The job you invented for yourself

I never really decided to be an entrepreneur.
I decided to help.
I decided to answer a need I saw in my field and in my community and somewhere along the way, I accidentally invented my own job.

If you’re anything like me, you might have built your work the same way — no blueprint, no formal business training, just the conviction that the work mattered.

It’s imagination. It’s ingenious. And it’s precarious.

Because while you’re pouring energy into the part you love, the business that holds it might be running on duct tape and determination. You make pricing guesses. You overwork to keep up. You treat marketing like a necessary evil or avoid it completely. And you hope it all adds up to enough.

That’s what I mean when I talk about the accidental entrepreneur — someone who built their work from the ground up, often in systems never designed for helpers, feelers, or justice-minded folks.

A small exercise for today:
Take a blank page and draw two columns. At the top of one, write:

“Things I love about my work”
At the top of the other, write:
“Things that drain me”

Give yourself five minutes to list what comes to mind. Then circle just one thing from the “drain” column that, if shifted, would make the biggest difference to how you feel in your work right now.

You don’t have to fix it all — you just need a place to start.

You deserve mentorship and structure that actually match the work you do — and the values you bring to it. That’s exactly why I built EMBER: a place to do the emotional and strategic work of business, side-by-side, so you can create something that stays interesting and you can keep doing for as long as you choose.

If you’ve been thinking about joining, now’s a good time — you can take 30% off your first payment for The Hearth or EMBER DIY when you join by August 31st with code KINDLING30.

Because the job you invented for yourself? It is needed and it deserves to last.