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Context
This story started, as many of the most meaningful ones do, with a conversation. One of my clients was coming back from maternity leave. She owned a small business making educational toys for children — a company that she had built with love, creativity, and a lot of hard work. But as she was stepping back into her role, she felt unsettled.
On one hand, she was full of excitement to reconnect with her business. On the other, she told me she felt pulled in too many directions. Some tasks drained her energy, some partnerships didn’t feel right anymore, and she wasn’t sure how to define her role now that her life had shifted so much. “I want my business to feel like me again,” she said.
Challenge
What she needed wasn’t another to-do list or a rigid plan. She needed clarity. She needed to see which parts of her work truly energized her, which ones could be delegated, and how to reconnect with the joy that had first made her start this company. And maybe most importantly — she needed a way to integrate her new reality as both a business owner and a mother.
Approach
We started small, with honest conversations. Many of them happened in the form of spontaneous WhatsApp voice notes — quick reflections about her day, her struggles, her sparks of inspiration. Those little check-ins gave me raw material to see patterns in what gave her energy and what left her exhausted.
Then I introduced her to the idea of job crafting — a way of redesigning your work around your strengths, values, and passions. We mapped her tasks, her relationships, and even her mindset about the work itself. Suddenly, it was clear: some things had to stay, some had to go, and some could simply be reframed to make them feel lighter.
The process wasn’t static. At one point, she told me she had an unexpected opportunity to pitch herself to a potential business partner. Instead of treating it as a separate challenge, we used everything we had uncovered so far. We crafted her pitch around the very essence of what she loved about her work. She didn’t just present her business — she presented herself in a way that felt authentic and energizing.
Outcome & Impact
By the end of this process, she wasn’t just clearer about her role. She was calmer, more confident, and actually excited about her work again. She had a simple map of what to keep, what to let go of, and what to reshape — and she had already tested those insights in real life with her pitch.
What I loved most about this journey was watching the shift in her perspective. Her business stopped feeling like a list of obligations and started feeling like a space where she could truly thrive. That’s the power of job crafting — it’s not about adding more tasks, but about realigning what you already do with who you really are.
In short:
Problem: She came back from maternity leave unsure how to define her role and feeling drained by parts of her business.
Solution: We used job crafting to redesign her work around her strengths, passions, and authentic self.
Result: She left with clarity, confidence, and a renewed excitement for her business.
