Career change might look like a simple shift. In most cases it’s probably more complex. People make the decision in pieces, over years, often while they are also doing something else entirely: studying for an exam, holding a newborn, sitting in a cubicle they did not choose. Career change stories tend to get told backward, starting from the destination and working toward the moment that made it inevitable. But the moment rarely feels inevitable when you are living it. It feels like failure, or at least like admitting you were wrong about yourself.
That is where Kimberly Tara’s story starts. She planned to become a chemical engineer. She switched to accounting less than two weeks into a class she took almost by accident, became a CPA, made partner-track goals for herself at a public accounting firm, then walked away from all of it to build her own firm. Along the way she hit burnout twice, discovered she was a people pleaser after insisting for years she was not, and eventually had to redesign her own business from the ground up just to keep it sustainable.
This episode is for anyone who has changed direction and quietly wondered if that meant something was wrong with them, and for anyone weighing whether to stay small and steady or grow into something that costs more than money. Tara’s turning points were never dramatic. They were observational. She watched a colleague FaceTime her toddler to sleep for the fourth night in a row and realized, calmly and without judgment of the other woman, that she did not want that life. That single scene reframes the rest of her story, and it is where the real decision-making begins.
Changing Your Mind Is Not the Same as Failing
Tara spent three and a half years working toward a chemical engineering degree at Auburn University before she sat in an accounting class for non-business majors and knew, within two weeks, that she had found the wrong subject the first time around. She loved chemistry. She was good at it. But loving a subject and wanting the job attached to it are not the same thing.
“I don’t sit in a room all day by myself. I need to be around people,” Tara said of the realization that pushed her out of engineering.
The switch cost her money. She lost her engineering-specific scholarships because, as she put it, she had earned them as a woman in a male-dominated discipline, and losing that funding meant she carried roughly the same debt load post-switch as she would have if she had never changed direction at all. It also cost her something harder to measure: the sense that she had wasted years on the wrong plan. Stone’s reflection during the conversation names a pattern many people recognize only once they are through it, that a change of direction in school or career gets internalized as personal failure in the moment, even though, looked at from any distance, it is one of the most common chapters in anyone’s story.
Watching Someone Else’s Life Can Show You What You Actually Want
Years into public accounting, on track to make partner faster than anyone else at her firm had, Tara watched a senior manager she admired FaceTime her three-year-old to sleep for four nights running while visibly pregnant with her second child.
“That was the fourth night in a row she was FaceTiming her kid to sleep,” Tara said. “I actually don’t want that.”
Stone was careful to frame this as observation rather than judgment of the other woman’s choice, and Tara agreed. The clarity did not come from disapproving of anyone. It came from finally having something concrete in front of her instead of an abstract five-year plan. She later realized, telling the story on the show for the first time, that she was already a few weeks pregnant with her first child during that same tax season, though she would not find out for weeks. Whatever was happening beneath the surface, the decision that followed was hers to make consciously: leave the partner-track plan, start a family sooner than scheduled, and build something of her own.
Asked later why she shares this story publicly at all, Stone put the question directly to her guest. “What is the reason you like to share your story publicly?” Stone asked.
“The women that I work with lack the confidence to think that they can do this,” Tara said. “Don’t let kids stop you. Don’t let spouses stop you. Don’t let the world stop you.”
Burnout Rarely Announces Itself in the Moment
Tara’s own firm hit six figures in its first year. It also nearly burned her out by month 18.
“I was laying in bed at night, not just thinking about my problems, but all my clients’ problems,” Tara said. “I care so much, and I want to overdeliver. It just kind of came to a head where I had to figure something out.”
She traces her pattern of burnout back to high school and again to college, each time tied to holding herself to standards nobody else set for her. What surprised her more recently was learning, through coaching, that she is a people pleaser, a label she had spent years rejecting.
“I’ve realized that I’m a people pleaser in the sense that I do want to make everybody happy,” Tara said. “I want them to think that I’m the best mom, the best CEO and the best wife. Doing it outwardly is what proves that.”
Burnout is easier to name in hindsight than in the moment, and the version that hits high-achieving women often gets mistaken for commitment right up until it becomes unsustainable.
Scaling a Business Means Redesigning It, Not Just Growing It
The decision to hire her first employee came from a math problem Tara could not avoid. With four children arriving over five and a half years, she no longer had the uninterrupted hours she once had, and she was tired of thinking about clients while with her kids and thinking about her kids while working. Growing the business meant taking a pay cut for a year while she rebuilt it from the inside.
“I did it the way that most business owners should, but they just don’t know any better,” Tara said. “I had to create packages instead of everything being customized. I had to give up control.”
What started as a solo practice became a six-person, full-time team over roughly three years, but only after Tara redesigned pricing, scheduling and service structure to work without her doing everything personally.
The Takeaway
Career change stories rarely turn on one dramatic exit. Tara’s turned on a handful of quiet, specific moments: a class she almost skipped, four nights of watching someone else’s life, a burnout she could only name after the fact, and a spreadsheet-brained decision to rebuild her business instead of simply growing it bigger. Each one required her to admit that an earlier plan no longer fit, without treating that admission as a verdict on her judgment.
That is the part worth carrying into your own decisions, whether the plan you are questioning involves a degree, a job title or a business you built yourself. Changing direction is not evidence you got it wrong the first time. It is evidence you were paying attention.
This article was inspired by an interview with Kimberly Tara and Amy Stone on The Art of Imperfect Adulting podcast. https://imperfect-adulting.captivate.fm/listen or https://www.youtube.com/@imperfectadulting To hear more compelling conversations like this one and receive special offers from our guests directly to your inbox, join our email community today.
Career Change: Interview Transcript Kimberly Tara with Amy Stone | The Art of Imperfect Adulting | August 2026
Amy Stone [00:00:00]:
This is The Art of Imperfect Adulting.
Amy Stone [00:00:03]:
I’m your host, Amy Stone.
Amy Stone [00:00:05]:
I share stories from real people who have already been through some hard stuff.
Amy Stone [00:00:09]:
Why?
Amy Stone [00:00:10]:
So that you don’t feel alone while you’re busy figuring out your own life.
Amy Stone [00:00:15]:
Let’s do this. Welcome to The Art of Imperfect Adulting. I’m here today with Kimberly Tara. Kimberly, are you ready for a fun chat today?
Amy Stone [00:00:26]:
I am.
Kimberly Tara [00:00:27]:
I’m so excited for this. It’s kind of different from the podcast interviews I normally do.
Amy Stone [00:00:31]:
I love it. I love it.
Amy Stone [00:00:33]:
I love it when people tell me I’m different. All right, so here we go. Starting off with the same question that I ask everybody, everybody, everybody. What part of the world do you call home and what’s something you love about living there?
Kimberly Tara [00:00:43]:
Yeah, so I newly call the suburbs of Charlotte, North Carolina in the US home. Born and bred in New Orleans. And something that I am loving about it right now, so we are in the summer months and we woke up to 66-degree weather this morning. And it was an opportunity to have a conversation with my kiddos about the pros and cons of living in different places. And a pro is that right now it’s 66 and like low humidity outside and it’s beautiful.
Amy Stone [00:01:10]:
I love that. I love that answer. I do.
Amy Stone [00:01:12]:
I do.
Kimberly Tara [00:01:12]:
I know you understand that.
Amy Stone [00:01:14]:
I love that answer. I do. All right. My next warmup question that I ask everybody is a workaround, a sneak around question, which maybe as a woman raised in the South, you’ll identify with. You know, I was told you’re never supposed to ask people their age, but it is a way that people align in the new information. So now I ask people, which of these generation descriptions do you match? Silent Generation, Baby Boomer, Gen X, Millennial, or Gen Z?
Kimberly Tara [00:01:41]:
Well, I think technically I’m a Millennial. I’m gonna be 36 this year in a month. I don’t hide my age. I just own it. So I’m pretty sure that makes me a Millennial. I’m 1990, but probably in my Soul, I’m probably more Gen X.
Amy Stone [00:01:56]:
Oh, interesting.
Amy Stone [00:01:57]:
All right, very good.
Amy Stone [00:01:58]:
And the reason I ask this question, so that everybody knows, is it’s feeding information so that people can find what they’re looking for. Like, one of the goals of my show is to cross those generational divides when it’s helpful, right? Because the best time, and that feeds into this, because the best time to get financial information about something you’re doing is before you need it. It’s before you need it, right? So Kimberly, today we’re going to talk about career change and choices and decisions about careers. Let’s start with this. What did you study when you were in school? Like, what was it that you studied that you thought was going to be the path for your career?
Kimberly Tara [00:02:38]:
Yeah, so I actually, as a sophomore in high school sitting in my chemistry honors class— nerd alert, yes— um, I thought I was going to be a chemical engineer because you can either be a chemistry researcher or a chemical engineer when you love chemistry. And I did not. I, you’ll learn very quickly. I don’t sit in a room all day by myself. I need to be around people. So I was going to be a chemical engineer, right? It made good money. It was innovative. So I went to Auburn University to study that. 3 and a half years in, realized that I didn’t love it, all the other engineering aspects that came with it. And I was ultimately trying to get my bachelor’s in chemical engineering and then get my MBA. And so I had this just, I mean, life-shattering moment where I had to admit sort of this failure to myself that I no longer wanted to do that. I’d had 2 internships, I had done 3 and a half years of classes, and I just didn’t love it the way that you needed to love it to get through that curriculum. It’s very difficult. And I sat in an accounting class for non-business majors. And I was, I was having these feelings of this, I don’t wanna do engineering, but I don’t know what else I would do. I haven’t thought about anything else for 5 years. And when I sat in that class, less than 2 weeks in, I knew it was for me. I switched from the College of Engineering to the College of Business, and I have never looked back after I got through all of the cries and the, the moments and the feelings that I had to work through.
Amy Stone [00:04:05]:
So that is really interesting, and that is not actually the pure topic that you pitched, but my focus on these things in these conversations It’s always about the choices and the decision because we like to— we tend to tell transformation stories in our life and life goal stories with the destination. And I mean, it’s a great story.
Amy Stone [00:04:25]:
It’s the hero story.
Amy Stone [00:04:25]:
It’s like, look at where I ended up and how I got there. But this is a really, really powerful part of a lot of people’s stories. And it’s really funny because once you’re through it, you realize that A lot of people have this in their educational story, the day that they were like, you know what? I am not going to be this. But when you’re in it, when you’re in it when you’re in school, you think you’re the only person that’s done it and you tend to internalize it and think, oh, if I change now, I’ve done something wrong. There’s something wrong with me. So what was it that you liked? Chemistry? Yes.
Kimberly Tara [00:05:07]:
I liked chemistry.
Amy Stone [00:05:08]:
You liked chemistry and—
Kimberly Tara [00:05:11]:
I was good at it.
Amy Stone [00:05:11]:
Yes.
Kimberly Tara [00:05:12]:
And I’m a Type A high achiever, so I like being good at everything.
Amy Stone [00:05:16]:
And then so the— but you’re obviously a Type A person that you’re like, what’s the job that attaches to this?
Amy Stone [00:05:23]:
Of course.
Amy Stone [00:05:23]:
So you went into engineering school and that is a very— that makes a lot of sense. And how you had— if I understand the story right, you were 3 and a half years into this before you realized, you’re like, no, I actually don’t like the job that matches this study. Is that the right sequence of events?
Kimberly Tara [00:05:42]:
That is correct. And I would say, you know, a lot of people go into engineering because it seems glamorous, it makes a lot of money, right? Parents do it. So a lot of my classmates were sort of pushed into it by their parents that they needed to do that. We had a lot of ROTC. members in there because it was one of the approved curriculums. And so a lot of them didn’t make it past the first 12 months, but I was in it to win it, right?
Amy Stone [00:06:10]:
Yeah, no, and then how much, if you remember, ’cause this has been a hot minute since you did this, when you made the switch—
Kimberly Tara [00:06:17]:
Thank you for that reminder, Amy.
Amy Stone [00:06:19]:
Sorry, sorry, but I, you know, like how much did it add to your study time to make the switch from an engineering program to a business program? And school has changed a lot. I have kids that, I have an engineer actually who just finished an engineering program, And watching her go through school, it was really clear how different it was. And seeing all of her friends announce their degrees and their specialties, that has changed a lot since I was in school. But how much did it add to your study time to make that change after 3 years?
Kimberly Tara [00:06:51]:
Yeah, so it added a summer of study and an extra semester because for chemical engineering and with 2 internship rotations in there, it was already a 5-year program with the number of hours that I needed. So it only extended me by a half, by one semester. I took a summer where I worked and took classes. And then because I had to go back to some of the beginning with like the Business 101s, I was able to take 18 and 21 hours those semesters because it was quite frankly a joke compared to my junior level engineering classes.
Amy Stone [00:07:26]:
Oh, man.
Kimberly Tara [00:07:27]:
So I mean, it probably could have been a year if I didn’t do those things, but for me it really wasn’t a whole ton. The worst part was actually, Amy, that I lost a lot of my discipline-specific scholarships because I was in engineering, because I was a woman in engineering. And so all of those engineering-specific scholarships I lost. And so I would say I incurred basically the same amount of debt post-switch that I did in the first 3 and a half years because I lost so many scholarships.
Amy Stone [00:07:55]:
Yeah, no, it is, that is, education is expensive. Higher education is expensive.
Amy Stone [00:08:00]:
Yes, yes.
Amy Stone [00:08:00]:
Very, very much. Okay, so you make this change. I’m so glad I asked that question, ’cause sometimes that’s just like filler question, get-to-know-you question, but this is a pretty big part of your story.
Kimberly Tara [00:08:12]:
Pretty pivotal part of my story.
Amy Stone [00:08:14]:
Yeah, there you go. So in the information you gave me, you shared that after you graduated, you went into public accounting, and I think that means that you’re working for a pretty big accounting firm, but I’m not actually sure. Can you tell us what that means and what the career path that you went on once you graduated after switching your degree?
Kimberly Tara [00:08:35]:
Yeah, so a big thing that I knew with, with switching my career, especially so late in the game, staring down $100,000 of student loans that needed to be paid back, right? I knew that I needed to become a certified public accountant. I needed those 3 letters, that designation behind my name, because even though I’ve seen a lot of CPAs not do good things, that designation, that licensure does hold a lot of weight behind it. So in order to do that, you have to study under another public accountant as part of— you have to take all of the exams, you have to have 2,000 1,000 hours, all of the things, right? And so it’s one of those things where it’s like, it’s just the trajectory. Like, if you’re gonna be in accounting and you wanna make it and you wanna learn and you wanna like have these credentials behind you, you need to go into public accounting. One thing that I did do differently, so it was, um, you probably remember, uh, you know, back in your day it was like the Big 8, it was the Big 4. It still is the Big 4. It still is the Big 4 now. And so I actually—
Amy Stone [00:09:32]:
They’ve changed their names, so go ahead and list them so that people—
Kimberly Tara [00:09:34]:
They changed their names.
Amy Stone [00:09:35]:
They changed them lots, a bunch along the way. Uh, what are they now?
Kimberly Tara [00:09:39]:
Uh, so right now it’s KPMG, Deloitte, Ernst Young, and, um, PwC, PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Amy Stone [00:09:46]:
PricewaterhouseCoopers. All right. So, right. And that, those are important.
Kimberly Tara [00:09:50]:
Yeah.
Amy Stone [00:09:50]:
Those, and those are important.
Kimberly Tara [00:09:51]:
I did interview with Deloitte, but ultimately I decided I didn’t wanna go to one of the Big 4 because I, when I was in engineering, I interned with BASF, which is the leading chemical, chemical company in the world. And so like would’ve had opportunities to move to Germany, things like that. So I felt that large corporate culture from my internships there. And I knew, look, the accounting’s the accounting. We follow GAAP principles, we follow the IRS, right? Like, the rules are the rules that you have to follow. And so I decided to go with a medium-sized growing firm based out of Atlanta because I didn’t want that large corporate culture. I wanted to be a bigger fish in a smaller pond because I felt like the opportunities to learn would be better, and it just fit my longer-term goals that I had at the time that wound up being different. We can talk about that. So I actually went with a medium-sized, what is classified as a medium-sized public accounting firm in Atlanta.
Amy Stone [00:10:48]:
Well, I think that this is a very good example of the fact that you are clearly a planner. I would love to go back and meet the 16-year-old you and give you a skills assessment and see where it lined you up, because, you know, Because they’re both 2 intentional things, accounting and engineering. I just— it’s fascinating to hear you talk about it at such a young age that you were able to look at a big picture and be like, you know what, this is this trajectory, but I’m gonna go over here. It’s not— it’s just not something all of us are able to do. I am one of those people who I have some ideas and then sometimes I put myself in a spot and I’m like, oh, wait.
Kimberly Tara [00:11:33]:
Yeah.
Amy Stone [00:11:34]:
Now that I’m here, I see—
Kimberly Tara [00:11:36]:
And it’s so funny because like I am so relaxed now, 4 kids later. And at the, you know, I’d like to think I still feel very young at 35, yet I also know that like, you know, like I’ll tell my parents sometimes, I’m like, well, we’re just kids. And then they’ll be like, you have kids, you’re not a kid. And I’m like, okay, you know, but I just, I feel so young. And at the same time, I also look back and I’m like, wow, Wow, what— like, I don’t know, like, I’m just so, um, so much more relaxed. And I’m like, why was I stressing so much at 16? But I am who I am.
Amy Stone [00:12:08]:
You are who you are, and that works. I will tell you that my— one of my in-laws, this is a while ago, but even like she said in her 70s, she’s like, I still feel like I’m, you know, XYZ age. I don’t think it ever— I don’t think— I don’t know that that ever ends. Like, it’s like we know That we’re older, but it’s like we are always just the person we are. Somebody’s hardworking.
Kimberly Tara [00:12:30]:
And I’m definitely a more relaxed version, in a good way, of who I am. And my husband is kind of the yin to my yang. But, um, you know, I definitely, um, it makes me really great at my job is what I say. It makes me really good at the thing that I do.
Amy Stone [00:12:42]:
Very cool. So you choose intentionally to go for a medium-sized firm in Atlanta, Georgia. You were coming out of Auburn Auburn is also in Georgia, right?
Kimberly Tara [00:12:52]:
It’s, it’s in Alabama, but Alabama, 2 hours. So like Atlanta and Birmingham are the 2 big recruiters from there, right?
Amy Stone [00:13:01]:
Got it.
Amy Stone [00:13:02]:
Very, very good. All right. So you do that for a while, and you decide to leave that job. And there’s a specific story of watching something happen with a coworker that tied you into making a pretty big decision. I’m going to let you tell the story of what you observed and why you decided to leave this, uh, career trajectory, public accounting job?
Amy Stone [00:13:28]:
Yeah. Yeah.
Kimberly Tara [00:13:29]:
So, um, it’s not gonna shock you, Amy, that I knew at this firm that the youngest and quickest person to make partner had done it in 10 years. So I was gonna do it in 9.
Amy Stone [00:13:41]:
You had a plan.
Kimberly Tara [00:13:42]:
I had a plan.
Amy Stone [00:13:44]:
Did you have a checklist or a spreadsheet of the plan?
Amy Stone [00:13:47]:
Just curious.
Kimberly Tara [00:13:47]:
Probably. Probably. Probably. Um, I used to keep more checklists in my head because I didn’t have 4 kids and I could, and now I’m like, if it’s not written down or on the calendar, it’s, it’s gone. So I had a plan and I moved around. It’s such a wonderful firm, such a wonderful experience, great people. And we moved buildings while I was there. They were, they were growing. It was great. I got to be a part of a lot of that. And when we moved buildings, they put— so we call them bullpens in public accounting where like you’re all just kind of sitting in like cubicles and You’re just kind of all out there. So the partners get offices, but all the staff and seniors and just everybody else, we just like— it’s a— sometimes you were literally fighting for a spot to sit. When we moved, they put the partners’ offices on the outside of our high-rise, but the managers’ offices on the inside of the high-rise so that light could come in. And we got these low cubicles that like just kind of like you could see everybody. So it was kind of cool. And so because they did that, because they put these managers’ offices on the inside, they made glass wall so that they could— you could still see in. It was this very open concept. They were getting light. So the point, the purpose I’m telling you that is because I could see into this manager’s office, right? So my back was to the windows facing the interior of the building, looking right into her office in my, in my sea of like 2, 4, 6, 8 cubemates, right? So we’re in the thick of tax season and, you know, we’re all sitting there Sherbet away. I was probably about 25 and my husband, I, you know, I had already, he had already been with me through studying for the CPA exam, working multiple busy seasons, studying for the CPA exam. So he was just, we didn’t have kids at the time. We had our townhouse and he would just kind of work late. Then he would go home and do his thing. The firm fed us because if they fed us dinner, they kept us there and we didn’t have to leave so we could continue to billable hours, right? Do more work.
Amy Stone [00:15:44]:
Yeah.
Kimberly Tara [00:15:44]:
Produce more stuff. And so it was 4 nights into this one week, and for the 4th night in a row, I watched this manager who I love, and she was wonderful and such an inspiration for where she was. She was a senior manager and she was FaceTiming her 3-year-old son to sleep for the 4th night in a row. She was visibly pregnant with her 2nd child in her belly. And I don’t know, and, and I’m gonna, I’m gonna come back and tell you something, Amy, that we might have an aha on this podcast. But I had this moment where I was like, I don’t wanna do that. That is so sad. I was so sad for her, even though, even though she, like, she had chosen, and I don’t know if she was sad. I have no idea what she was feeling.
Amy Stone [00:16:29]:
Right.
Kimberly Tara [00:16:29]:
But I felt sad.
Amy Stone [00:16:30]:
Right.
Kimberly Tara [00:16:31]:
That, that was the 4th night in a row that she was FaceTiming her kid to sleep. And I was like, I actually don’t want that. Right.
Amy Stone [00:16:39]:
And I’ll just pause and say that, because this becomes a controversial pivot or point between women sometimes with the choices they make. This is just a personal decision. Yes, this is just me. Right. This is the decision you made. And it’s not actually— there’s the— and I’ve told plenty of these other stories also. People take the other side of this and they’re also happy with it. So it’s not a value judgment to make the decision. But your story is that you saw this And when you saw it, it was able to reflect it back to you and you were like, wow, is that what I want? And your answer was no.
Kimberly Tara [00:17:15]:
Right. And, and it was, it was like, it was, yeah. You know how sometimes, and, and a lot of the work that I do for our clients is intangible. And so sometimes we really need something tangible that we can see and that we can feel in front of us. And, and it’s those moments when we have something more tangible that it’s like, wow. Yeah. And so a couple things to note here is that. I always thought that I was gonna have 2 kids. I was gonna have 2 kids. I was gonna have them by the time I was 30, you know, 28 and just before 30. Yeah. I was gonna have a boy and a girl, girl and a boy. Didn’t matter. But funny, funny story. I have 4 kids and they’re 3 boys and a girl, and I love them and I couldn’t imagine my life any differently. Um, so I realized it, it was seeing her and it was also like, you have, you set this goal of making partner in 9 years, right?
Amy Stone [00:18:00]:
Yeah.
Kimberly Tara [00:18:01]:
Which would’ve put me at like, 31 or something like that, 31, 32. And I was gonna have 2 kids and it’s like, you can’t have that. Like if you’re gonna meet this ridiculous goal of making partner in 9 years, that’s your life.
Amy Stone [00:18:15]:
Yeah.
Kimberly Tara [00:18:15]:
Like you don’t even get to see your husband, much less have 2 kids. But I still, I wanted the kids more. I, I wanted the family life more. That was more important to me. And I wanted to find a way that I could still have my professional goals. But I wanted the personal goals more than the professional goals.
Amy Stone [00:18:32]:
I appreciate, I appreciate that very much. And for some context in like how we make decisions and the value of being able to see it, sometimes that shows up as like representation. Like it, it, it, there’s something about being a human being that we cannot always make decisions for things or have opinions about things that we haven’t experienced to some degree. So like you can read all about Mongolian food and think you know what it’s going to be, but that might change when you actually try it. And so— and that’s just the way it goes. That’s just the way it goes. Not 100% true, but—
Kimberly Tara [00:19:08]:
I really believe that.
Amy Stone [00:19:09]:
Yeah. And we put a lot of judgment on it. Parenthood is one of the things where that is so often the case, right? You think you know. I mean, it’s not that people don’t tell you.
Kimberly Tara [00:19:23]:
It is the most humbling experience.
Amy Stone [00:19:25]:
Right. And it’s not that people don’t tell you how hard it is to have a newborn and the sleep. People tell you nonstop for your whole life and then you get there and you’re like, oh, this is what they meant. You know, I mean, and it happens if you have siblings and it happens if you’re a nurse and it happens if you’re a teacher. Watching it happen to somebody else is one thing. Reading about it is one thing. Doing it is different. But yeah, so that’s very good. Okay, so you make this decision. When you see this, had you already started your family or like, uh, or was that in the future?
Amy Stone [00:19:59]:
Yeah.
Kimberly Tara [00:20:00]:
So it’s funny that you asked that question cuz that was the aha that I had. I was like, so we actually didn’t find out that we were pregnant until I was 10 weeks pregnant because we were planning to move. We were in busy season. Mm-hmm. So like I had a couple signs when I looked back and I was like, oh, oh, I should have probably known this. And so now that I’m sitting, I’m like, this is the first time I’m, I, this isn’t the first time I’m sharing this story. This is the first time I’m having this realization that I was actually already pregnant. So, who knew if that impacted what I was seeing even subconsciously, right? Those hormones were probably starting to kick up. I don’t know. I was probably 10. I must have been like 3 or 4, 5 weeks pregnant, 3 or 4 weeks pregnant, something like that.
Amy Stone [00:20:42]:
Barely.
Kimberly Tara [00:20:43]:
Just getting started. Barely. But there was something subconsciously that now I’m realizing, who knows if I would have had that realization? I think I would have even if I wasn’t. Even barely pregnant, but I actually was, unbeknownst to me, barely pregnant with our first child.
Amy Stone [00:20:59]:
That is really interesting. All right. So you go on to— there’s a couple of things. So you go on to have a medium-sized family. You guys go on to have 4 kids. And— but you come to this realization that the firm public life is not gonna match what you are— your new goals and your new plan of family. And so that’s a shift. That’s a decision. You make that decision. What you do then is you leave and start your own accounting firm. Do I understand that correctly?
Kimberly Tara [00:21:30]:
Yep, that’s correct.
Amy Stone [00:21:31]:
You achieve pretty rapid success. At the time you’re doing this, I think you have 1, maybe 2 kids.
Kimberly Tara [00:21:39]:
Yeah, all of this, I just kept having kids as I was growing the business.
Amy Stone [00:21:43]:
Having kids and growing and stuff like that. So you have success with this business. You take it to 6 figures. And then I think you experienced some burnout, some stress and overwhelm. Okay. So tell us, tell us what the burnout felt like and, and what, how you realized that that was what was going on.
Kimberly Tara [00:22:02]:
Yeah. So I would say it wasn’t the first time I experienced burnout. I, looking back, you know, we’re, we’re wiser now as we get older and we just learn more. And I put a lot into my personal and professional development education. I probably burnt out the first time when I was a junior in high school.
Amy Stone [00:22:18]:
Okay.
Kimberly Tara [00:22:19]:
Um, because again, I was in all the honors and AP classes, needed to get A’s, not because my parents made me, but because I held myself to those standards. I was in all the clubs. Junior year was when I started becoming president of the clubs and on the executive boards and all the things. So that was the first time that I really burnt out then. So when I went to college, I was like, I’m not doing anything. I’m just doing one thing because I needed that break. So once again, by junior year of college, I was I was in all the things starting to become in those leadership positions. So I had experienced burnout before, but it had been a while. It had been a hot minute since college when I really started experiencing burnout. And so when it first, cuz, and I’ve experienced it more than once in, in this business as a CEO. When I first started experiencing it, I was probably a little over a year into the business. I was coming up on having a 1-year-old and I realized that yes, I had hit 6 figures in 12 months, but I was basically working the hours that I was working— not quite, but I felt like I was almost working the hours that I was working in public accounting. I had way more stress, right? Because anyone who is self-employed or runs a business knows there’s so much that comes into play when you run this business, when you are the business, when you have clients expecting certain things from you. And by 18 months in, I was burnt out. And I was even considering, is this worth it? Because now I have to pay for all of my licensures and all of my continuing education. And I have to think about all these things. And I’m laying in bed at night, not just thinking about my problems, but all my clients’ problems, because I care so much. And I want to help them. And I want to overdeliver. And it just, it kind of came to a head where I was like, I have to figure something out. Because this is This is not the dream. This is not what I left public accounting for. And, um, I really like, the signs were there that I was working more hours than I planned on. I was missing out on things with my son. I, and some of it was my own guilt that I created, right, Amy? That like he was home with, with a sitter. And so I was like, well, if I’m not out working and I hurry home, I can be with him.
Amy Stone [00:24:31]:
Right?
Kimberly Tara [00:24:31]:
Mm-hmm. And so I was, I was trying to be 100% as a mom, as a business owner, as a wife, as a friend, as a, I was a 26, 27-year-old young adult and, you know, I hadn’t realized yet that I couldn’t give 100% to all of those things at the same time.
Amy Stone [00:24:47]:
Yeah. And when I have this discussion with other people on the show and in real life, one of the things that I like to offer as reflection, and we’ll see if you agree with it, is that, you know, first of all, I think burnout is very hard. to pick out in the moment. It’s easier to see and name it in the rearview mirror, which a lot of things are like that. You know, in the moment, you’re just getting to the next thing. The second thing is that, you know, this is not a diagnosis, but we get a lot of positive reinforcement societally and community-ishness, like from people around us, for leaning into all of those things. Like, so there’s a really great— you know, people love to reward the women who are selfless for their kids at school and at home and at fundraising and at work. So it’s like, if you— it’s very— it’s easier than people think to fall into the be all things to all people.
Kimberly Tara [00:25:54]:
It is.
Amy Stone [00:25:54]:
And if you can’t, then you’ve done it wrong. sort of thing. And I’d love to say that that’s not happening to the younger generation of women, but I do think it still is because I think that it’s not— we want to blame the system and we want to blame the tools and we want to blame social media and we want to blame whatever. In the ’80s, we blamed magazines and catalogs. There’s a piece of this that sort of comes to education and peer support and somebody showing you like, hey, Even if you think that every woman is supposed to look like a Victoria’s Secret model, look around because that might not actually be what your reality is and the awareness that you get to decide for yourself. And so I just always throw that in that it’s like, you know, you think— I told myself I wasn’t gonna do it. And it was looking back and I was like, oh my God, I don’t care about some of these things. Why am I doing this? You know?
Kimberly Tara [00:26:50]:
I don’t actually care. It’s very hard. Yes. And I’ve actually recently learned— so I have a nervous system regulation coach, so I’ve I’ve, you know, for the last probably 7 or 8 years— That is so modern.
Amy Stone [00:27:01]:
I just have to say, I’d love to— I’d love to get— my dad passed away years and years ago, but I would love to have given that sequence of words to my father in heaven and been like, what?
Kimberly Tara [00:27:10]:
I’ve always had some form of business coaching, right?
Amy Stone [00:27:14]:
Right. No, no, it’s fantastic.
Kimberly Tara [00:27:16]:
This is the most that has like worked on me as a human. And so I’ve recently learned that I’m a people pleaser. And I’ve always thought of myself as kind of outspoken, little bit lack of a filter.
Amy Stone [00:27:28]:
Yeah.
Kimberly Tara [00:27:29]:
Kind of do what I want. And I’ve realized that I’m a people pleaser in the sense that I do wanna make everybody happy.
Amy Stone [00:27:34]:
Yeah.
Kimberly Tara [00:27:34]:
I do want them to think that I’m the best mom and I’m the best CEO and I’m the best wife. And that, that doing it outwardly is what proves that. And being room mom and being on the boards.
Amy Stone [00:27:45]:
Yeah.
Kimberly Tara [00:27:45]:
And all the things instead of, um, prioritizing and saying, No. So I’m working on that.
Amy Stone [00:27:52]:
So I will share with you that based on my own personal experience, and I’m not a psychologist, sociologist, or anybody who’s qualified to say this systemically, but I believe that that assessment can shift for individuals. So, and the reason I think that is just my own personal experience. I was a driven, results-oriented person that people, you know, like I was, you know, a leader but not always a good team player in projects if people weren’t on my way. That was my assessment from teamwork my whole life. And then when I was in my 30s, I took a personality test and they were like, you are a people pleaser. You are a nurturer and a people pleaser. And I was so shocked by that result that I was like, this test is broken. This test is wrong.
Kimberly Tara [00:28:33]:
That sounds like me. It’s like, I don’t know what you’re— you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Amy Stone [00:28:37]:
I took it over and over again. I was like, this is wrong. And then I was in a community where a bunch of people were taking the test and they were all like, this is so spot on. I was like, what? And it was a season of reflection for me that I was I was like, why did I do that? So, but I had changed my life to be— I was in the season of, you know, lots of young kids and lots of community things, and I had changed my life and was making my decision for the benefit of these folks that showed up with me being a nurturer. And I support that decision. I understand why I made it. But it’s super fascinating to me that, like, I changed so much that when I took that quiz, I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then now I’m on the backside of that. I mean, my youngest is now in college. It’s like, oh, I can make decisions for myself again.
Amy Stone [00:29:19]:
Yay.
Amy Stone [00:29:21]:
So anyway, just for reflection. Anyway, we’re off topic and we’re on a tight timeline, so let’s keep going because there’s another decision that you make here, right?
Amy Stone [00:29:28]:
Okay.
Amy Stone [00:29:28]:
So you’ve realized you’re in burnout. You’re doing these things. There’s a part of your pitch that I think is really helpful to know, which is that you’re an accountant. You’re an engineer. You’re financially aware. You shared with me that you knew that your family was a 2-income family.
Amy Stone [00:29:43]:
Right?
Kimberly Tara [00:29:43]:
We are still.
Amy Stone [00:29:44]:
So, 2-income family, and that was a part of your budget. Very, very smart decision. You had a— you were a solopreneur. You always— you thought that this business was gonna just be you, but you find yourself in a position where you’re like, hey, if— and I don’t know if this is related to the burnout story or not, you can tell me. You realize that in order for this to do what you need it to do, you have to make a decision to, I think, bring on other accountants. Walk me through that decision process if you can, because I think this is a decision that, uh, maybe every single solo service business faces at some time.
Kimberly Tara [00:30:25]:
Yeah, and I can tell you that’s accurate because I’ve— I get to see— I’ve seen the behind the scenes for the last 15+ years, right? Um, I’m also the child of 2 entrepreneurs, so like I just I just grew up, this was my life. Dinner was a nightly economics lesson. So yeah, I remember it. I was holding our 3-month-old baby at the time and our 2 bigger kids had gone to school, right? They were in like pre-K 3 and kindergarten or something like that. So naively—
Amy Stone [00:30:54]:
If you’re listening on the audio, I’m chuckling because she puts school in finger quotes because they’re so little. It’s like—
Kimberly Tara [00:31:01]:
Yeah, because they’re so little.
Amy Stone [00:31:02]:
They’re so little. It’s like school, which Cool.
Kimberly Tara [00:31:05]:
Singing and art. Right. But it was all day. They were gonna go from 7:50 to 3:10 because in New Orleans they were in private school at the time. And so it was all day. I was dropping them off at the same place and I naively thought that because I was now dropping them off that I was gonna have 7 hours a day, 5 days a week because they were in school. So you’re chuckling because—
Amy Stone [00:31:26]:
Yeah, I’ve lived this. I’ve lived this. And then, yes, then day 2 is a performance and day 3 is the flu and Yes.
Kimberly Tara [00:31:33]:
Day 5 is music conferences.
Amy Stone [00:31:35]:
So I didn’t know that yet.
Kimberly Tara [00:31:37]:
I didn’t know that yet. So I had to learn that. And I realized, wow, by the time you go in, we had accidents and forgotten lunches and I wanted to be an involved parent. Let’s go back to, remember, I wanted to put being a mom just as important, equally as my career, right? So I wanted to be there for fair dance practice. and teacher appreciation lunches and book fair days when parents could come. But by the time I started doing that, and we only live 7 minutes from the school, but by the time I started doing that round trip and I was like, wait, I’m only doing this for 2 kids and I’m gonna have to do this times 4. Like, yeah, I’m actually not gonna have 35 hours uninterrupted each week to work. And so like, again, y’all already know how my brain processes. I’m like doing the math, I’m doing the numbers. I’m like, this is not gonna work. And to add onto that was for the previous 5 years of my business, right? If I was with the kids, I was thinking about, I was checking my phone, emails coming through from clients, calls, texts, all the things. And so I was thinking about work when I was with my kids and I was thinking about my kids when I was working. And I’m like, what are we like? I don’t want to do this for the next 30 years. This is not, this is not what I signed up for. So I, I kind of was laying in bed. I was holding our 4th little baby. We were done having babies. 4 was— I thought I was gonna have 2, so 4 was already a lot. And I told him, I said, you know, I have to make a decision that I can’t keep taking on new clients. I have to stay small and highly profitable like I am right now, or I need to grow the business enough that I can afford to bring on another, another tax professional. And I have high standards, so that’s not like a $30,000 a year hire. That’s like a significant payroll amount. And so my sweet husband, always my biggest supporter, he’s like, well, you know, I just kind of feel like you won’t be happy staying small, even though you say you will, you won’t. Like, he knows me. And I didn’t feel good about that either. I felt like I didn’t want to be thinking about clients when I was with my kids and worrying about if they were being taken care of. I wanted to be able to take a vacation.
Amy Stone [00:33:45]:
Yeah.
Kimberly Tara [00:33:45]:
where I could actually take a break and not still have to work on vacation because my clients’ businesses were still going. I had some apprehensions because again, I had helped clients navigate bad employees, bad employee situations, stress of not having enough cash, all the things. But we made the decision together that, you know, I would take this leap of faith, I would figure out the plan. Um, and that was ultimately what led me to the decision to Grow the business, which meant, and, and because that decision that you were talking about, I, the way that I looked at it, and look, I had been trying to get more time back.
Amy Stone [00:34:20]:
Okay?
Kimberly Tara [00:34:21]:
Anybody who has a kid knows, anybody who has more than one kid knows, and, and you just keep adding on kids and you just keep having less time. I had 4 kids in 5 and a half years. Those years are, we call them the lost years. I didn’t even know Taylor Swift put out 5 more albums. Talk about like, Amy, how you go back to like, maybe you don’t want kids and, and that’s not for you. Talk about like Taylor and I are basically the same age. Talk about 2 very different lives, right?
Amy Stone [00:34:41]:
Yeah.
Kimberly Tara [00:34:41]:
Right? I’m popping out 4 babies, she’s popping out 4 multi-platinum albums or whatever, and I didn’t even know it because those are the lost years. Yeah, I just was surviving. Um, and so, you know, what it came down to— so that was, um, towards the end of 2022. So I started coming up with a plan by the end of 2022. I started, um, figuring out like lead magnets and email lists because I was just growing by referrals at that point. I was like, okay, I actually have to like, go out and do some active marketing if I wanna control who knows about me and how many clients come in. So I spent the bulk of 2023 starting to guest on podcasts and putting it out there that, you know, I was gonna grow the firm. I wanted to, and it really started selfishly because I wanted to make more money. And I was, I was, I was ready to do something for me after spending 7, almost 7 years now giving my body and my life and my brain to these kids, which—
Amy Stone [00:35:35]:
Yes.
Kimberly Tara [00:35:35]:
No regrets there. But I was ready to, I was ready to kind of not put that behind me, but like forge a new path and be like, okay, I can, I can do, I can take this on. So basically what happened was I started growing the business. I then took a pay cut and I was able to hire about a year later. Exactly. I was about to hire a year later, a qualified person who I pay very well. She has become my ride or die, my right hand. I couldn’t do this without her. And from November, so October of 2023, it was just me. November of 2023 was my first hire. We are in, uh, summer of 2026 and we now have a 6-person team.
Amy Stone [00:36:18]:
So a, uh, system-level back office question. Are these employees, partners, consultants?
Kimberly Tara [00:36:26]:
These are all full-time W-2 employees.
Amy Stone [00:36:29]:
That, that is really fascinating. Okay. One more back. strategy question that— and then we’ll wrap this, begin to wrap this up. Would you say that in making this decision— I’m writing this question on the fly, so it’ll be a little bit long-winded— but would you say that in making this decision to go from solopreneur to a firm that supported employees, it was really a grounds-up redesign of how the revenue structure and promotion and everything would work? Yeah.
Kimberly Tara [00:37:03]:
Everything. And that was what I was really working on in that year. Because again, I’m the numbers person. I’ve seen the back ends of businesses. And so I did it the way that most business owners should, but they just don’t know any better. And so instead of getting the business, having the broken systems, and then figuring it all out, I got the business—
Amy Stone [00:37:22]:
That’s the reason I asked. That’s the reason I asked.
Kimberly Tara [00:37:24]:
Got to put the systems in place. And look, we’re still learning and like we always have room for improvement. But some of the things that I did, I was doing all customized work. I was, was constantly sending emails. I was scheduling, um, uh, calendar events back and forth. So I had to do little things like give up control and just have a calendar system where people could book a call with me based on the open calendar slots.
Amy Stone [00:37:46]:
Yeah.
Kimberly Tara [00:37:47]:
I had to create packages instead of everything being customized, right? I just had to put a price on tax prep for specific types of tax return types, at least a starting point, right? And our prices are starting at so that if there’s complexity, we have some wiggle room. And so yes, I spent a whole year in addition to getting out there, putting myself out there with podcasts and some visibility, I also worked on the efficiencies, the operations, and the backend systems in order to make it something that someone could come in and help me with.
Amy Stone [00:38:20]:
Yeah.
Amy Stone [00:38:21]:
And the reason I asked is because the training that we give a lot of service-based entrepreneurs is build your solo practice and then scale, as if they are 2 different steps. And I have come to a realization many, many years ago that that is very, very hard to do because you are really— you’re putting yourself in a position to really redesign, and what works at solo doesn’t work with scale. So it might actually be—
Kimberly Tara [00:38:46]:
You’re so correct that we could do an entire episode on how to flip from that. Yeah.
Amy Stone [00:38:49]:
And that’s not the focus, right? That’s not the focus of this show.
Kimberly Tara [00:38:51]:
We could do a whole episode on what I would do differently.
Amy Stone [00:38:54]:
Yeah. I just really think that, I mean, because you can see it as you watch people like redesign and it’s like, then people are like, oh my God, she’s changing everything. And it’s like, yeah, I kind of, I just, so anyway, that’s it, but it’s off topic.
Kimberly Tara [00:39:06]:
And it’s also very hard for people like me who are like, here we go again. And like, again, I’m working on giving myself grace because, and like my nervous system regulation coach is like, yeah, but what you built 7 years ago wouldn’t Wouldn’t work today, right? Like, you’ve got to give yourself grace for the pivots and the imperfections as we go along and we learn.
Amy Stone [00:39:25]:
Yeah.
Amy Stone [00:39:25]:
No, absolutely. And you’ve done an excellent job of talking about this. All right. So very good. In a second, we are going to wrap this up, but I do want to ask you, what is what you hope that— what is the thing that you hope that people will take away from hearing your story? What’s the reason you like to share your story publicly?
Kimberly Tara [00:39:45]:
I think why I share my story publicly is because the women that I work with, Amy, they, they lack the confidence to think that they can do this, that they think that they can have a business, that they think that they can be in charge of their finances and their taxes and take the lead on this. And I am adamant that they can do this, that they should do this, that don’t let kids stop you. Don’t let Don’t let spouses stop you. Don’t let the world stop you. If you have a dream, go after it. You can, you can do it as, as a mom. You can do it if you’re not a mom. You can do it if you’re a caretaker of elderly parents, whatever your life looks like. And you are so much more capable, uh, at the numbers and the finances than you think you are. Um, that’s why I’m here to share my story.
Amy Stone [00:40:31]:
I love that. I love that. All right, so you have a special offer for the audience. And for people who are listening and watching, the details of this are always in the audio show notes. They’re in the YouTube show description. The easiest way to get the links for these offers is always to be a subscriber to the Imperfect Adulting email community, which I call the village, because then the links are right in the email. So anyway, there you go. All right. It is a free tax savings calculator. And it’s to help people find out how much they’re overpaying on business income taxes. It is free and the link is taxmove.io. All right, so that and all the contact information for Kimberly is in the show notes.
Kimberly Tara [00:41:11]:
And I wanna add, remember that you’re a business owner if you are self-employed, if you’re a freelancer, if you’re a digital creator, if you get a 1099 for income, remember that classifies you as a business owner. That’s something I’m learning is like people don’t identify as a business owner, but they call themselves self-employed. And I’m like, girl, you a business owner.
Amy Stone [00:41:30]:
Yeah, no, it’s, it’s a whole thing. It’s interesting ’cause it took me, um, like I, in entrepreneurship, I found myself in all these money mindset type things. My dad was a freelancer my whole life, and I was— like you were saying, like, money was just a thing that was talked about. Like, I just— people are like, oh, I’m nervous talking about money. I was like, why am I not? And I’ve tied it back to the fact that it was just something we talked about all the time.
Kimberly Tara [00:41:52]:
But we’re so— you and I are so lucky, right? Because we’re actually the exception, not the rule.
Amy Stone [00:41:56]:
The exception, right? The exception. And, and yeah, so 100%. So it’s very good. All right, we’re gonna wrap this up with our wrap-up questions.
Kimberly Tara [00:42:04]:
All right.
Amy Stone [00:42:04]:
Kimberly, share with us, like, at this time in the world, like, there’s no shortage of information, right? But personal referrals and recommendations are really important in finding the good stuff. Share with us something in the entertainment world, the news world, the information source, a podcast, a book, a movie, a TV show, something that you enjoy that you would like to recommend to the people in the audience.
Kimberly Tara [00:42:24]:
Yeah, so a book that I recently read that I’ve really enjoyed is Remarkably Bright Creatures. I’ve actually gotten back into fiction reading, not just just business book reading. And it’s funny, I listen to business podcasts and I like to read fiction books, and I loved that book because of the way it ended. And I don’t wanna give any spoilers, but that’s why I loved it. And then, yeah, that’s a recent read that I loved.
Amy Stone [00:42:46]:
That’s a good one. Absolutely. That’s a wonderful suggestion. It’s very entertaining. I will say they personify the octopus to a point that I— it pushed my boundaries, but there we go.
Kimberly Tara [00:42:58]:
It did. It did. But I liked the way that it ended because it didn’t end— it didn’t come back to make it all like sunshine and rainbows, right? And so I think that’s the part that I liked. It was like not reality, but also not like, well, of course it ended with sunshine and rainbows.
Amy Stone [00:43:14]:
There you go.
Amy Stone [00:43:14]:
Very good.
Kimberly Tara [00:43:15]:
All right.
Amy Stone [00:43:15]:
This last question I call unsupervised online shopping. What is something that you have purchased online that was pretty great and we should all know about it? Can be big, can be little, can be recent, can be a long time ago.
Amy Stone [00:43:28]:
Just anything. Yeah.
Kimberly Tara [00:43:30]:
I feel like this, I feel like I should be able to think of something better that has been more like instrumental in my life as a mom. But truly the Dyson vacuum, stick vacuum that charges and doesn’t have a cord. As a mom of 4 little kids who doesn’t even have any pets to take care of, I vacuum every night. We have the robo one, but I still go grab that stick to clean stuff up. It’s, it’s just the worst.
Amy Stone [00:43:55]:
I think that’s an excellent suggestion. There’s somebody in the audience that’s listening that’s like, ah, that is what I need in my life.
Kimberly Tara [00:44:00]:
I did not wanna buy it. I got it on a Black Friday. Friday sale, because it’s like, I am not spending $300 or $400 on a vacuum. That is ridiculous. And I am like, I’m a changed person 5 years later. I take back what I said.
Amy Stone [00:44:11]:
I love that because when I was young and I got a job, one of the marketing jobs, one of the case studies that was used for successful positioning and so on and so forth was a very expensive vacuum. And it was a wonderful thing. And the guy who was my mentor, he was like, I bought it. Because I had to see why this vacuum was so expensive. And he’s like, I still own it because I forgot to return it. It was just— I mean, it was so funny. Anyway, thank you very much, Kimberly, for being on the show and sharing your story today on The Art of Imperfect Adulting.
Kimberly Tara [00:44:45]:
Yeah, thanks for having me. This has been great.
Amy Stone [00:44:48]:
Thank you for joining me today.
Amy Stone [00:44:51]:
I hope you enjoyed the show.
Amy Stone [00:44:53]:
Before I go, I want to encourage you to become a bigger part of the conversation. Please subscribe wherever you’re listening or watching the show. That helps my stats. A request from the bottom of my indie creator heart is to please tell your friends about the show. That is the real way new people discover it. If you feel motivated, I would love it if you rated the show or wrote a review on whatever platform you are using. Please Be sure to head over to imperfectadulting.com and sign up for the email community. I call this the village. You’ll get some free stuff right away, and you’ll begin to get the weekly emails that I send. This includes the links for special offers from any guests on the show and cool stuff I put together for the community. There’s a lot more going on than just this show, and the only way to find out is to get the emails.
Amy Stone [00:45:45]:
Yeah.
Amy Stone [00:45:46]:
Plus, you’re busy. You don’t have time or desire to follow every single tidbit on social media, and you don’t have to because I’m happy to send it to you. If you have a story you’d like to share with the audience, I have an open application for guests. Guess where you’ll find it? That’s right, on the website and in the emails. And that’s a wrap for this episode. Until next time, remember that the journey is the destination. Ralph Waldo Emerson said that, not me. Well, until just now. I did just say it. But what I want you to hear today is that if your adulting journey isn’t going the way you expected, that just may not mean you’re lost. It may mean that you’re just on your way. And now the fine print. The Art of Imperfect Adulting podcast and streaming video show is a copyrighted work created and produced by Amy Stone and Amy Says So. The music was written and produced by Todd Thompson at Dharma Bomb Studios. All rights are reserved. Anything expressed on this show is offered as entertainment, and the views of the guests may not always represent the ideas and viewpoints of the host. That’s me. Amy Stone does not intend to hold myself— herself out to provide professional advice or recommendations of any kind. In the end, you and you alone need to make those kinds of decisions based on your personal and individual situation. needs, circumstances, and comfort level. Yeah, it’s a little weird for me to talk about myself in the third person, but you get the idea. This is Amy Stone, signing off.