Nice to meet you!

I grew up in a small town on the West end of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. When I got to high school graduation, I was ready to get out of my comfort zone, so I headed as far East as I could without leaving the state. That led me to Sault Ste. Marie, where I got a Bachelor’s of Accounting at Lake Superior State University. During my time there I met my now husband, Nick.

We got married a year after I graduated LSSU and it seemed like all of the pieces of our lives were just falling into place. Eight months after the wedding I found out I was pregnant and we knew that becoming parents was the last piece for us to feel complete. At our first appointment I waited with bated breath to see my baby for the first time on the ultrasound. Instead, I was met with silence from my doctor. She didn’t have to say a word, I knew that she didn’t find a heartbeat. We were crushed. We fell into a deep well of grief that took us a long time to climb out of. Two years later I was pregnant again and my excitement was tempered with fear. I went into that appointment with bated breath not from excitement, but anxiety.

In that appointment we relived our worst fears. Once again, there was no heartbeat. The survival mode that we had been in stretched on and we grappled with simply living our day to day lives while coping with the losses we had experienced. I would go on to have two more miscarriages. I view that period of four and a half years like a black hole in our lives. Everything but our grief went on to the back burner. I can’t say that we had no happy moments during that time, but they were all colored with the ache of our family feeling incomplete.

I finally had to face one major question: What do I want my life to look like if I cannot have children? It was one of the hardest things I had to do. But I realized that whether I have a baby or not, I want to have a healthy body, a happy marriage, a career that I love and less stress about my money. I began to climb out of the black hole I had been wallowing in.

This change in mindset is what led me to the epiphany that I wanted to help others. In my search for how, I discovered financial coaching and realized it was where I wanted to pour my energy. I signed up for an academy and started building the business I never thought I would have.

Within two months of getting started, I found out I was pregnant with my daughter.

It was like the moment I started focusing on thriving, the universe just opened up to me. It was amazing and terrifying. I continued to work on my business while going through pregnancy after loss. I dealt with a ton of ups, downs, emotions, fears all while making baby steps in my pregnancy and in my coaching.

I am still amazed to say that I gave birth to my daughter Wendy in January of 2020. She is one of the biggest miracles of my life.

Then, as soon as I was about to go back to work at my day job, covid hit. It was like my life had been this wild rollercoaster of emotion, grief and struggle for so long and all of a sudden the rest of the world was joining me.

I could feel myself shifting, growing, transforming and the question I had asked myself earlier started being asked by so many people around me - “What do I want my life to look like?”

I knew that the job I had been working wasn’t it and I had a manager that just didn’t value me. I knew I wanted something that would offer me more flexibility to prioritize my family. I decided to take the plunge and go full time in my business.

I failed.

I did not bring in the money I needed to care for my family. We slowly burned through the savings that was just supposed to be a safety net. All the pressure to be successful took the joy out of my business. I decided to get a job, but it had to be something that would work for my family.

I got invited to apply for a job as an accountant at a local non-profit. It was exactly what I needed to be able to balance my work and my family while still being able to figure out this whole business owner thing on the side.

One month after starting that job, I found out I was pregnant with my son.

Now I was facing learning a new job, being pregnant, raising a toddler and still trying to grow my business. On top of that, my daycare was not able to take David until he turned 10 months because she didn’t have the space. He ended up coming with me to the office (and board meetings, events and out to the assisted living homes) for the first 10 months of his life until I finally got daycare.

David was born in March of 2022, three hours away from home. I won’t get into his birth story here, but it’s the biggest manifestation I’ve ever done in my life, so if you want to hear more, let me know.

Since that time of having David in the office with me, I have had the space to confidently step up into the space of being a CFO and it has become super clear for me that the work I have done in that position is what I want to do for others.

The board I was working with had gone through a period of time where they had no financials, so they hired an accountant and she got the basic bookkeeping going and was at least able to turn out a profit and loss and balance sheet for them.

After I came in and did my magic I was able to give them clarity and insight into their past trends, current financial position and where they were headed. I was able to give them tools to confidently assess and make decisions about future plans. I was able to talk about the mindsets that will help them thrive.

I have a superpower for getting financial recordkeeping in order, creating ultimate clarity to make decision making easier, creating systems for cash flow, payroll (yes, if your business is just you, you need a system for payroll!), reporting and analyzing. Plus, I’m great at boiling it down to the most important things you need to know.

I want to work with you because you have decided to intentionally live your life. You are ready to let the struggles you have faced be the reason you’re moving forward, not being held back.

You have a talent for coaching, healing, teaching or transforming and you want to bring that into the world. Maybe you know what that talent is, but you need to find a way to refine it by investing in a course, certification or coach and you have no idea how to do that because your personal money isn’t exactly in order.

Or you’ve already hopped on and got your business going, but it’s just so much to keep up with on the money side of things - you dread tax time, don’t know exactly what’s going on with your business money and avoid it like the plague.

But what if you could let a big fat nerd who loves all things money take care of the day to day bookkeeping? Then, distill down to the information that you need to be able to set goals, make decisions and thrive in your own zone of genius in business. And it wouldn’t just be unloading a box of receipts at the end of the year - it would be regular analysis and coaching around your money systems and beliefs and how they are affecting every single aspect of your life.

If you think you might be ready for that, I'd love to chat. Schedule a free clarity call with me so we can talk about how I can help.

Cheers,

Amber