress, and in who gets to make the decisions. If one of my kids is sick, I move my meetings. I don’t ask anyone. I don’t file a form. I don’t worry about what it looks like or whether it’ll be held against me at my next performance review. I just move the meetings and I take care of my kid. When there’s a field trip to chaperone, I go. When I want to take a Friday afternoon, I take it.

There’s no looming guilt. No shame from having a boss who has expectations of your time that supersede the expectations of your own family. No checking my phone during a school concert because someone sent something marked urgent.

And for me, that’s everything. After years in corporate where the implicit ask was always to put the company and my career first and fit your life into the gaps, the absence of that pressure is not a perk. It’s a different way of living.

On the income side: I make multiples of what I made in corporate, and I built that within the first couple of years of starting Her Big Leap. I’m not saying that to make it sound easy. I’m saying it because when I was in corporate, I had no frame of reference for what was possible outside it. I thought what I earned was what my skills were worth. It wasn’t. It was what that company or my boss had decided to pay me, within a salary band, within a system that wasn’t built to pay me what I was actually worth.

That’s true for most of the women I work with. They come in not knowing what their expertise is valued at in the market. They find out. And the number is almost always bigger than what they expected.

I’m now well past those first years. The business continues to grow. But the question isn’t really about me anymore. When women read this, what most are actually asking is: can I get to something real in the first couple of years? Not the ten-year version. The “what’s possible while it’s still scary” version.

Here’s my honest answer: for many women, yes. Not for everyone, and not as a guarantee to anyone. What happens in those first couple of years depends on the expertise you’re starting with, how hard you work, the market you step into, the business you decide to start and how much of the mindset work you’re actually willing to do. I’ve seen it happen fast. I’ve also seen it take longer, and that’s just as normal.

What I can tell you is that fast is a real, documented outcome for women who bring real expertise and do the work – not the typical one – but a real one. Some of what that’s looked like inside the program is below.*

The thing I want women to hear, especially the ones who are still in corporate looking at this from the outside, is that the life I’m describing is not a trade-off. It’s not “she makes less but has more freedom.” It’s not “she chose family over career.”

It’s more. More income than corporate paid me. More time present with my kids than corporate allowed. More control over my days than I ever had climbing someone else’s ladder.

That’s what the leap from corporate to starting your own business is actually for. Not just the exit from something that wasn’t working. The entry into something built specifically around the life you want.

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*In the Her Big Leap program, we’ve had women who take their 15+ years of expertise, start a consulting or advisory business leveraging all of that expertise and match, surpass and even double their corporate salary in their first year of business. These are the women who have the expertise and experience to begin with, build something directly based on their corporate expertise and identity, and have an incredible work ethic. They are also, without exception, the women who do the most work on their mindset during the program.

We have also worked with women who decide they want to do a major pivot, start a business doing something they’ve never done before. Unsurprisingly, many of those businesses need a hot minute to ramp up. (Although, even with that, I’ve seen exceptions to that rule, where women have done a major pivot and made well into six-figures their first year – that usually takes a doubling down on mindset work, dialing in their strategy and a lot of determination).

Sarah Janzen is the founder of Her Big Leap, a program that has helped hundreds of corporate women across North America and Europe build thriving businesses on their own terms. She does all of it while raising two boys, which is the best proof she knows that “waiting for the right time” was never the strategy.