Latest / The Comeback Career Podcast with Fexingo: Returning After a Gap, Stay-at-Home Re-Entry / How a Career Gap Helped One Parent Start a Consulting Firm
Transcript
- Lucas: Sarah Chen spent six years out of the formal workforce raising two kids. When she decided to go back, she didn't apply for a single job opening. Instead, she started a consulting firm. Luna: I love that. It's such a counterintuitive move — most people think consulting is something you do after decades in an industry, not after a gap. Lucas: Right. But Sarah had a specific edge. Before her gap, she'd been a marketing director at a mid-sized retail chain, focused on customer analytics. She knew the pain points in retail data — the messy spreadsheets, the siloed systems, the difficulty of translating foot traffic numbers into actionable decisions. Luna: So she didn't lose that expertise. She just took a break from applying it. Lucas: Exactly. And during her gap, she stayed sharp in a low-key way. She'd help friends who ran small boutiques with their Excel models or their email campaigns. Nothing formal, but it kept her thinking about retail problems. Luna: That informal practice is something a lot of parents do but don't recognize as valuable. So when she decided it was time to return, what was her first concrete step? Lucas: She did something I think is brilliant. She reached out to five local independent retailers — a bookstore, a children's clothing store, a gift shop — and offered to do a free one-hour audit of their customer data. Just a friendly conversation, no strings. Luna: That's a low-risk way to test the waters. And I bet she learned a lot about what those businesses actually needed. Lucas: She did. Every single one of them had the same problem: they were sitting on years of transaction data but had no idea how to use it. One owner told her, 'I know my best customers by face, not by data.' That was Sarah's lightbulb moment. She realized there was a market for a service that bridged that gap for small and mid-sized retailers. Luna: So her niche — retail analytics for independent retailers — came directly out of those conversations. She didn't invent it in a vacuum. Lucas: Right. She used her gap to do what she calls 'informal market research.' No focus groups, no paid surveys. Just honest conversations with people who had a problem. And that's how she built her service offering. Luna: What about the actual business structure? Did she incorporate right away, or start as a sole proprietor? Lucas: She started as a sole proprietor. She didn't want to spend money on legal fees before she had any revenue. Her first contract came from that children's clothing store — she'd done the free audit, and the owner asked her to build a simple customer loyalty program. Sarah charged fifteen hundred dollars for the project. Luna: That's a very reasonable starting price. Enough to feel like real money, but not so high that a small business owner would balk. Lucas: And it set a precedent. She delivered the project in three weeks, the owner was thrilled, and that led to referrals. Within six months, she had four clients and was making about four thousand dollars a month. Not a fortune, but a meaningful income after six years of zero. Luna: I think a lot of parents worry that they need to charge premium rates from day one. Sarah's approach shows you can start small and scale up. Lucas: And that's exactly what happened. After her first year, she raised her rates. She also formalized her business — got an LLC, opened a separate bank account, bought professional liability insurance. But she only did that once she had consistent cash flow. Luna: That's smart. Too many people over-engineer the business structure before they have a single client. Lucas: One thing I found really interesting was how she handled the work-life balance question. She told me she made a rule: no client meetings before nine a.m. or after three p.m., because those are her kids' drop-off and pick-up windows. And she only takes clients who respect those boundaries from the start. Luna: That's a strong filter. It probably scared off some potential clients, but the ones who stayed were the right fit. Lucas: Exactly. She said the clients who pushed back on her schedule were the same ones who would have been difficult about scope creep and late payments. So it was a useful screening tool. Luna: That's a good lesson for anyone starting a consulting business, not just returning parents. Set your boundaries early, even if it means losing a few opportunities. Lucas: Now, three years in, Sarah's firm has a small virtual team — a part-time data analyst and a freelance writer who helps with client reports. She's up to about eighty thousand a year in revenue, and she's turning away work because she doesn't want to grow beyond what she can manage personally. Luna: She's deliberately staying small. That's a conscious choice, not a failure to scale. Lucas: And that's one reason her story works so well as a model. She didn't set out to build a unicorn. She set out to build a flexible, profitable business that let her use her skills and be present for her family. And she did it starting from a six-year gap. Luna: I wonder how many listeners are sitting on a similar expertise from their pre-gap career, thinking they need to go back to a traditional job to use it. Lucas: That's exactly the mindset shift. Sarah didn't wait for someone to hire her. She created her own role. And the gap wasn't a liability — it gave her the perspective to see a market need that she might have missed while buried in corporate deadlines. Luna: Yeah. There's something about stepping away that can actually clarify what you're good at and what you want to do. Lucas: Quick honest thing. A handful of listeners chip in monthly through buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo, and that's literally what funds making episodes like this one possible. We don't run ads, so it's listener-supported in the truest sense. Luna: And we're grateful for every single one. It keeps us independent and lets us dig into stories like Sarah's without any outside pressure. Lucas: So back to Sarah — one more detail I want to mention. She said the hardest part wasn't the business logistics. It was the internal voice telling her she had no right to charge for expertise she hadn't used 'professionally' in six years. Luna: Imposter syndrome, but with a gap-specific twist. How did she get past that? Lucas: She said it was a slow process. She kept a folder of positive client feedback and read it whenever she felt shaky. And she reminded herself that her clients weren't comparing her to other consultants — they were comparing her to the chaos of their own spreadsheets. She didn't need to be the world's best analyst. She just needed to be better than what they had. Luna: That's a really healthy framing. 'Better than the alternative' is a much lower bar than 'perfect.' Lucas: And it's true. Her first client had been managing customer data in a spiral notebook. Any structured approach was a huge improvement. So Sarah's advice for parents considering consulting is: don't wait until you feel ready. Start with one small project, learn as you go, and let the confidence come from results, not from permission. Luna: That's a great note to end on. If someone's listening and thinking, 'I could do that,' what would you say the first concrete step should be? Lucas: Exactly what Sarah did. Think of one business problem you know how to solve, find a small local business that has that problem, and offer to help for free. Not as a charity, but as research. You'll either confirm there's a market or learn you need to pivot. Either way, you're moving forward. Luna: And that forward motion is what a gap sometimes steals from us — the feeling that we're stuck. Sarah's story shows you can start moving again, even from a standstill. Lucas: Exactly. That's the comeback. I'm Lucas. Luna: And I'm Luna. Thanks for listening.