Should I quit my marketing business and switch careers?

June 14, 2024 7:40 AM

I run a marketing business which has struggled for the past two years. I'm considering whether to pivot, change careers, or find an in-house or agency job. I have lots of experience but am burned out. Should I try to turn my business around or look for a new career path?

Follow-up to this question. Thank you!

I run a marketing business that has had a rough two years. I am the owner/only full-time employee and have two freelance admins who work for me as well as graphic designers/video editors/other freelancers I hire per project.

I have been a self-employed consultant since 2017 and my business is only on track to earn $90,000 before expenses this year. In 2023 we only generated gross of $65,000. In previous years we grossed anywhere from $120,000-$200,000. After expenses, I'm struggling to meet my take-home salary of $60,000.

I'm really burned out and trying to figure out whether to change careers, pivot my business, or get a job in-house or at an agency.

THE GOOD:
- I'm in my early 40s. My wife has a well-paying job, so we're not at risk of being on the street. Even if my lost all my income, we could get by with some belt tightening.
- My kiddo is about to start kindergarten in the fall, which means my wife and I will now have an additional $2000+ month free since we're not paying for preschool or private occupational therapy for him anymore.
- My company works on a wide range of projects. In the past year, for instance, I helped clients design interactive experiences and write UX scripts for trade shows/conventions and museums, hosted and produced a B2B podcast, trained corporate executives and high-profile engineers for keynote speeches, ghostwrote LinkedIn posts for higher-ups at Fortune 500 companies and wrote internal documentation and YouTube tutorials for an AI startup.
- I have run a business for seven years and have deep experience supervising contractors, with project management, account management/working with clients, working with bookkeepers, managing P&Ls, etc.
- More broadly speaking, I'm great at building complicated projects, working with lots of different data sources/reference materials on projects, and explaining complicated things simply.
- I know how to work with Excel/Sheets, PowerPoint, Google Docs, Creative Cloud and ChatGPT/Claude in my sleep.
- I'm in a major metro (Chicago) with lots of opportunities in my field.

THE BAD:
- From my experiences, freelance + contractor rates in the marketing and advertising rates are plummeting. I used to easily charge $150+/hr while now I'm lucky if I get $120/hr. There have been so many creatives and industry folks laid off in the past few years that the market is absolutely flooded with other senior- and mid-level folks working with freelancers doing similar work to what I currently do.
- We don't live close to any family, so we don't have any family support with our kid. This makes working more than 40 hours a week harder.
- I'm also helping an elderly parent remotely with medical issues/insurance/coordinating with caseworkers, which is a part-time job in itself and is wearing me the hell out. They are non-compliant with doctors' orders and it leads to frequent issues I have to intervene in.

Part of me just wants to do a career change to anything where I can earn $100,000+ a year and not be stuck working on my laptop at 9 or 10pm when the kid's asleep after a full day of work, another part of me wants to see what I can do to turn my business around.

Any advice?

posted by allthethings to Work & Money (6 answers total)

Seems like your work-life balance isn't great when running your own business. As we age, we have more at-home responsibilities, both positive (family time) and stressful (elder care).

I suggest giving up the business and finding something where you can focus on projects rather than hustle/management/finance, so you can shut the laptop at 5pm on weekdays and focus on the life you and your family have in front of you.

This is completely separate from the industry you're in, which is undergoing radical shifts. Find stability while you can. Perhaps even look at trimming expenses so if working for someone else isn't as reliable as you hope, you can transition to part-time work only.
posted by seanmpuckett at 7:51 AM on June 14

Try to get a unionized job in the government or academia. They pay more, have better work life balance, and struggle to find qualified people. With your experience you could probably find a really high paying manager or director job that wouldn't have you on call 24 7.
posted by winterportage at 7:52 AM on June 14 [2 favorites]

I am in a unionized marketing job in academia and highly recommend it as a mid-career move.
posted by warriorqueen at 8:20 AM on June 14

The fact that you are even hesitant to try to turn your business around, regardless of the structural issues facing independent marketing people says enough to me that you should not try or you should find something else.

I know nothing about marketing, but I do have a decades long friendship with someone who had a very established marketing firm, 100 employees who just sold out to a bigger firm that had much more resources to offer a client. He felt that AI was going to make significant inroads in the business and he did not have the resources that the firm he sold out to did to even fund AI work.

I don't know what you should do, but I know what you should not do. Through no fault of your own, you will always struggle at independent marketing.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 9:43 AM on June 14

Another vote for looking at an in-house job, ideally in a big, stable industry like government, education, healthcare, insurance, etc. The work likely won't be as exciting as what you are doing now, but you will not have to do nearly as much work to earn a $60k salary. If you find you have extra time and capacity, most places will allow you to freelance on the side.
posted by mjcon at 7:30 PM on June 14

Something to consider would be selling the business as a going concern to another agency. There are pros and cons to this, someone might buy the business mainly for the client list and then let you go after a year or two, but then if you are thinking of a career change anyway it could be a good way to make the transition.
posted by Lanark at 1:50 AM on June 15