Posting this for anyone else who may be in a similar situation.

I just started a full-time job at a larger (>1500 employee) business after seven years of first freelancing and then running a small marketing agency as a US S-Corp. I’m a dad in my forties and also have eldercare requirements outside of parenting stuff.

I feel more relieved and more like I’ve taken a 200 lb. backpack off my back than anything else.

For my business, I went from generating $150,000+ annual revenue in 2019/2020 without doing much outbound marketing to going full-throttle on new customer acquisition and barely clocking $90,000 in 2024. 2023 was a hell year where we barely clocked $60,000.

I ended up taking a full-time remote in-house senior marketing role at a B2B company instead that pays ~US$140k a year. I have to travel across the US to the home office a few times a year, but is otherwise remote.

I’m just… happy. The last few years have been brutal and we hit some terrible industry headwinds (mergers at large agencies who were anchor clients that subcontracted us work + shrinking marketing budgets across the board). We went from having very professional clients who paid well to having clients who… well, weren’t either of those.

I am so happy that I won’t be chasing $10k invoices for months anymore.

It’s good on the personal front too. My wife works in a job that requires travel and she is on the road 5 days a month or so, and I’m constantly helping my elderly father with insurance stuff or health emergencies. I haven’t had much time to exercise or take care of myself between 60 hours a week of work + childcare + eldercare. Not good for me, not good for my family.

I’m lucky that I’m able to cash out when my business is still functioning and that we didn’t have to file for bankruptcy or anything like that. I still have ~$10k debt on the business credit card that I’m planning to pay off this year doing winddown work for legacy clients. But there are a lot of projects at the day job I’m excited to do with a larger budget + more resources than I’d have working with a client. So, so excited for that.

I know there’s a lot of glamorization of running a small business, but we all know the reality is different. It’s been a hell of an adventure and so happy I got to do it.