Hi! I’m Ann Marie, content creator and marketing support for Quantum Leap Experience. I help create the Quantum Leap Experience newsletter each week, and I’m also on my own growth journey—right alongside you. Needless to say, my biggest leap yet was one I didn’t plan for. It came out of life circumstances that reshaped everything. Each day still brings new stressors that test my resilience and highlight some of my inner saboteurs, such as being a stickler or hyper-vigilant. But over time, I’ve learned to be more patient with myself. I’ve learned the power of pausing when things feel overwhelming and giving myself permission to breathe, regroup, and grow through it – because even the most unexpected chapters can lead to transformation if you stay open to the process.
I grew up hearing, “Look before you leap.”
And for the most part, I always did.
I have enjoyed a solid professional career spanning over 25 years in digital marketing and advertising sales, which has taken me from agency boardrooms and client meetings in New York to California and many places in between.
I lived primarily in the Northeast, with weekends spent back home in the fields of Pennsylvania, helping my dad on his grain farm.
Big-city deals during the week, time in the tractor seat on the weekends—it was a rhythm that worked.
In 2015, after a decade of living in Connecticut, I felt a pull to return home to Pennsylvania.
I bought my first house just 2.5 miles from Dad’s farm, and continued my career moving forward while working remotely.
Then, in 2018, the company I was working for was sold.
I took it as a sign to give freelancing a try.
With a few clients and a lot of hope, I stepped into a new chapter.
Freelancing suited me.
It was fast-paced, flexible, and grounded in the strong relationships I had built.
It also allowed me to expand my skills from writing pitches to managing content, and creating articles, and newsletters for my clients.
Best of all, I could now contribute more on the farm during the week.
The leap to freelancing was paying off.
But nothing prepared me for the leap I’d have to take next.
In December 2021, I lost my dad unexpectedly.
It was the hardest moment of my life. The one I’d quietly feared for years.
Suddenly, the fields we had once worked side by side became mine to tend.
My sister and I stepped up.
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Not just because the farm needed us but because we needed it.
Carrying on Dad’s work became a way to carry him with us.
He had taught us so much, though we hadn’t realized just how much until he was gone. Thank God he repeated the important stuff.
Still, there was so much we didn’t know.
I had never created a crop plan before, nor had I planted acres of corn on my own.
I had never driven our grain truck filled to the brim during harvest (yikes!).
But we learned. And we did it.
I had been balancing client work with farm life for a while, but this was something entirely different.
My sister and I are owner-operators of a working farm, and I manage it by navigating storylines and project work in the mornings and soybean fields until dusk.
Farming is not a side hustle.
It demands all of you.
Your time, your heart, your patience.
It’s not exactly the life I imagined, but it’s the one I’m proud to live.
A life where I get to grow brands and cultivate crops.
My leap into freelancing has given me the freedom to take an even greater leap into legacy, into stewardship, and to honor the life and lessons my father left behind.
I’ve learned that growth begins where comfort ends.
Often, the leap you fear the most ends up being the one that truly shapes you.
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