09/28/2026
Long post but meaningful as we reflect on Dolly day… From 9 to 5 to Building a Business That Works for Moms
Sometimes a song says something so clearly that you don’t fully understand its meaning until you’ve lived it yourself.
Years ago, Dolly Parton sang about the reality of working the 9 to 5—the long hours, the expectations, the feeling of giving everything you have to a job while wondering when there’s supposed to be time left for the rest of your life.
At the time, I heard a catchy song.
Years later, as a working mom trying to build a career, I heard something very different.
I heard my own story.
I started By the Books because I wanted something that the traditional corporate world didn’t seem designed to give me: the ability to be a great mom and have a meaningful, successful career.
I didn’t want to have to choose.
I wanted to be present for the school events, the sick days, the practices, the holidays, the moments that don’t show up on a calendar but somehow become the memories you remember forever.
But I also wanted to build something of my own. I wanted to use my experience, my skills, my work ethic, and my ambition. I wanted to create a business that I could be proud of.
And somewhere along the way, I realized something:
Maybe the problem wasn’t that I couldn’t fit into the corporate world. Maybe the corporate world simply wasn’t built to fit the life I wanted.
So I built something different.
By the Books has become so much more than a bookkeeping business to me. It represents the freedom to create a career on my own terms—and, hopefully, to create that same possibility for the people who work alongside me.
Because being a mom shouldn’t mean you’re less ambitious.
Wanting a career shouldn’t mean you’re less devoted to your family.
And choosing flexibility shouldn’t mean you’re choosing mediocrity.
Women shouldn’t have to prove that they are serious about their careers by sacrificing the people and things that matter most to them.
I don’t believe success should require us to miss everything that makes life worth living.
Dolly was singing about this reality decades ago. And somehow, all these years later, we’re still having the conversation.
Maybe that’s why 9 to 5 hits a little differently for me now.
I didn’t start By the Books because I wanted to escape work.
I started it because I wanted to build a life where work could exist alongside motherhood—not instead of it.
And if building my own business has taught me anything, it’s this:
Sometimes you don’t need to find your place in someone else’s system.
Sometimes you need the courage to build your own.
So here’s to the moms building businesses between school drop-offs and pickups.
The women answering emails after bedtime.
The entrepreneurs squeezing a little more work into the day after everyone else has gone to sleep.
The women who are ambitious, exhausted, proud, overwhelmed, grateful—and somehow doing it all anyway.
We don’t have to choose between being good mothers and successful women.
We get to be both.
And maybe that’s the real dream—not escaping the 9 to 5, but creating a life where the hours we spend working actually support the life we’re working so hard to build.
