Hi, friend! I'm Jen (she/her). I'm currently based in Honolulu, Hawai‘i–born and raised–but am well traveled and lived for brief stints in Colorado and California back in my twenties (a.k.a. the 90s). As somewhat of an accidental entrepreneur, I am both proud of and grateful for the life I've been able to build for myself over the past fourteen years.
The launching point
My leap into entrepreneurship began in early 2012 when I left my faculty position with University of Hawai‘i (Hawai‘i Sea Grant) and launched a boutique consultancy that has pivoted a few times since then–serving clients ranging from charitable foundations and government agencies, to community-serving nonprofits and small businesses.
At that time, being a business owner was never something I intentionally prepared for or even entertained as a possibility for myself.
On paper, everything looked phenomenal. The reality, however, was that I was burned out from working 60 to 80 hour work weeks (largely of my own doing). After nearly four years in my position, there was also a bit of disillusionment beginning to set-in due to the fact that despite bearing the responsibility of securing grants to cover all program costs including my salary, I would often get pulled into other projects outside of my interests and work plan.
So I approached my director to share that I'd decided to leave and wanted to work to develop a transition plan to sustain the grant-funded programs I'd built and led, rather than simply giving two weeks notice.
That decision–to openly plan for my departure, created the opportunity I never saw coming.
An unexpected crossroads
But first, I began applying for my long-standing dream job: to lead a nonprofit. After advancing quickly through several recruitments, I found myself turning down the dream job offer and withdrawing from the final round of interviews for two other positions. Wait… whaaat? Walking away from the dream job–what happened?
When we hold the same goal or aspiration for an extended period, we often forget to check-in with ourselves to be sure it's still what we want or need when we finally reach that goal, or even allow ourselves to consider other pathways.
While interviewing for my dream job, folks whom I'd partnered or collaborated with through my work at Sea Grant began reaching out: “Hey, can we contract you to help us?” They knew (and valued) my skills and strengths and saw opportunities for me to support their work in a different way.
Faced with the option of continuing to do the same work I loved, on my terms and as my own boss–was a revelation. It suddenly became the new dream–the clear and best option I'd never even allowed myself to consider.
Taking the leap
On February 6, 2012, I filed the articles of organization for my LLC which was officially approved the next day. Having leapt into self-employment without a mentor, savings, or support system in place, the next couple of years were a dizzying blur of doing-all-the-things as a solo practitioner and fledging business owner.
From branding and business development, to invoicing and fulfilling client deliverables, preparing proposals, acquiring insurance, doing the bookkeeping and more–it was both thrilling and terrifying.
The breakthrough
It took me nearly seven years to break the six-figure mark. And honestly, it shouldn't have taken that long. There are many now-obvious factors, but the most important shift in crossing that threshold came from doing LESS. Yep. A lot less.
My business started consistently earning six figures when I worked fewer hours, enjoyed my weekends, indulged in afternoon naps and long walks, took extended work-free vacations, and made time for a budding relationship.
At that time, I began strategically scaling back my client portfolio to increase schedule flexibility and shift to a more singular focus on communications support for cause-driven changemakers. Previously, I'd taken on everything in my skill set, from interim executive leadership roles to board governance trainings, strategic planning, advisory services, project management, and even serving as a lecturer teaching a course in civic engagement and volunteerism for honors students at the University of Hawai‘i.
With this new found focus, the business was beginning to scale and on track for its highest multiple six-figure year, and I was beginning to allow myself to set my sights even higher. Then, my world was upended.
Becoming a caregiver
During the first few months of 2021–peak Covid–everything changed. I got married in January, we bought a condo in February, and my husband was diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS; a.k.a. Lou Gehrig's disease) in May. ALS is a cruel disease for which there is yet no cure and the inspiration for the ice-bucket challenge.
People living with ALS lose their ability to move, eat, speak, and breathe over a period of months or years. Disease progression is unpredictable and extremely heterogenous; there's no way of knowing the speed or sequence of decline. Every few months, he continued to lose more function and mobility and rely more and more on me.
I've always been one of those people who manages to “do all the things” with grace, but caregiving proved to be a humbling and life-altering fork in the road. Disrupted plans and upended schedules became our norm; a huge adjustment for a type-A planner and do-er. For the first time in my life, I frequently felt overdrawn on precious social capital and routinely found myself disappointing people and projects I cared about.
The downshifting process I'd started needed to accelerate.
A risky move
By the end of 2021, the idea of “retiring client services” had a magical ring to it. Even with the downscaling progress made to date, I was tired. I didn't want to stop working–nor was that financially feasible, but I'd lost the drive to chase contracts and invoices, and manage consulting clients and project teams.
But how? I wasn't sure, but continued transitioning retainer consulting clients to trusted colleagues and dabbling with different business models–including a membership (Comms For Causes).
A year later, on December 18, 2022, I made another leap and announced that I was retiring my consulting services (which I completed in June 2023) and pausing the membership without any certainty of what would replace it.
The new dream
In January 2023, I read We Should All Be Millionaires by Rachel Rodgers and everything shifted. EVERYTHING. Every time a marketing message landed in my inbox from her company, Hello Seven, I treated it like my homework.
A few weeks later, a message appeared on a Sunday morning announcing the Hello Seven Coach certification program. The curriculum weaves together business, money, and mindset coaching with the express purpose of serving historically excluded entrepreneurs who are underestimated and underserved—women, BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, and people with disabilities—how to grow a business from 0 to 7 figures.
I applied immediately and was accepted into the inaugural cohort of Hello Seven certified coaches. April 2023 marked the beginning of my coaching journey, and while I opted not to renew my Hello Seven coach license in 2025, I will be ever grateful for the confidence Rachel and her team instilled in me, and having the Hello Seven coaching tools + growth scale framework to guide me when I launched my business coaching practice.
The year of surrender (but not defeat)
Unfortunately, caregiving for someone living with advanced ALS eventually becomes all-consuming. As I confessed in this note, 2024 was both humbling and heartbreaking.
The caregiving responsibilities that sparked my business pivot snowballed much faster than I anticipated. I could barely take care of myself, let alone my business.
My husband, my rock—the man who continued to work from a hospital bed in our living room because it was the one thing HE could still do despite relying on others for anything he couldn't do with his eyes or failing voice—made the soul-crushing decision to retire. His last day of a forty-plus-year broadcasting career, his dream job from childhood, was June 30, 2024.
It's impossible to encapsulate the horrors and heartbreak that we endured together during his final year in a few short sentences. It was brutal and all consuming. After a string of infections that led to repeated bouts of sepsis, and debilitating anxiety that contributed to day-long panic attacks, he opted to start home hospice on Dec. 17, 2024. In less than 48-hours he was gone.
My year of reclamation
Feb. 6, 2025 marked 13 years of self-employment, (and 50 days since José's passing).
This is a proud achievement, and yet it's a humbling benchmark given that this year is about rebuilding. Not starting over, but rebuilding after an extended period of shifting priorities and lost momentum.
To deny any trepidation, especially with the chaos + uncertainty originating from our domestic political environment, would be insincere. But I'm ready.
As a business coach, I'm strangely energized and motivated by the challenge. I've done it before and know I can do it again – but this time I have the opportunity to share my journey with other women who may be in a similar place.
Will I fumble along the way? Most definitely.
There's no way to learn, grow, and advance without risk. Failing forward is a real phenomenon. We learn by doing. It's possible to accelerate growth even when things don't initially go as planned.
My why
It's taken a horrible, thieving disease and unfathonable loss—of my life partner + person, the life we planned for, and even my own sense of self—for me to fully embrace and pursue my dreams. Dreams and aspirations bigger than I previously allowed myself to entertain.
While the original goal of my pivot was to be better equipped financially to support my partner's care and our life together, it's now about paying it forward in this new season as a recovering caregiver and newly widowed business owner.
What's really lit a fire under me is the urge to expand our legacy. To be guided by our lived experience with ALS and pay it forward through philanthropic influence, while serving women entrepreneurs and social impact clients with thought partnership and advisory services that embolden them to dream, do, and achieve bigger things, too.
Sharing my story here is an important step towards openly embodying this new vision. To capture the powerful sense of permission that I've gifted myself in this next season of life. Permission to prosper, unapologetically. And I want that for you, too.
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