Bye Buddy

My colleague and friend, Molly Cogan, wrote a tribute yesterday about our beloved friend who passed away on Monday.

I want to add to it.

Molly and I met on the road. That’s how a lot of us found each other. Thrown together by campaigns, policy tours, events that required everything you had and then a little more. Johnny Williams was the constant in a lot of those miles. The person who showed up, handled it, and made the impossible feel manageable.

For those who didn’t have the privilege — Johnny owned and operated a bus transport company. What started as a single leap of faith in the 80s grew into a full fleet operation. He saw something the industry hadn’t caught up to yet: that campaigns and major tours needed the ability to move fluidly from community to community, and a bus was the most powerful way to do it.

He built the model. Then he kept building.

At the prime of some of those campaigns and tours, we could effectively hit eight to twelve cities in a single day. I think our record was 15. Those are 15 full events with sound, staging, lighting, dignitaries, movements, local city involvement, and a full program all wrapped up with a press avail. Multiple buses running simultaneously around the country. Multiple teams. A tour director. Dignitaries moving by plane, train, and automobile between stops.

And before any of it could happen, advance teams had driven every route by hand. We are talking hotel computers to print maps. Driving every turn, every underpass, every airport approach ourselves to confirm the bus could get through. No GPS. No apps. A Blackberry if you were lucky, and we were thrilled the day they introduced a color screen. You knew that route because you had physically been on it. There was no other way.

We needed a full 13’6” of clearance. Anything at or less would not get us through. I see you, Norfolk Airport.

The buses weren’t just transportation. They were wrapped full coverage, the campaign messaging built right into the visual. Every stop, every roadside press avail, every pop-up moment was backed by a backdrop that worked and was multifunctional. What looked to the outside world like people just riding a bus was actually a micro-managed, minute-by-minute operation that accounted for every possible detail and then some.

And as the operation evolved, Johnny evolved with it. Faster than most. When the press vans that followed us needed to file stories on deadline, Johnny figured out how to get WiFi on the bus so they could tap in and transmit from the road. Nobody asked him to solve that problem. He just saw the need and built the solution. That was always Johnny. Watching what the people around him required and finding a way to deliver it before they knew to ask.

The glue holding all of it together was Johnny Williams.

Here’s what most people never see about operations at that level. I was on one movement that was very high profile. The images from the event were to be used for additional materials.

FLOTUS was en route. Less than thirty minutes out. The bus had already been cleared by Secret Service, wrapped, positioned, locked in as the visual backdrop for the press avail. A bomb-sniffing dog came through doing a final sweep.

The dog signaled. On the bus.

Everyone froze. Because when a dog signals a possible threat, there is no explanation that satisfies. It did not matter that a volunteer from the church where the city event was being held had innocently grabbed a bottle of 409 and wiped down the steps trying to be helpful. It did not matter that 409 is a known trigger for bomb-sniffing dogs. The protocol does not negotiate.

The bus had to move. Which meant tearing down an entire side of staging with less than thirty minutes on the clock.

Johnny didn’t panic. We all handled it together.

That’s what trust looks like in a high-stakes environment. Not a policy or a process. A person you know, without question, has your back. And knows you have his.

Not every story from the road is that heavy. Some of them are just ridiculous.

We were running lean on a campaign stop at one of the oldest ice cream shops in the Midwest. Rolling fields, small town, the kind of place that’s been there longer than anyone can remember. The plan was to leapfrog ahead of the motorcade by about ten to fifteen minutes, get everything set, and be ready when the bus arrived.

I was flying down country roads when I zoomed past a red Chevy Blazer. Unmarked. Small town police officer.

He pulled me over.

So there I am, talking into my radio to my colleague on the bus to ask Johnny to slow down without making it obvious to anyone in order to buy me time, while simultaneously telling the officer to please just write the ticket. Quickly. Because I have a motorcade a few minutes behind me and I need to be at the next stop before they arrive.

The look on his face.

I made it. Just barely. But that’s the road. You solve the problem in front of you and you keep moving. Every single time.

There was another moment I’ve never forgotten. We were on the road, and things were not going well. The kind of not-well that makes everyone tense and short and looking for somewhere to put it.

Brenda, Johnny’s wife, who traveled with him at various intervals, didn’t get frustrated. She gathered us. Johnny, Brenda, a small handful of us, standing in a circle, holding hands, praying over the events and everyone involved.

I think about that moment a lot. The chaos outside. The stillness inside that circle on the bus.

That is the Williams family.

Johnny had a huge heart. He worked hard for candidates and causes he believed in, across decades of this country’s history. He loved Brenda and his kids and grandkids fiercely, and he would tell you so.

He built something real. He saw a gap before anyone else did, took the leap, and then spent decades refining the operation as the world changed around him. He didn’t wait for the industry to catch up. He stayed ahead of it.

That’s the thing about people who build from nothing. They don’t stop at the idea. They stay in the execution, all the way through, for as long as it takes.

Every time we wrapped an event and said our goodbyes, he had one line.

Bye Buddy.

So that’s what I’ll say.

Bye for now, Johnny. Thanks Buddy.

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Six years ago, I wrote this.

April 6, 2020. Nobody knew what April 7 would look like. Nobody knew the DC area wouldn’t reopen until the following year. Nobody knew that words like grit and resilience were about to get redefined. That we’d find out what they actually mean when there’s no timeline, no roadmap, and no guarantee there’s another side.

What I knew on April 6th: I was running a significant business, and within three weeks, we watched our monthly revenue drop to below $10,000.

Do that math. Payroll. Insurance. Vehicles. Equipment. Rent. Ten thousand dollars doesn’t come close to covering it. And we had no idea how long we’d be sitting there.

Just weeks before, Google had been out for a full day of filming. Cameras, crew, a documentary on female entrepreneurs building something. I was one of them. And then the world stopped. Not slowed. Stopped.

Reporters started calling. They wanted the collapse story. The business owner who couldn’t hold on. I wouldn’t give it to them. Not because things weren’t brutal, but because brutal and finished are not the same thing. I’d spent years building something that could take a hit. I wasn’t going to let someone else write the ending.

What that entire chapter taught me, and what I keep coming back to every time the ground shifts again, is that your ability to navigate anything comes down to one thing. Not strategy. Not capital. Not connections.

How you choose to respond.

The article below is exactly what I wrote in the middle of it. Not looking back. Not knowing how it ended. I’m sharing it again because the world has a way of cycling. New pressure, new uncertainty, new reasons to spiral. And every time it does, I think about what my dear friend Keith Harrell always said.

Attitude is everything.

He meant every word. So do I.

Is the media driving a message of doom and gloom?

Interesting experience. Over the past several days, I have been interviewed regarding business and the impact of COVID-19. In one interview specifically, I was repeatedly asked for a “negative” sound bite and what the reporter was attempting to get me to say was a message of doom and gloom. Our business is failing, we’ve let most everyone go, we don’t see any hope... NOTE: I didn’t give her what she wanted and subsequently was not even mentioned in the interview.

DON’T BELIEVE ALL OF WHAT THE MEDIA IS TELLING YOU!

Are we struggling??!! - Of course. EVERYONE is being impacted by the pandemic. There is no such thing as a nonessential person and we are all shouldering and navigating this current situation.

This is also the time to get lean and mean as well as get smarter. Do you have a crisis plan in place? If not, get one! We have regrouped, transitioned many of our services, giving options to others for alternative types of activities for their furry companions that still adhere to social distancing protocols as well as help the pet parent provide for a safe and fun experience for their dog.

NOTE: Pet Parents - being at home constantly with your pets is not necessarily a good thing. Your pets need to get out and EXERCISE! Being constantly at home is setting you and your pet up for possible behavioral issues when all of this comes to an end. Exercise, Engagement, and Socialization (with other dogs) are the keys!

So, here is what I shared with the Reporter that she found was not acceptable to the story she was portraying.

• We are down currently about 80% in monthly volume.

• Our team has all been given the option to remove themselves if needed.

• We are volunteering at the Humane Rescue Alliance on Mondays providing adventures! Guess what - just because a pandemic is going on doesn’t mean that the many pets in shelters don’t need exercise. In fact, they need volunteers even more!

• Tuesdays through Fridays, we are providing limited services focused on our Adventures - exercising dogs out in nature while social distancing.

• All days we are providing heavily discounted services to those serving on the front lines.

Finally, WE ARE HIRING! We need people who love dogs! There are many pets to exercise and there is a safe and secure manner in which to do this while observing all protocols and mandates set forth.

I challenged the reporter and kept circling back that while we are down, we will survive and our goal is to maintain a positive attitude, look for additional ways to give back, and ensure our team members are able to stay afloat. This is not easy by any stretch, but as my dear friend, Keith Harrel used to always say, “Attitude is Everything!”

Oracle let 30,000 people go. Via email.

Times are hard for a lot of people right now. The pressure is different than 2020, but the question is the same. What do you do when the ground moves?

Here’s what I know: you have an idea. The world needs your idea. Go build it.

If you need a starting place, reach out. I’d love to help.

If this resonated, subscribe to The Jenn Files. I write about business, money, and resilience — cutting through the noise so you can build something that can’t be broken.

Prefer to read in the app without the inbox noise? You can switch to app-only notifications in your Substack account settings under Notifications. I want this to work for you however works best.

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I’ve been sitting with a story this week that I can’t shake. Dr. Karen Becker’s mom wrote about a little black-and-white stray cat named Max. The kind of cat who shows up in your backyard like he owns the place, earns your trust inch by inch over months, and then finally lets you love him completely.

Max didn’t eat poison. He hunted. He caught a mouse. That mouse had eaten rodenticide.

Max is gone.

Secondary poisoning. When a rodent consumes bait and then is eaten by a predator before dying, the toxins transfer. The cat didn’t touch the bait. The cat just did what cats do. And died from someone else’s solution to someone else’s problem.

Dr. Karen Becker, widely considered the most well-known integrative veterinarian in the world, didn’t live with Max, but she has seen this more times than anyone should. She put it plainly: these poisons ripple through entire ecosystems, harming the very predators that naturally control rodent populations and unintentionally putting our pets at risk. She’s right. And she’s not alone in saying it.

Max’s story isn’t rare. It’s just rarely connected.

I’ve spent time living in various parts of the world. Africa, South America, Central America, in places where the infrastructure is raw and the risks are visible. We used to joke about the asbestos in the roof. On one stretch of months living in Africa, we boiled the water. That was simply how you got clean water. You knew it wasn’t safe, so you treated it accordingly. That habit of questioning everything, what’s in the water, what’s in the air, what’s in the walls, doesn’t leave you.

Fast forward to a mass on my lung, and the joke stops being funny. I wonder about it. I can’t prove anything. But I’ve spent enough time in enough places to know that what surrounds you finds a way in.

Here’s what nobody tells you when you come home to the USA: you don’t reduce your toxic exposure. In many cases, you increase it. You just stopped being able to see it. The risks got prettier packaging. They got brand names and pleasant scents and end caps at Target. The asbestos in the roof was obvious. You knew to boil the water. The plug-in air freshener is not obvious. The tap water looks fine. And your cat is licking it off the floor at 2am.

I live in Florida now, close to the water. That means I live close to everything that comes with it: rats, roaches, palmetto bugs the size of your fist, things that fly at you from directions you weren’t expecting. Florida will humble you fast if you think you can spray your way to a clean perimeter.

I broke down and hired a pest control service. It sort of worked. But the toxic smell was terrible. And even more worrisome, the beneficial insects I actually wanted were dying. Something needed to change.

Here’s something nobody tells you about living close to the water in Florida: the rats live in the palm trees. Once you know that, you just know it. I see them late at night, running the fence line. First time? Unsettling. Now? They’re just part of what’s out there.

There’s a squirrel family in the tree in my front yard. There’s a rat family in one of the palms. Every so often I spot a snake. I saw one recently that looked like it had just eaten a rat. Nature being nature.

Here’s the shift in thinking that changed everything for me: the goal is not elimination. The goal is an ecosystem. Beneficial insects thriving. Butterflies moving through. Birds whistling in the yard. The right predators doing the work that rodenticide was never going to do sustainably. As long as nothing is getting into the home, we’re not at war with what’s outside it.

That’s the whole philosophy. Build an environment that keeps itself in balance, and you need a lot less of what’s under the sink.

Houston, my cat, has been on a multi-year gut health recovery journey. Lyra, my special needs cat, lives with severe seizures and is on palliative care. Bella came to us having lived on rancid food, underweight, kept in a cage and pushed to produce litter after litter. She is on her own recovery journey now, and living her best life. When I look at the research on toxin load and environmental triggers across all three of them, I don’t see coincidence. I see a pattern I wish I’d understood sooner.

I’ve always been about removing the toxins. What I’ve learned is that you have to keep reading the labels and questioning things. And in our society of overabundance, a few simple items can do the work of most of what’s under your sink. Vinegar as a fabric softener. Castile soap for your floors, your yard, your counters. It isn’t complicated. It’s just different from what we’ve been sold.

Here’s what nobody talks about: the poison you didn’t mean to use is still poison.

The Environmental Working Group tested dogs and cats. Not near factories, not near Superfund sites. In regular homes. Cat samples came back contaminated with 46 chemicals total, including 9 carcinogens, 40 chemicals toxic to the reproductive system, and 34 neurotoxins. Dogs showed 35 chemicals, including 11 carcinogens.

Cats groom themselves constantly, licking off whatever has settled in their fur and on their paws. The dust on your floor. The residue on your couch. The air freshener you sprayed this morning. It all goes somewhere.

Dogs exposed to lawns treated with a common herbicide were found to be twice as likely to develop lymphoma. Pesticide exposure in cats and dogs has been linked to mammary cancer, bladder cancer, and oral squamous cell carcinoma across multiple peer-reviewed studies.

The ASPCA’s Animal Poison Control Center received over 451,000 calls in 2024 related to toxic exposures in animals. Four hundred and fifty-one thousand calls. In one year.

We think toxins live somewhere else. They live all around us. And under our sinks.

The Nose Knows — And It’s Getting Sick

Nasal cancer in dogs used to be rare. It is becoming more common, and the research points in a consistent direction.

Veterinary oncologists have documented a clear connection between chemical exposure and nasal tumors in dogs. Flea sprays have been correlated with nasal tumor development. Air fresheners are explicitly named as a risk factor. The mechanism isn’t mysterious: dogs breathe at floor level, where airborne chemicals concentrate. Their noses filter everything. Over time, chronic exposure to VOCs, synthetic fragrance, and chemical residue creates the conditions for malignancy.

A study of 25 top-selling air fresheners and laundry detergents found 133 different volatile organic compounds, averaging 17 VOCs per product. Of those, 24 were classified as toxic or hazardous under U.S. law. Formaldehyde, a known carcinogen linked to cancers of the nose and throat, is found in common household cleaners, new furniture, synthetic fabrics, and scented products.

Your dog’s nose is filtering your home’s air. Every plug-in, every spray, every paraffin candle is going somewhere. It’s going through them. And your pet bed, the one that feels soft and looks cozy, was almost certainly sprayed with fire retardant chemicals before it ever reached your home. Fire retardants accumulate in household dust. Your pet sleeps on that bed, breathes that dust, grooms it off their coat. Night after night.

The Store That Smells Like a Warning Label

Walk into a Bath & Body Works. The scent hits you before you’re through the door. People love it. I hear about it constantly: “I just picked up their room spray,” “I got the plug-in refills on sale.” I understand the appeal. It smells like something good is happening.

It isn’t.

What you’re breathing in that store, and bringing home and releasing into the air your pets breathe twenty-four hours a day, is synthetic fragrance. “Fragrance” is a legally protected trade secret in the United States. Companies are not required to disclose what’s in it. A single “fragrance” ingredient can contain dozens of chemicals, including phthalates linked to hormone disruption and VOCs linked to respiratory damage.

Bath & Body Works is not uniquely evil. Victoria’s Secret. Fabuloso. Febreze. Pine-Sol. Tide. These are household names that people trust because they’ve always been there. The conglomerates behind them are not concerned about your chemical exposure. They are concerned about market share. And as long as people keep buying, the formulas will not change.

Here’s the number that should end the argument: the European Union has banned over 1,300 chemicals from cosmetics and personal care products. The United States has banned 11. The EU operates on the precautionary principle. If there’s evidence of harm, the ingredient is out until proven safe. The U.S. operates in reverse. A chemical stays in until harm is proven, a process that takes decades and requires fighting a lobbying apparatus that spends hundreds of millions of dollars making sure it doesn’t happen.

Eleven. Against thirteen hundred.

The products are the same. The chemicals are the same. The difference is that in Europe, they’re not allowed to sell them to you.

“My Pet Seems Fine.”

This is the part where I lose people. And I understand why.

Your dog is energetic. Your cat is eating well. Nobody is at the vet every month. Everything looks normal. So why would you change anything?

Here’s the problem with that logic: cancer doesn’t announce itself at stage one. Kidney disease doesn’t wave a flag before it takes thirty percent of organ function. Thyroid dysfunction, liver stress, chronic inflammation all build silently, over months and years, inside a body that looks perfectly healthy from the outside.

By the time your pet is showing symptoms serious enough to alarm you, the disease is often already established. You’re no longer in prevention mode. You’re in rescue mode, trying to slow something down that had a years-long head start.

Integrative pet health coaching isn’t for sick animals. It’s for the animals who look fine right now, whose owners want to understand what’s actually happening beneath the surface and get ahead of it before it becomes a crisis.

When I work with a client, we look at bloodwork. We look at diet. We look at the home environment: what they’re cleaning with, what’s on the lawn, what’s in the air, what flea and tick products are being used and how often. We build a picture of the full toxic load that animal is carrying. Then we build a plan to reduce it.

That’s what I did with Houston. That’s what I do with every client.

The best time to start is before your pet needs it.

Your Home Detox Checklist

I’ve learned this the long way, across a lot of years and a lot of different environments. The good news: you don’t need much. A few simple things replace most of what lines the shelves. Start with three this week and build from there.

Air

• Remove all synthetic air fresheners: plug-ins, aerosol sprays, Febreze, paraffin candles, synthetic reed diffusers

• Swap to natural beeswax candles, which burn clean without releasing toxic byproducts

• Diffuse lavender essential oil for fragrance, one of the safest options for homes with pets

• Open windows daily; even 15 minutes a day significantly reduces the toxic load building up in your home. Indoor air is measurably more polluted than outdoor air.

• Add a HEPA air purifier in rooms where pets sleep

• Let new furniture, rugs, and curtains off-gas outside before bringing them in; formaldehyde in pressed wood and synthetic fabrics is a documented carcinogen

Bedding

• Your pet’s bed was almost certainly treated with fire retardant chemicals. Swap to certified organic pet bedding made with natural fibers

• The same applies to your own bedding; natural fibers where possible, and wash new bedding before use

• Avoid foam beds with synthetic covers; opt for wool, cotton, or hemp

Cleaning

• Replace ammonia and bleach-based cleaners with Dr. Bronner’s peppermint castile soap; it works on floors, surfaces, and as a yard spray

• White vinegar diluted in water cleans most surfaces without leaving chemical residue

• Vinegar is also your fabric softener; pour it where you’d normally pour Downy

• Skip the Swiffer and disinfecting wipes; the chemicals linger on surfaces pets walk on and lick off their paws

• Read every label. If you can’t pronounce most of what’s in it, it doesn’t belong on a floor a pet walks on

Laundry

• Switch to fragrance-free, plant-based detergent

• White vinegar replaces fabric softener completely; no synthetic fragrance, no chemical softeners on the fabric your pet sleeps against every night

• Eliminate dryer sheets entirely. Swap to wool dryer balls, or saturate a washcloth with white vinegar and toss it in the dryer as a natural fabric softener. It works.

Yard and perimeter

• Eliminate rodenticide entirely. Use mechanical traps or bucket traps, relocate don’t kill if possible. Max died from a neighbor’s rodenticide. Yours could too.

• Replace synthetic pesticides with food-grade diatomaceous earth; wear a mask, use a mister, apply around the perimeter of your home

• Use Dr. Bronner’s peppermint castile soap in a hose-end sprayer over your lawn to deter bad insects

• Plant a living perimeter: mint, rosemary, lemongrass, clover; find what grows in your zone

• Consider replacing grass with clover or mini clover; beneficial to pollinators and requires no pesticides to maintain

• Rinse your pet’s paws after walks if neighbors use lawn chemicals

Pest control on your pet

• Research every flea and tick product you use; many contain chemicals linked to neurological effects in pets

• Wondercide cedarwood and rosemary formulas are what I use and personally recommend

• Talk to your vet before changing any treatment protocol; integrative care works alongside conventional medicine, not against it

Water

• Filter your pet’s drinking water. The PFAS “forever chemicals” Erin Brockovich has spent her career fighting are in municipal water supplies across this country, in measurable concentrations, in cities that look perfectly safe on paper.

• For a budget-friendly gravity filter: the Purewell stainless steel system requires no electricity, no plumbing, and removes chlorine, heavy metals, and sediment

• For broader contaminant reduction including bacteria, viruses, fluoride, and lead: the Alexapure Pro is the stronger investment

• Stainless steel or ceramic bowls only; plastic leaches hormone-disrupting compounds into water, especially in heat

Food

• Read the label on your pet’s food the same way you read yours

• Rotate proteins; variety reduces nutritional gaps and overexposure to any single ingredient source

• Minimize ultra-processed pet food with synthetic preservatives, artificial dyes, and flavoring

• Fresh, whole food where you can; even partial improvements matter

Some links above are affiliate links. I only recommend products I personally use or have vetted.

What Actually Works

This isn’t about being perfect. It’s about being deliberate.

Every swap reduces the load. Every plant you put in the ground instead of a pesticide stake is a choice that compounds over time. Every bottle of Febreze you don’t buy is one less thing your cat is grooming off her fur at 2am.

One study found that certain household chemicals run up to six times higher in dogs than in their owners, in healthy dogs, in ordinary homes, with no known exposure event. Six times. Because they’re on the floor. Because they’re smaller. Because they live inside the invisible cloud of whatever we’ve chosen to keep things clean.

They are carrying our choices.

Max didn’t get the chance to make a different one.

We do.

That’s my birthday wish. Not for me, for them. For Houston, who is currently in the backyard laying in the cedar mulch, earthing, watching the critters in the yard. For Lyra, who had a seizure earlier today and is still fighting hard enough without needing to fight her environment too. For Bella, who already survived one life she didn’t deserve and is building a better one. And for every dog and cat and rabbit and bird living in a home where someone loves them deeply and has no idea what’s in the air freshener they bought at Target last Tuesday.

Start somewhere. Start today. One swap.

They can’t read the label. You can.

A Birthday Offer — Because This Is the Work

Max’s story, Houston’s journey, Lyra’s fight. This is why I built Integrative Pet Parent.

Integrative pet health coaching isn’t about replacing your vet. It’s about looking at the full picture: bloodwork, environment, diet, history, and building a real program for your specific animal. The kind of review that asks why instead of just treating what’s visible.

“I went looking for help after my 12-year-old dog, Handsome Guapo Hank, had a medical emergency where I truly thought it might be the end. His bloodwork came back ‘normal’ and X-rays showed no blockage — but his behavior told a completely different story, and I knew something wasn’t right. After stabilizing him, I was still at a loss. Before working with Jenn, I felt helpless and overwhelmed. This experience changed everything. Jenn shares her expertise in a clear, practical way and shows you a path you can actually integrate into daily life, especially when it comes to nutrition and overall wellness. Small, manageable changes grounded in science. I now feel confident and empowered as an advocate for Hank’s health, even alongside his vet.”

— Caroline, Handsome Guapo Hank’s mom

The full intake is $350. For my birthday week, I’m opening ten spots at $100.

Here’s what’s included: you submit your pet’s intake information and any recent lab work. I review everything. We meet. I build you a personalized program, the same process I used with Houston, the same approach I’ve taken with every client.

Your pet seems fine right now. That’s exactly when to do this.

→ Fill out the intake form here

After I receive your form, I’ll send you a payment link and we’ll get you scheduled.

This offer closes midnight Sunday, April 6th. Ten spots. When they’re gone, they’re gone.

The Voices Worth Following

These are the people who have been sounding this alarm the longest. They are not radicals. They are credentialed professionals who looked at the evidence and told the truth before it was comfortable to do so.

Dr. Karen Becker is widely considered the most well-known integrative veterinarian in the world. Her life’s work is connecting what we feed, what we expose, and what we lose. The story of Max came through her family. That tells you everything about how personally she takes this.

Dr. Marty Goldstein is a Cornell-trained veterinarian, founder of Smith Ridge Veterinary Center, and author of The Nature of Animal Healing and The Spirit of Animal Healing. Four decades of treating chronic and degenerative disease in animals through integrative medicine. His position has never wavered: what we put in and around our pets’ bodies is directly connected to what kills them.

Dr. Judy Morgan is an integrative veterinarian, acupuncturist, food therapist, and author of eight books on natural pet care. After 37 years in clinical practice, her entire focus is education. Her message is unambiguous: minimize chemicals. Start now.

Dr. Andrew Weil is a physician, author, and founder of the University of Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine. His work focuses on human health, but the through-line is the same: the chronic disease epidemic in America is inseparable from our chemical environment. What harms us harms the animals living inside that same environment.

Erin Brockovich is the consumer advocate who helped build one of the most significant environmental contamination cases in American history, with no legal training. She has spent three decades fighting PFAS and industrial chemical contamination in water supplies across the country. Her message has never changed: chemicals shouldn’t enter our bodies before anyone proves they’re safe. We have the system backwards.

The Environmental Working Group produced the landmark Polluted Pets study. Nonpartisan, rigorously sourced, and worth bookmarking: ewg.org.

This is what Integrative Pet Parent is built for, cutting through the noise so you can make better choices for the animals who trust you completely. All content there is always free. Follow along.

Integrative Pet Parent

Prefer to read in the app without the inbox noise? You can switch to app-only notifications in your Substack account settings under Notifications. I want this to work for you however works best.

Sources

• Environmental Working Group, Polluted Pets study: ewg.org

• ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center, Top Toxins of 2024: aspca.org

• PlusChem / FDA: EU bans 1,300+ cosmetic chemicals; U.S. bans 11

• University of Illinois / Journal of the National Cancer Institute: dogs twice as likely to develop lymphoma with 2,4-D herbicide exposure

• Environmental Impact Assessment Review: 133 VOCs found across 25 top-selling air fresheners and laundry detergents; 24 classified toxic or hazardous under U.S. law

• PetMD / Vetster: flea sprays and air fresheners correlated with nasal tumor development in dogs

• NIH / peer-reviewed: pesticide exposure in dogs and cats linked to mammary cancer, lymphoma, bladder cancer, and oral squamous cell carcinoma

Last updated: March 2026. This is a living document — updated periodically as tools change and new ones earn a place on the list.

I didn’t plan to start a pet business. I was surviving.

For years I had operated at the presidential level — advance work, communications, and operations across WH, DHS, HHS, and large corporations. In a world where this kind of work doesn’t always come with a steady paycheck, I had been fortunate. Contracts were reliable. Work was consistent. Then the climate shifted.

The administration in power was not exactly welcoming to those of us who had worked with certain people. Contracts dried up. Opportunities that had always been there simply weren’t anymore. That’s the reality nobody talks about in those circles. Your livelihood is tied to relationships, to who is in power, and to whether the people you’ve served are currently in favor or out of it.

I was also getting sick. Regularly, seriously sick. What appeared to be bad colds, pneumonia at various intervals. We didn’t know yet that it was foreshadowing a much more serious battle. I was fighting things most people around me didn’t know about, while still showing up and doing the work.

And then, at the start of this already difficult chapter, I lost Jessie and Keiki within 48 hours of each other. My dog and my cat. Both of them, suddenly, unexpectedly. The grief of losing an animal is real and it is profound. Losing two at once, while everything else was already on fire, that was its own kind of breaking point.

I was tired. Tired of the temp work, tired of putting on a smile for people who looked right through me, tired of waiting for something to come through. I figured there had to be a better way. So I started pet sitting.

It made sense. I loved animals. I had always worked and been around animals. I needed income. I needed a way to heal my heart. I needed something that kept me moving and kept me close to creatures who asked nothing complicated of me and wouldn’t judge me in return. I signed up for one of the big-name apps that had entered the market and I got to work.

I was good at it. Better than good. I became one of the top providers on the platform, so much so that the app reached out and asked me what my secrets were. I also had to call them and ask them to add a third digit to their pricing field. Their system only allowed you to charge up to $99 at the time. I needed to charge more.

Still, in my mind, it was a bridge. Something to carry me until the next big contract.

Then a difficult client complained, after services had already been rendered. He had asked me to book off the platform to save on fees. I agreed. What I didn’t know was that he was setting me up, planning to file a complaint and get the services for free. The platform never called me. Never asked for my side. They blacklisted me overnight. Took the money. Took the clients I’d built. Took the reviews. Took everything. And refused to hear my side of the story.

I had contact information for some of those clients. I reached out, apologized, and told them exactly what had happened. Every single one of them said the same thing: We’re staying with you. We don’t have any loyalty to this platform. We’ll go where you go.

And there I was. A side hustle that had quietly become something real. A decision in front of me. And absolutely none of the infrastructure in place to support it.

I built the website, the payment platform, the scheduling system, the email list, all of it, in a scramble. That was a good problem to have. I had clients. The rest was just stuff to figure out.

That’s the point of this article.

Your first and primary goal is to get clients. Everything else you can build as you go. I’ve watched too many smart, capable people spend six months perfecting their logo, researching tools, and crossing every T before they open their doors, and then never open them.

Get your first dollar. Then build the machine.

Here’s the machine.

Before you spend a dollar, ask yourself these questions.

Not every business needs the same foundation on day one. But these are the questions worth having answers to, even if you’re still working through some of them.

Legal and structure: Are you operating as a sole proprietor, LLC, or S-corp? Have you filed with your state? Do you have an EIN from the IRS? Do you have a registered agent? Are there state or local business licenses required in your industry? Federal requirements?

Financial: Do you have a dedicated business bank account, completely separate from your personal finances? Do you have a bookkeeper? Do you understand your tax obligations? Do you have a business credit card? Do you have a contract in place before you take on work?

Insurance: At minimum, general liability. If you’re giving advice or professional services, add professional liability, also called errors and omissions. If you’re holding client data, look at cyber liability. Don’t skip this category. I’ve seen businesses get wiped out by situations that a basic policy would have covered.

Your runway: How many months can you operate without income? Three months minimum. Seven is better. More on this below.

Your banking foundation.

Open a dedicated business checking account as soon as your LLC or business entity is set up. Mixing personal and business finances is how you create a tax nightmare, pierce your LLC protection, and make your bookkeeper want to quit. I learned this from watching other people make the mistake. Don’t be that person.

Most default to the big commercial banks. I’d push you to think differently.

If you qualify, Navy Federal Credit Union and Pentagon Federal Credit Union (PenFed) are two of my favorites. Navy Federal serves active duty military, veterans, DoD employees and contractors, and their immediate family and household members. PenFed started with a military focus but has since opened membership to everyone, no affiliation required. Both are member-owned, not-for-profit, and built to serve you rather than extract from you. Check your eligibility before you default to a bank that doesn’t have your interests at heart.

If you want a digital-first option built specifically for startups, look at Mercury or Relay. No fees, clean interfaces, and they integrate well with accounting tools.

On credit: Apply for a business credit card early, even with a small limit. You’re building a credit profile for your business separate from your personal credit. Running expenses through a dedicated card also makes bookkeeping dramatically cleaner.

I’m a fan of American Express. The points programs are genuinely valuable if you use them strategically, and the business cards come with protections and benefits that most people don’t take full advantage of. A great starting point is the Amex Blue Business Cash card — straightforward cash back on business purchases with no annual fee. If you travel regularly for your business, look seriously at the Amex Platinum. The annual fee looks steep until you actually inventory the benefits: airport lounge access, travel credits, hotel status, Global Entry and TSA PreCheck reimbursement, purchase protections, and more. For a business owner who is on the road, it often pays for itself in the first trip. The points also transfer to a wide range of airline and hotel partners, which means smart redemptions can fund travel that would otherwise come straight out of your operating budget. Know what you’re spending, know what you’re earning, and make the card work for you rather than the other way around.

The Oh Crap Account: I operate in themes of seven. Close your books within seven days of month end. And build what I call an Oh Crap Account with seven months of operating reserves. Not three. Seven. This is the money that doesn’t get touched unless everything goes sideways. It’s the difference between a bad quarter and a catastrophe. Build it before you think you need it.

Your domain.

Own your name on the internet before someone else does.

If you plan on speaking, writing, or building any kind of public profile, you need your personal domain. If you have business names, those are separate purchases. If you’re building a service-based business, consider buying the domains around your primary name as well. One strategy worth knowing: having multiple related websites that point back to your main site helps validate your presence and strengthens your search visibility. It’s a long game, but it pays off.

I use Porkbun for domain registration. Straightforward, well-priced, and it doesn’t nickel-and-dime you the way the bigger registrars do. I made the switch after Google sold their entire domain division to Squarespace. Fine, but the pricing went up and I moved on.

Go search your business name right now. If it’s available, buy it today.

While you’re at it, go claim your handle on every social media platform you can think of, even the ones you’re not planning to use yet. Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Facebook, Pinterest, X, Threads, and anywhere else relevant to your industry. Your name is your brand. Reserve it before someone else does. You don’t have to be active everywhere. You just have to own the name.

Your workspace and email.

Once you have a domain, you need a professional email address. Not Gmail. Not Hotmail. Not Yahoo.

Every time I see a business card with a Gmail address on it, I think the same thing: whose company are you advertising? You are literally promoting someone else’s brand every time you hit send. If you want to be taken seriously, your email needs to end in your business name. Period.

Google Workspace handles this cleanly — email, calendar, Drive, Docs, all of it integrated and built for business. It’s what I use and recommend to almost everyone.

The exception: if you’re operating in a space where HIPAA compliance or legal data protection requirements matter, take a hard look at Microsoft 365 with Teams first. The compliance integrations can make it the smarter call. Know your industry before you commit.

Google Drive handles cloud storage and file backup within Workspace. Have a system from day one. Files scattered across your desktop is not a system.

Your website.

You need a home base. Somewhere that belongs to you, not a platform that can change its algorithm, suspend your account, or decide tomorrow that your content doesn’t fit their guidelines.

I learned that lesson operating off a platform that blacklisted me overnight. No call. No explanation. They just shut me down and took everything. Don’t build your business on someone else’s foundation.

Squarespace is one of my favorite options for getting up fast without sacrificing how it looks. Clean templates, easy to manage, no developer required.

I’m also a fan of Ghost for those who want a cleaner, more content-focused platform. If you go that route and want help with setup, I have a programmer I can refer you to.

When you’re ready to build the machine — funnels, automated email sequences, lead management, CRM — Go High Level does all of that and more. It starts at $97 a month for the Starter plan and replaces a stack of other tools. There’s a learning curve. Worth it when you’re ready. If funnels are part of your plan from day one, don’t wait. Start with the base plan and grow into it.

Whichever platform you choose, make sure your website has a privacy policy and terms of service from day one, especially if you’re collecting emails or payments. Termly and Iubenda both handle this affordably and keep you protected.

Your email list.

This is the one asset most new business owners completely overlook. It is one of the most important things you will build.

Social media followers are rented. An email list is owned. Platforms get acquired, algorithms change, accounts get suspended. Your email list goes with you no matter what. I know this from experience, not theory.

I use and recommend Substack. It’s where I publish The Jenn Files, and it gives you something rare: a publishing platform and a list you actually control, in the same place. Your subscribers are yours. That matters more than most people realize until the day a platform decides otherwise.

Start building your list before you think you need it.

Your security.

This one gets skipped. Don’t skip it.

Surfshark VPN is what I use. When you’re running a business from a coffee shop, an airport, or anywhere outside your home network, a VPN is not optional. You are protecting your clients’ data, your financial accounts, and your business. The cost is minimal. The risk of not having it is not.

1Password for password management. Once you have ten tools running you need this. It protects you and it protects your clients. Non-negotiable.

Google Authenticator for two-factor authentication codes. I use 1Password for passwords and passkeys, and Google Authenticator alongside it for an added layer of protection. Set this up early. Every account that matters should have two-factor enabled.

Your operational stack.

These are the tools that determine how money moves in and out of your business.

Invoicing and payments: Can your clients pay you easily? Square and Stripe are the two I’d look at first, depending on whether your business is primarily in-person or online. Ask yourself before you choose: do you need to add gratuity to invoices? Do you need contracts attached? HoneyBook and Dubsado both handle contracts, invoices, and client management in one place for service-based businesses and are worth a serious look.

One thing worth thinking about early: your operational tools will be shaped by your industry. Every industry has platforms built specifically for it. Generic tools work until they don’t. When I was building in the pet services space, we tested several options before landing on Time to Pet. It was built for that business model and it showed immediately. Before you default to a generic solution, research what the leading operators in your industry actually use.

Scheduling: Don’t make people email back and forth to get on your calendar. A booking link solves this in thirty seconds. Google Calendar has one built in and can be configured to collect payment as well. Calendly is another clean option.

Your phone situation: Think carefully about this one. Do you want clients to have your personal mobile number? How available do you want to be? What boundaries do you want to set from day one? If you want separation, Google Voice gives you a dedicated business number that rings your cell for free. SimpleTexting and Podium are more robust as you scale. Go High Level handles this too once you’re on that platform. There’s no universal right answer, but make a conscious choice rather than defaulting into one you’ll regret.

Contracts and e-signatures: Get a contract in place before you do a single dollar of work. Adobe Acrobat is my first choice. HelloSign and DocuSign are both solid options. If you don’t have a contract attorney, use a vetted template from a lawyer who specializes in your industry. A handshake is not a contract. I’ve seen what happens when people skip this step. It isn’t pretty.

Automation: Once you have a few tools running, you’ll want them talking to each other. This is where automation platforms come in. Think of Make (my preference over Zapier) as the connectors between your software. When someone fills out a form on your website, automation can trigger an email response, add them to your CRM, notify you via text, and create a task in your project management tool, all without you touching anything. It sounds complex. It isn’t once you see it in action. Start simple, one or two automations that handle your most repetitive tasks, and build from there.

Your books.

Get this set up before you need it. Not after your first tax season. Before.

Wave is where I’d start. Built for small business, clean, and handles the basics without overwhelming you. I’ve used it. It does the job.

When you’re ready to level up, look at Digits. It’s the AI-native accounting platform built for modern business — automated bookkeeping, real-time insights, invoicing, bill pay, all of it. It starts at $100 a month and it’s more equipped than anything else in the space right now. More money than Wave, but a genuinely different category of capability.

The broader landscape has changed significantly. Xero, FreshBooks, and a growing number of AI-native tools are all worth looking at depending on your volume and complexity. QuickBooks is still out there but it’s not the only answer and it’s not always the right one.

Remember the seven rule: close your books within seven days of month end, every month. Not quarterly. Not when you get around to it. Seven days. It’s the only way to actually know where your business stands.

What matters more than any software is having someone in your corner who knows how to use it. I work with a bookkeeper I trust completely. If you’d like a referral introduction, reach out to me directly.

Do not wait on this. Get a good bookkeeper and a good accountant in place before you think you need them. That relationship is worth more than any software on this list.

Your AI stack.

We live in a different world now. A lean, focused business owner with the right AI tools can move faster and operate smarter than teams twice the size did five years ago. What used to require a full staff is now enabling solopreneurs to build and scale real businesses. The playing field has shifted. A single person with the right tools can now compete with operations ten times their size. That’s not a prediction. It’s already happening.

Claude is my primary AI, where I do my thinking, my writing, and my strategy work. ChatGPT has its place and I maintain a paid membership there as well. If you’re in the Google Workspace ecosystem, Gemini is already baked in. These aren’t gimmicks. They’re part of how modern businesses operate. Get familiar with at least one of them from day one.

Blotato is what I use for social media content repurposing and scheduling. You create once and distribute everywhere. For a business owner without a team, this is the difference between a consistent presence and radio silence.

I also want to specifically mention Sabrina Ramonov. She’s a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree who founded and exited an AI company acquired by Pegasystems, and she now runs Blotato and is on a mission to teach ten million people how to use AI, for free. She has built one of the most practical, accessible libraries of AI education available for small business owners and founders. She also recently launched Women Build AI, a community for women building with artificial intelligence. Start with her free resources at sabrina.dev. If you are serious about learning how AI can work inside your business, she is one of the best people to learn from.

Don’t leave money on the table.

Two tools that require almost no effort and pay you back on purchases you’re already making.

Rakuten gives you cash back at thousands of retailers — stores you’re already buying from. Sign up, shop through the portal, get paid. It’s one of the simplest ways to recover money you’d otherwise leave behind. This is my referral link — we both benefit when you sign up.

Beyond cash back, think about how you’re earning on every dollar your business spends. The right credit card rewards program, the right cash back tools, the right loyalty programs — none of them require extra work. They just require paying attention.

The things nobody puts on the list.

Your working hours, and who knows them. You set the culture of your business from day one, including the culture around your own time. A service business will consume every hour you allow it to. Decide what your boundaries are, then hold them. This is harder than it sounds and more important than most people realize until they’re burned out and wondering what happened.

Your Oh Crap Account. Seven months of operating reserves in an account you do not touch unless you absolutely have to. Not three months. Seven. Build it early. Protect it fiercely. The businesses that survive hard seasons are the ones that planned for them. I’ve seen businesses that looked strong from the outside collapse because they had nothing in reserve when one bad month turned into two.

One more thing.

I built a seven-figure business from a 13-inch laptop, a mobile phone, online tools, and relentless focus and grit. I did it while fighting for my health. I did it while grieving. I did it when the contracts dried up and the options narrowed and the easy path disappeared.

The infrastructure matters. This list is real and worth building.

But none of it means anything without clients.

Get your first one. Then your second. Let the business tell you what it needs. Then build the machine to support it.

The businesses that make it aren’t the ones with the most tools. They’re the ones that moved.

Quick reference: everything in this article.

Banking and credit

• Navy Federal Credit Union — military and family eligibility

• PenFed Credit Union — open to everyone

• Mercury — digital-first business banking

• Relay — digital-first business banking

• American Express Blue Business Cash — cash back, no annual fee (referral link)

• American Express Platinum — travel benefits, lounge access, TSA PreCheck reimbursement

Domain and identity

• Porkbun — domain registration

Workspace and email

• Google Workspace — email, calendar, Drive, Docs (referral link)

• Microsoft 365 with Teams — for HIPAA and legal compliance environments

Website

• Squarespace — fast, clean, no developer required

• Ghost — content-focused platform

• Go High Level — funnels, CRM, email, automation, starts at $97/month (referral link)

• Termly — privacy policy and terms of service

• Iubenda — privacy policy and terms of service

Email list

• Substack — publishing platform and owned email list

Security

• Surfshark VPN — VPN protection (referral link)

• 1Password — password management

• Google Authenticator — two-factor authentication

Payments and invoicing

• Square — in-person and online payments

• Stripe — online payments

• HoneyBook — contracts, invoices, client management

• Dubsado — contracts, invoices, client management

• Time to Pet — pet services industry platform

Scheduling

• Google Calendar — booking links, payment collection

• Calendly — scheduling

Phone and texting

• Google Voice — free business number

• SimpleTexting — business texting

• Podium — messaging and reviews

Contracts and e-signatures

• Adobe Acrobat — e-signatures and contracts

• HelloSign — e-signatures

• DocuSign — e-signatures

Automation

• Make — workflow automation (preferred)

• Zapier — workflow automation

Books and accounting

• Wave — small business accounting (referral link)

• Digits — AI-native accounting, starts at $100/month

• Xero — accounting software

• FreshBooks — accounting software

AI and social

• Claude — primary AI for writing, strategy, and thinking

• ChatGPT — AI assistant

• Gemini — AI integrated with Google Workspace

• Blotato — social media repurposing and scheduling

• Sabrina Ramonov free AI resources — AI education for business owners

• Women Build AI — community for women building with AI

Cash back and rewards

• Rakuten — cash back on everyday purchases (referral link)

• American Express Blue Business Cash — cash back on business purchases (referral link)

Ready to build this out with someone who’s done it? That’s exactly what I do. Let’s talk.

If this landed for you, I’d love to have you in The Jenn Files community. I write about business, money, resilience, and grit — cutting through the noise so you can build something that can’t be broken. Subscribe here.

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Delta just stripped Congress of its perks.

Airport escorts. Expedited TSA clearance. Priority customer service. Gone.

CEO Ed Bastian made it simple: while TSA agents work without paychecks, members of Congress wait in the same line as everyone else. He called it inexcusable that frontline workers were being used as political chips. Then he acted on it.

I’m all for it.

But it got me thinking about something bigger than Delta’s fight with Washington. It got me thinking about the businesses we’re building and the cultures we’re creating inside them.

Who gets the perks? And what does that say about who you are as a leader?

I had a conversation with a business owner this past week who is in the thick of scaling. Smart, driven, doing the work. We got into benefits, and I watched something familiar happen. They started adding up the fees, the administrative complexity, the cost per employee. Health coverage. PTO policy. Team events. And piece by piece, they were talking themselves out of it.

I get it. The numbers are real. The complexity is real.

But here’s what I kept coming back to: the benefits you offer your team are not a line item. They’re a declaration. They tell every person who works for you exactly where they stand.

Are you building a business of haves and have-nots? Or, are you building something that carries people with you?

I’ve been following on TikTok. He’s the President and CEO of Sherman Portfolios, author of The King’s Business, and he teaches seven laws for running a business rooted in biblical wisdom. The first law is excellent.

Purpose beyond profit.

Why does your business exist beyond just making money?

He draws it from Luke 12:15.

“Take care and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”

If your only reason to exist is revenue, he says, you won’t inspire yourself and you won’t inspire anyone around you.

I’ve built and exited a seven-figure business. I know what it looks like to scale something real. And I can tell you: the businesses that last, the teams that stay, the cultures people actually want to be part of, they were never built on profit alone.

They were built on purpose. And purpose shows up in how you treat people when it costs you something.

Delta’s decision cost them something. They gave up a relationship with 535 members of Congress to stand with the people working the security lanes for free. That is purpose beyond profit in action.

Weisner has another law he calls the Hot Dog Stand Effect. The idea is simple: lead in a way that if you went and started a hot dog stand tomorrow, people would follow you. Not because of the title. Not because of what you dangled in front of them. Because of who you are and how you led.

That’s the standard. Not what you gave people when things were good. What you did for them when it was hard.

I live in Palm Beach County. You want to see haves and have-nots in the same zip code? Drive along the water. Ocean villas starting at forty million dollars and up. Then go about two miles inland. You’ll come across neighborhoods where the homes are falling apart. Same county. Same roads. Same sky.

The USA is still the only place in the world where one generation can radically change what the next one inherits. I believe that. I’ve lived it. But you have to be numb not to see what’s right in front of you.

The gap doesn’t close because we ignore it. It closes because people with resources decide to lead with something other than self-interest.

That starts inside your own business. And, it begins with identifying what is your purpose… beyond profit.

So here’s the question I want to leave you with.

If you stripped away the titles, if you pulled back the curtain on how decisions get made inside your company, who gets what, who has access and who doesn’t, what would your team see?

Would they see a leader who built a business of haves and have-nots?

Or would they see someone building something worth belonging to?

Kindness is not soft. Compassion is not weakness. Championing the people around you is not a distraction from building a great business. It is the business.

The numbers matter. They always matter. But the numbers are downstream of the culture. Get the culture right and the numbers follow.

Build something people want to stand in line for. Not because they have to. Because they believe in what you’re building.

If this landed for you, I’d love to have you in The Jenn Files community. I write about business, money, resilience, and grit — cutting through the noise so you can build something that can’t be broken. Subscribe here.

Ready to look at the culture and systems inside your own business? Let’s talk.

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Fear doesn’t show up when the stakes are low.

It shows up right before the most important decisions of your life. The ones that would actually change something. The ones where the cost of being wrong feels unsurvivable.

That’s not a coincidence. That’s neuroscience.

I was sitting in my car outside a townhome in the Virginia/DMV area.

The same car I also used to Uber between dog walks. Michelle McGlade was on speaker phone. Inside that townhome, a little Frenchie was waiting for her afternoon walk. I was about to go get her. But first I had to get through this conversation.

Michelle is one of those people who loves you enough to tell you the truth even when the truth is going to sting. Executive coach. Courage catalyst. Straight shooter. The kind of friend who doesn’t let you stay comfortable in a story that’s keeping you stuck. She wasn’t the first person to say what she was saying. My mom had said it. Others had said it. I was undercharging. I needed to raise my prices.

I was in tears.

Not because I didn't understand the logic. I understood the logic. If I was ever going to scale, if I was going to build a real team, disrupt the status quo of an industry that deserved better, and turn a dream into something that could outlast me, I needed to charge what the business actually required. You cannot build a legitimate payroll that meets state and federal labor laws on prices set for survival. You cannot carry insurance, hire employees, and build infrastructure on rates designed to be accessible. The math doesn't work. It never worked. I just hadn't let myself look at it directly.

Here’s the part that made it hard: I genuinely loved my customers. I valued the trust they placed in me. They let me into their homes, handed me their keys, trusted me with the animals they loved, and even had me over for dinners. Many of them had enormous hearts for their pets and modest budgets to match. I knew that. And if I’m honest, if I could have done it for free, part of me would have.

But that’s not building. That’s giving yourself away.

The fear wasn’t about the numbers. The fear was about the customers. I was afraid I would lose every single one of them.

And underneath that fear was a question I hadn’t fully answered yet: what was I actually building? A side hustle? A job I loved? Or a company. A legacy. A business that could exist without me being the one always holding the leash.

The answer to that question changes everything. It changes your pricing. Your hiring. Your systems. Your ceiling. You cannot build a company on side hustle prices. And you cannot lead what you haven’t first decided to build.

I’ve been reading Victor Marx this week. He’s the founder of All Things Possible Ministries, a man who has operated in some of the most dangerous places on earth. His frame on fear stopped me.

Fear lives in the amygdala. Purpose, mission, and love live in the prefrontal cortex. When fear is triggered, it wants you to avoid, hide, run, or freeze. But when you connect to your purpose, the prefrontal cortex overrides the amygdala. That’s courage. Not the absence of fear. The override.

What hit me reading that: I wasn’t in that parking lot failing to be brave. I was disconnected from my purpose. I was calculating losses instead of building vision. Fear had the room because I hadn’t given my brain anything stronger to work with. Michelle knew it before I did.

You cannot think your way out of fear from inside the fear. You need a reason that is bigger than the risk.

Fear of raising your prices is one of the most common and most expensive fears in business.

It sounds small when you say it out loud. I’m afraid to charge more. It sounds like a confidence problem, a self-worth problem, a mindset problem. Self-help has a lot to say about it. Most of it isn’t useful.

Here’s what it actually is: a fear of losing what you’ve already built.

Which means it’s a fear that only hits people who have built a reputation worth protecting. You don’t fear losing customers you don’t have. You fear losing the ones who showed up, stayed, trusted you, referred their friends. The business you sweated for. The clients you earned one relationship at a time.

That fear is rational. It makes complete sense. And it will keep you exactly where you are forever if you let it run the math.

Because here’s what the fear doesn’t calculate: the cost of staying small.

Every month you don’t raise your prices, you are choosing the business you have over the business you could build. You are choosing to remain the person doing the work instead of the person building the team. You are choosing a ceiling and calling it safety.

I sat in that parking lot longer than I needed to. I cried more than I needed to. I walked the little Frenchie. I drove home. I processed it for days.

And then I did the most intentional thing I knew how to do: I wrote an email.

Not a blast. Not an announcement. A carefully considered note to specific core clients whose trust I had earned and whose opinion I genuinely respected. I told them what I needed to do and why. I explained what building a real team required. I was honest about the math and honest about what I was trying to create.

Every single one of them wrote back. Every one of them affirmed the decision. Not one of them left.

We went on to build a thriving business and a thriving team. We helped change the pet care industry, pushing for greater transparency and elevating the standard of care. We built a business that mattered beyond the work itself.

The fear was wrong. Not because the risk wasn’t real. But because what I was building was worth more than what I was afraid of losing.

Victor references 1 John 4:18:

Perfect love casts out fear.

I’ve turned that verse over more than once since reading it. What it says at a practical level is exactly what the neuroscience says. Fear loses its grip when a stronger force takes the room. Love. Purpose. Mission. The reason you started building in the first place.

You don’t beat fear by eliminating it.

You beat it by giving your brain a better reason to move.

Whatever you are standing at the edge of right now — fear is not a stop sign.

It’s a signal.

The price increase you keep putting off. The business you haven’t launched. The cycle you know needs to break. The leap that wakes you up at 3am. That’s the one. That’s always been the one.

The jump is the only way through.

If this hit home, share it with someone standing at their own edge. And if you’re not already subscribed, join us at The Jenn Files — business, money, resilience, and grit, cutting through the noise so you can build something that can’t be broken.

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My brother and I were watching Tom and Jerry when we should have been doing chores.

If you’re Gen X, you know exactly what that Saturday morning looked like. Carpet. Cereal. Possibly a sofa fort. The kind of cartoons that required nothing from you except to show up.

Mom and dad were out shooting a wedding. Professional photographers. Saturdays were their busiest days, and the deal was always the same: finish the list first. Dusting, vacuuming, dishes, bedrooms. All of it. Then we could enjoy limited tv time, including cartoons.

We thought we’d timed it right. One eye on Tom and Jerry, one ear on the driveway.

We miscalculated.

Mom came home early. Much earlier than normal. She walked into the family room, looked at us on the carpet, looked around at the chores not done, not even started, looked at the tv, and didn’t say a word. She walked over, picked up the large box tv, yanking the plug out of the wall, carried it outside to the garage, and threw it into the trash.

It didn’t just drop in.

It crashed. It shattered. We heard it from the garage door where we were standing, frozen. To a kid watching Tom and Jerry get destroyed in a million pieces — that is borderline traumatic. That is the kind of moment that imprints.

There is a reason Gen X’ers are so tough.

We didn’t have a television for seven years.

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Seven years is a long time when you’re a kid. I want to be precise about that. It wasn’t a week. It wasn’t a month. Seven years.

And here’s what I couldn’t have told you then: it was one of the best things that ever happened to us.

Without the tv, you find out what you actually do. We read. We went outside. We got bored — genuinely, deeply bored — and learned that boredom isn’t a problem to solve. It’s a condition that produces things.

Here’s what it produced in our family: opinions. Loud ones. Everyone in my family talks. Everyone has a viewpoint. We debate, we discuss, we argue, and then we eat dinner and do it again. Friends who came over for the first time would pull me aside afterward and say, “Everyone in your family has something to say about everything.”

Yes. We do.

I think seven years without a tv is a meaningful part of why. When there’s no screen to default to, you learn to articulate what you think. You learn to hold a position, defend it, and sometimes change your mind. Those aren’t soft skills. They compound in ways that take decades to fully see.

I came across a clip this week from The Madison, a new Paramount+ series from Taylor Sheridan, starring Michelle Pfeiffer. In it, a grandmother looks at her grandchildren and says what a lot of people are finally saying out loud: “…what spoiled little bitches we raised…”

The comment section was overwhelmingly one thing: she’s not wrong.

187,000 likes on a reel about a grandmother sitting in the wreckage of her own choices.

Some parents get it early. Some figure it out too late. Some never figure it out at all. The kids pay the price either way.

The difference isn’t love. Every one of those parents loved their kids. The difference is understanding early what a lot of people only see in hindsight. Discomfort is not the enemy. Ease is. Protecting your kids from every consequence doesn’t build them. It hollows them out. And one day you look up and wonder where you went wrong.

My mom picked up the tv on a Saturday morning in our family room and made sure that was never her story. None of us forgot it. I don’t think she did either.

I spent several years living largely out of hotels. Moving between projects, no fixed home base. When I finally had an apartment again and got my things out of storage, what I hadn’t sold in the meantime, there was no tv.

I could have gotten one. I didn’t.

Friends would come over and notice immediately. The wall where it was supposed to be. And then we’d just... talk. For hours. Real conversations. Not two people watching the same screen and commenting on it.

It turns out when you remove what people default to, you find out who they actually are. Yourself included.

When friends teased me about it, I had one answer: Whose convenience is this for?

I went ten years without a television. During a meaningful stretch of that time, I built a seven-figure business from scratch.

I’m not drawing a straight line between those two facts. But I’m not pretending the line doesn’t exist, either.

Building requires a certain kind of focused discomfort. You have to be able to sit with the problem long enough to solve it. Every time you reach for distraction before you’ve earned it, you’re borrowing against concentration you don’t get back.

The tv that shattered in our trash can on a Saturday morning taught me that before I had words for it. My mom wasn’t making a statement about television. She was making a statement about what we were there to do.

I’ve been thinking about this since reading a piece by Isabelle over at Wealthy Women Guide. She puts into words what doesn’t get said plainly enough:

There are people who pay monthly. And there are people who get paid monthly. The difference between those two groups isn’t income. It’s what they’ve decided to own.

Look at your monthly expenses. Not to judge them. Just to see them clearly.

Amazon Prime. Apple TV. YouTube TV. Netflix. Then the add-ons — HBO, Paramount, Disney, whatever came bundled with something else six months ago. That’s before we’ve touched the food delivery subscriptions. Add it up. Most people haven’t. Most people would be surprised if they did.

Now ask the question Isabelle is asking: what do you actually own?

Not access. Ownership.

Access feels like enough until it doesn’t. Until the platform changes the terms. Until the price goes up. Until the algorithm decides you’re not worth showing anymore. Access is rented. Ownership holds.

I go through this with people in our 22 Days to Financial Freedom course. The subscriptions are always there. Line items people set up and forgot. And the pattern underneath them is almost always the same: spending on things that fill time instead of build it.

There’s a version of minimalism that’s about aesthetics. White walls, fewer clothes, capsule wardrobes. That’s not what I’m talking about.

I’m talking about a question you ask before every recurring expense, before every hour, before every habit:

Is this building my life, or just filling it?

When I moved to Florida, I finally bought a tv. I was in and out of the hospital more than I’d like to say, and sometimes you just need to lie on the sofa and watch something that asks nothing from you.

I gave myself that. No apology for it.

But here’s what ten years without one taught me: I knew exactly what I was buying it for. Not habit. Not background noise. Not because everyone else had one. I bought it because I had earned the right to choose it, and I knew the difference between choosing and defaulting.

That distinction matters more than people realize. Going without for a stretch of time doesn’t just save money or produce focus. It recalibrates your relationship with the thing itself. You stop consuming by default. You start consuming by decision. Those are not the same life.

Even now, tv on during the day is a sore spot. My parents know it. When I’m traveling for advance work or speaking, I can go an entire hotel stay without turning it on once. That used to feel like discipline. Now it just feels like what I do.

The Saturday morning when my mom threw that television into the trash — when my brother and I heard it shatter from the doorway — I thought it was the worst thing that had ever happened to me.

I was wrong about that. I was wrong about a lot of things that turned out to be the making of me.

She wasn’t punishing us. She was building us. There’s a difference, and most people don’t understand it until they’re standing on the other side of something hard, looking back.

Whose convenience is it for?

I’m still asking. Forty years later, it’s still the right question.

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If you read Part I, you know the numbers.

The premiums that consume 94% of a $63,000 income. The friend rationing transplant medication. The MRI I’ve been waiting three months for. The gap between what Congress pays and what the rest of us pay.

Now, let’s follow the money that built those numbers.

Before anything else, I want to say this clearly:

I am not opposed to Medicaid reform. The abuse is real. I have seen it with my own eyes. Work requirements are not an unreasonable ask. Accountability is not cruel.

What I’m opposed to is a system that punishes the people who built something, paid their taxes, played by the rules, and still can’t afford to get sick. Americans who did everything right — bearing the full weight of a broken structure while the people responsible for fixing it are spending their days on the phone raising money for their next campaign.

Small businesses employ nearly half of the American workforce. They don’t have HR departments negotiating group rates. They don’t have taxpayer-subsidized Platinum plans. They have a browser window, a healthcare.gov login, and a number that doesn’t work.

The math does not math.

That’s the story. Let’s tell it.

The Abuse Is Real. I’ve Seen It.

I’m going to tell you three stories. No names. These are real first hand accounts.

I had a friend in DC, originally from Africa. She came over on a student visa, did one semester of school, then overstayed. Used an asylum claim to eventually get citizenship. When her father got sick, he came to the United States with no health insurance and simply went to the emergency room every time he needed care. That’s how it works. The ER cannot turn you away. He qualified for emergency Medicaid, which opened the door to broader benefits.

I watched it happen.

In Florida, I had a service provider, originally from France. From outward appearances, a thriving small business. Routinely booked, her own salon space, seemingly doing well. Two kids. She knew exactly how to keep her reported income low enough to qualify for Medicaid and subsidized private school for her children. I know because I overheard her on the phone one day making exactly that claim: that she had very little income and couldn’t work much. She also flies back to France twice a year to visit family. She hung up and looked right at me, as though we were in on it together, and said she had to make sure certain things were reported a specific way to keep her subsidies in place.

That was my last appointment.

I’m not telling these stories to vilify immigrants. My own mother is a post-war immigrant from Sweden who came to this country legally with nothing and built a life. The issue is not where someone is from. The issue is a system with enough gaps in it that people, from multiple countries, on multiple visa types, at multiple income levels, can find their way through those gaps while the people who actually need the program get caught in the crossfire.

The third story is closer to home.

She worked for me briefly at my pet services company. Critical thinking wasn’t her strong suit, and she wasn’t there because she wanted to grow. She needed a job. Single mom. Young. No baby daddy around. A baby depending on her.

She knew the game though. She didn’t need anyone to explain the system to her. She’d grown up inside it. Her mother had run the same playbook. Now it was her turn.

She showed up late. Response time was a problem. She had a baby and we were going to fight for her anyway.

Then one day she just didn’t show. No call. No warning. Nothing.

When she resurfaced late that afternoon, I asked where she’d been. She told me she had a bad tooth infection and had gone to the ER.

Why the ER?

She explained it like it was obvious: if she went to a dentist, she’d have to pay money. If she went to the ER, they’d treat her for free and give her pain medication.

She wasn’t wrong. That’s exactly how it works.

I wanted to scream, not at her, but at what built her. She didn’t invent that workaround. She inherited it. And somewhere down the line, her child would too.

That’s what a system looks like when it has failed long enough to become normal.

The fraud isn’t anecdotal. Former Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg documented it in his book Fighting the Florida Shuffle: The Inside Story of Corruption in the Drug Treatment Industry and How One Community Found the Solution. How profit-driven operators lure vulnerable people into substandard rehab facilities, billing insurance until the patient leaves in an ambulance or a body bag. Patient brokering. Illegal kickbacks. Well-intentioned policies twisted into incentives for relapse over recovery. Aronberg’s task force made over 120 arrests and helped cut opioid deaths in Palm Beach County by 17%. The fraud was real. It was documented. It was prosecuted. And it still took years to claw back.

That’s what accountability looks like when someone actually does the work.

The fraud exists at every level. From a dollar here and there all the way up to billions. From individuals gaming eligibility to corporations overbilling Medicare by hundreds of millions.

And here is the question I keep coming back to:

How in the world can we continue to take care of the rest of the world and everyone who comes here if we can’t even take care of our own people first?

That is not a radical question. It is the obvious one.

The Job They’re Actually Doing

Members of Congress earn $174,000 a year. Taxpayer funded. To represent you.

Serve one term. Serve part of one term. Serve thirty years. It doesn’t matter. When they leave, they are paid for the rest of their life. A pension funded by the same taxpayers they stopped representing the moment they walked out the door.

Here is how they actually spend their time.

New members of Congress are handed a model daily schedule. Of a 9 to 10 hour workday, only 2 hours are allocated to legislative work. The actual job. The rest is fundraising. Call time. Donor outreach. Reelection.

The political parties expect members to spend 30 hours per week in party call centers located across the street from the Capitol. Buildings that exist specifically for this purpose, because it is illegal to fundraise from a congressional office.

They built separate buildings. Because the fundraising is so constant, so expected, and so central to the job that it needed its own real estate.

“Members of Congress spend too much time raising money and not enough time doing their job.” — Former Florida Congressman David Jolly

“Fundraising quotas are discouraging good people from running for office.” — Former Minnesota Congressman Rick Nolan

These are not outside critics. These are people who lived inside it.

In the 118th Congress, House members who ran for reelection in 2024 collectively raised $1.2 billion between January 2023 and December 2024. A House member in a competitive race raised a median of $7.9 million, roughly $10,900 per day.

Every hour spent raising that money is an hour not spent on healthcare policy. Not spent on the cost of insurance. Not spent on the small businesses carrying the full weight of a system nobody in Washington has been incentivized to fix.

An intelligence analyst I follow posted this before taking it down. I saved it because it said what a lot of people are feeling but won’t say out loud.

“I voted for no wars, mass deportations of the millions of illegals allowed to cross during the Biden administration, a better economy, and draining the swamp. The list was short. Yet every single person I had faith in has been blatantly bought or blackmailed. Fck you all. I’m not sitting idly by while you ruin our country and gaslight us. We aren’t dumb like you apparently think we are. Get ready.”

She took it down. That tells you something too.

That is not a fringe position. That is millions of Americans right now.

And the data explains exactly why she feels that way.

Who’s Paying Them

In the 2023–2024 election cycle, pharmaceutical and health product companies gave $26.4 million to Democrats and $16.1 million to Republicans. Democrats received noticeably more. At least 72 of the 100 sitting U.S. senators received at least $10,000 from the industry. Twelve received over $100,000. Seven were Democrats. Five were Republicans.

Both parties. Every time.

Top Senate recipients — Democrats, 2024:

• Bob Casey (D-PA): $520,776

• Jon Tester (D-MT): $401,885

• Sherrod Brown (D-OH): $372,314

• Jacky Rosen (D-NV): $266,422

• Ruben Gallego (D-AZ): $244,135

• Tim Kaine (D-VA): $200,824

• Adam Schiff (D-CA): $196,635

Top Senate recipients — Republicans, 2024:

• Marsha Blackburn (R-TN): $316,656

• Bill Cassidy (R-LA): $290,375

• John Barrasso (R-WY): $204,761

• Thom Tillis (R-NC): $131,955

• Ted Cruz (R-TX): $101,621

Source: OpenSecrets, FEC data released February 2025.

Now look at the House.

Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-KY) chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee. It is the most powerful position in Congress for healthcare regulation. His committee has direct jurisdiction over Medicaid, Medicare, and prescription drug safety.

In 2024, he received $534,102 from pharmaceutical and health product industries. Over his career, he has collected over $1.8 million from those same industries, more than any other currently serving Republican in the House.

When he became committee chair in January 2025, his PAC fundraising more than tripled. Around 100 PACs that had never written him a check before became donors the moment he got the chairmanship.

The man overseeing healthcare regulation in Congress is the single biggest recipient of healthcare industry money in the House.

Read that once more.

You can verify it yourself: Brett Guthrie — 2024 Campaign Finance Summary

The Revolving Door

Of the 51 lobbyists working for America’s Health Insurance Plans in 2024, 31 had previously held government jobs.

Government employees one year. Industry lobbyists the next. Writing the rules, then getting paid to work around them.

This is legal. Every bit of it. That’s the part that should keep you up at night.

The insurance industry didn’t buy Congress with illegal bribes. It did something far more effective. It built relationships over decades. Funded campaigns. Placed former employees in regulatory positions. Hired former regulators as lobbyists. Created a permanent, professional, well-funded operation that never stops running, whether Congress is in session or not.

By the time a vote happens, the outcome has often already been shaped. Not in the chamber. Not on the floor. In a dinner. A donor call. A hire made two years earlier.

Read that again.

By the time a vote happens, the outcome has often already been shaped.

The vote is the last step. Not the first.

The Money Machine. Both Sides.

The separate buildings aren’t the real problem. They’re the symptom.

The real problem is what happens once money enters the system. Direct donations are only the beginning. From there it flows through PACs, Super PACs, 501(c)(4) dark money organizations, leadership PACs used as personal expense accounts, and nonprofit structures where affiliated entities share an office while money cycles between them with minimal disclosure required.

This is not a Republican problem or a Democratic problem. It is a system problem. And both parties have built the same infrastructure.

On the left: ActBlue processed $3.8 billion in the 2023–2024 election cycle. Its nonprofit arms paid out $407 million in a single year, reported as one line item. No breakdown. No list of recipients. Hundreds of millions of dollars moved through a tax-exempt structure with no public disclosure of where it ultimately landed.

On the right: WinRed is the direct mirror. Since 2019 it has processed over $2.8 billion for Republican candidates and committees. Same structure. Same lack of transparency. Same result.

Neither one is required to tell you where the money actually goes.

The rules were written by the people benefiting from them. That is why they haven’t changed.

The Vote

On July 4, 2025, Independence Day, President Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act into law.

The House passed it 218 to 214. The Senate passed it 51 to 50, with Vice President JD Vance casting the tiebreaking vote. Only two Republicans in the House voted against it. In the Senate, only Susan Collins of Maine, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, and Rand Paul of Kentucky crossed their party.

One vote. That was the margin.

Who Actually Loses

Total U.S. healthcare spending in 2024 was $5.3 trillion. Medicaid alone accounted for $931.7 billion of that. The federal government paid 64.7% of the Medicaid share. It makes up 30% of the average state budget, the single largest category of state spending after K-12 education.

The top five states by total Medicaid spending: California, New York, Texas, Pennsylvania, and Florida. The five most populous states in the country. This is not a small program serving a niche population. It is the backbone of healthcare coverage for one in five Americans.

The system costs too much. That is not in dispute.

Let me be clear about where I stand.

Americans are among the most generous people on earth. We give. We volunteer. We build nonprofits and community organizations and faith-based programs that serve people in need, all over the world and right here at home. That generosity is real and it matters.

But the federal government’s first obligation is to American citizens. The people who were born here, built here, paid into the system here, and need it to be there when life falls apart.

Nonprofits exist for a reason. Private charity exists for a reason. Those are the right vehicles for serving people who come here seeking a better life. The federal benefits system is not that vehicle. It was never designed to be.

What we have right now is a system so riddled with fraud and abuse that it is failing the very people it was built to protect. Pathways designed for emergency care used as planned delivery strategies to establish eligibility. Emergency rooms used as primary care because there is no cost to showing up. Businesses run in cash while the owner qualifies for subsidies. Asylum pathways used as benefit pipelines.

Legal immigrants should have a path. But that path runs through citizenship, not through the subsidy system on arrival. That is not cruelty. That is a boundary. Every functioning country has one.

The groups that should never be touched: children. Pregnant women who are citizens. Veterans. Americans who built something, paid into the system, and need it to be there when life goes sideways.

The abuse is real. I’ve seen it firsthand — and it isn’t limited to one tax bracket. People who know exactly how to report income, structure their lives, and work the system while collecting benefits they were never intended to receive. The French salon owner wasn’t an anomaly. She was just the one who said the quiet part out loud to my face.

People with disabilities and seniors over 65 represent 20% of Medicaid enrollees but account for 51% of program spending. If Congress was serious about reform, that’s where the conversation would start — fixing the structure that allows the abuse, and protecting the people the program was actually built for.

Instead they cut the working poor. The people least equipped to fight back and, not coincidentally, the least likely to write a check to a reelection campaign.

That’s not reform. That’s convenience dressed up as policy.

The system needs to be rebuilt. What it does not need is to be blown up without anything viable to replace it. Right now that is exactly what is happening. The explosion without the safety net.

This is not a secret. Everyone sees it. Nobody with the power to fix it does.

And when Congress finally acts, the veterans lose coverage. The disabled lose coverage. The American children lose coverage.

The fraud goes untouched. The citizens bear the cost.

When hundreds of millions of dollars flow from lobbyists into the campaigns of the people writing the rules, the voices that actually need to be heard get lost. The constituent who can’t afford her prescription. The veteran waiting months for care. The small business owner paying full freight for coverage that gets worse every year and can't afford to lose a single employee to a system that was never designed to include her.

They don’t have a PAC. They don’t have a lobbying firm. They have a vote, and they’re starting to figure out that even that has been managed.

That is not reform. That is the system working exactly as designed, for everyone except the people funding it.

The Math Nobody Runs

A lot of people ask a version of the same question. I’ve asked it myself.

Why couldn’t we just do a flat tax for healthcare? Everyone pays 3%. Simple. Fair. Done.

It’s a reasonable instinct. Here’s the honest math.

A 3% flat tax on all U.S. personal income, wages, investments, everything, raises approximately $720 billion. Medicaid alone cost $931 billion in 2024. Medicare costs roughly another trillion on top of that. Total national healthcare spending is $5.3 trillion.

Three percent doesn’t cover it. You’d need somewhere between 6 and 7 percent just to cover Medicaid and Medicare as they exist today. To cover everything, you’re looking at closer to 22 percent.

But here’s what nobody tells you: the reason the math looks that bad is because the system itself is broken. The United States spends two to three times what other developed countries spend per person and gets worse outcomes. The problem isn’t the tax rate. The problem is what we’re funding.

Fix the cost structure first. Eliminate the fraud. Remove the profit margin from the middlemen. Then run the math again. It looks different.

That is what Part III is about.

Before you scroll, hit the like button and comment.

This is how you can help me and help others find me.

Leave a comment

What You Can Do Right Now

Look up your representative at opensecrets.org. Search their name. Look at the top industries funding their campaigns. Look at how they voted on the One Big Beautiful Bill. Put those two side by side. You don’t need a political science degree to read what you see.

Call them. Not email. Call. Congressional offices track call volume. It registers in a way emails don’t. Tell them you know what they were paid and what they voted for. Tell them you are paying attention.

Vote in every election. Not just the presidential ones. The people making healthcare decisions at the state level run in off-cycle elections with very low turnout. Low turnout means your vote counts more. Use it.

Talk about what you pay. Post your number. Share Part I. Share this one. Both.

Run the search. Go to stridehealth.com. Enter your real information. No subsidies. Screenshot what comes back. Then enter zip code 20001, Capitol Hill. Screenshot that too. Share both. That is the story in two images.

The system is not broken.

It is working exactly as designed. For the people funding the campaigns of the people writing the rules.

We want a system that works for legal citizens who built something, paid into it, and need it to be there when life goes sideways.

That is not too much to ask.

Part III is the rebuild. Three real options. Real tradeoffs. What would actually fix this and what it would cost.

That is next.

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Sources:

Pharma/health gave $26.4M to Democrats, $16.1M to Republicans in 2024: Deseret News / OpenSecrets, January 2025

72 of 100 senators received pharma/health PAC money 2024, individual amounts: OpenSecrets, FEC data released February 2025

Brett Guthrie — $534,102 in 2024 (verified OpenSecrets screenshot), $1.8M career total, PAC fundraising tripled after chairmanship, 100 new PAC donors: OpenSecrets / Read Sludge / Kentucky Lantern, December 2024 – October 2025

America’s Health Insurance Plans — 31 of 51 lobbyists former government employees: OpenSecrets.org

Congressional model daily schedule, 2 hours legislation, rest fundraising: U.S. Term Limits, Issue One, Georgetown Government Affairs Institute

30 hours/week fundraising: Issue One Congressional Fundraising Treadmill, 2021–2024

$1.2 billion raised by House members 2023–2024, median $7.9M in competitive races: Issue One, 118th Congress Fundraising Treadmill, February 2025

ActBlue — $3.8 billion raised 2023–2024 cycle: OpenSecrets / FEC

ActBlue nonprofit arms — $407 million paid out in 2020 as single line item, no recipient disclosure: Capital Research Center

WinRed — $2.8 billion processed since 2019, FEC complaint filed by Campaign Legal Center: Campaign Legal Center, 2022

One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed July 4, 2025 — House 218-214, Senate 51-50: Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, July 2025

Total Medicaid spending 2024 — $908.8 billion, 64.7% federal: Health Management Associates / CMS, October 2025

Medicaid 30% of state budgets, single largest spending category: Peter G. Peterson Foundation, July 2025

CBO — 10.9–11.8 million lose coverage, $1 trillion in cuts: Congressional Budget Office, 2025

4.8 million lose coverage due to work reporting requirements: Georgetown University Center for Children and Families, June 2025

Arkansas work requirements — 18,000 lost coverage due to paperwork failures: KFF / CBO

People with disabilities and elderly — 20% of enrollees, 51% of spending: MACPAC MACStats 2024 Data Book

GAO — 70% of Medicaid recipients work 35+ hours/week: U.S. Government Accountability Office

Dave Aronberg, Fighting the Florida Shuffle — 120+ arrests, 17% reduction in opioid deaths: Amazon / Florida Politics, June–July 2025

Congressional health benefits — 72–75% taxpayer subsidized: OPM, Congress.gov

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Chris is one of the sharpest financial minds I know. Pro-snowboarder turned money mogul, founder of The Money School, builder of 19 companies. He’s spent his career teaching people how money actually works. He doesn’t alarm easily.

This week, he alarmed.

Debt. Deficit. The dollar. Oil. The bond market doing things that shouldn’t make sense, but make complete sense once you understand what’s underneath them.

He connected dots that most people aren’t even looking at, and he landed here: we are probably heading into an economic slowdown. Late 2026, early 2027, his best guess.

I watched it twice.

And then I went back to the conversations I’d been having all week with the business owners I coach.

Here’s what struck me.

Every single one of them is building. In spite of everything. Not because they’re ignoring the signals. They see the same headlines you see. They feel the same tightening. They’re watching their dollars stretch thinner than they did five or six years ago.

And let’s be honest about what those years were.

COVID hit small businesses like a wrecking ball. I know because I lived it. I had a pet services company. We were classified as essential services, which sounds like protection until you watch 90% of your business disappear almost overnight. Essential meant nothing when nobody was going anywhere. I watched people who had built something real. Real customers, real revenue, real lives. Just gone. Not because they weren’t good enough. Because the ground disappeared beneath them. Some called it quits. Some said they just couldn’t. I understood every one of them. I was fighting for my own business at the same time.

Then we spent years in a policy environment that made everything harder. Inflation. Regulations. Taxes. A cost of doing business that kept climbing while margins stayed flat. It was a grind that didn’t let up.

I’m cautiously more optimistic now. But concerned. The signals Chris is pointing to are real, and this is not the time to assume someone else is managing your future.

But here’s what I keep coming back to.

The people I’m talking to this week? They’re building anyway.

That’s not recklessness. That’s pattern recognition.

Because here is what history keeps trying to tell us, and what we keep forgetting every time the headlines get loud:

Half of all Fortune 500 companies were created during a recession or economic crisis.

Half.

Disney. Microsoft. Airbnb. Slack. Publix. Revlon. FedEx. Charles Schwab. Goldman Sachs. Burger King. Trader Joe’s.

And the ones you’ve never heard of. Vernon Rudolph started Krispy Kreme during the 1937 recession. He had a secret donut recipe, no money, and a borrowed car he used as a delivery rack. Tim Chen got laid off from his hedge fund job in 2008 and launched NerdWallet from his apartment because he couldn’t find honest financial information online.

Not built in spite of the chaos. Built inside it.

George Jenkins quit his job in 1930 — the year after the market crashed — and started what became Publix. He didn’t wait for conditions to improve. He saw empty storefronts and a population that still needed to eat, and he built.

Reed Hastings founded Netflix during an economic slowdown. Brian Chesky pitched Airbnb to fifteen investors before he got his first yes. Eight said no. Seven didn't bother to respond. He built anyway.

This is a pattern. And patterns tell you something.

When things contract, the noise clears. The people who were building on borrowed confidence stop. They freeze. They wait.

The builders move.

So here’s the question nobody’s asking out loud.

While the unemployment numbers climb. While the layoffs keep hitting. While your company quietly starts talking about “restructuring” in meetings that didn’t used to happen.

What are you doing to change your situation?

Not tomorrow. Not if they let you go. Now. While you still have a paycheck, still have leverage, still have options.

And before you tell me that AI is going to take your job anyway. Let’s talk about that for a second.

Maybe it will. Maybe it already is, in some form.

But AI is also the great equalizer for anyone willing to use it. It is not the end of human expertise. It is a tool that makes one person capable of doing what used to take a team. The question isn’t whether AI changes the game. It’s whether you’re going to be someone who uses it, or someone who gets left behind waiting for someone else to decide.

The people who are scared of AI are the ones who have one income stream and no plan B.

The average millionaire has seven different income streams.

Seven.

If you have one — and that one is your job — you are already operating with your hands tied behind your back. You’re one decision by someone else away from starting over.

That’s not a judgment. That’s the math. And the math doesn’t care how good you are at your job.

Subscribe to keep reading. The next part is the one that actually changes what you do on Monday.

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I had a call this week that ended with a proposal.

The person on the other end wanted my help building their business. Smart, driven, moving fast. Their offer: do the work, and get paid when they’re successful.

I’ve heard this before. It always comes from someone who has never had to build anything from scratch. Someone who doesn’t yet understand that expertise isn’t a gamble you make on someone else’s timeline.

I passed.

I’m not telling that story to be harsh. I’m telling it because it’s a perfect picture of where many people are right now. Waiting for someone else to create the opportunity. Waiting for the right conditions. Waiting to be validated before they move.

The economy doesn’t wait. And neither do the people who come out of a downturn ahead of where they started.

When I was building a pet services company, I knew my numbers.

Not the annual revenue goal. Not the five-year vision. The 22-day number. The 30-day number. The exact amount I needed to survive and make it to the next month.

And I did what it took to hit it.

I drove Uber. Early morning shifts, usually starting around 4 or 4:30am, chasing airport runs. Then I’d walk and care for dogs through the day. Then I’d catch the evening rush. Then back to dogs for evening walks. Maybe a few more Uber runs, and then grab some sleep before I started again. Rinse and repeat.

Sleep was limited. Very limited. The hustle was real. The 22 and 30 day numbers weren’t a framework. They were the difference between keeping a roof over my head and losing everything.

It was not a cake walk. I’m not going to tell you it was.

But, I’m going to tell you this: there is still tremendous opportunity in this country. Not in spite of the chaos. Inside it.

You just have to start.

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This is how you can help me, and help others find me.

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I want to tell you about my mom.

She’s 80 years old. A post-war immigrant, born in Sweden, who came to this country legally with her family and nothing else. They built a life. Built businesses. Raised a family. Did it the hard way because that was the only way available to them.

She is, to everyone who knows her, their personal Martha Stewart. The woman can take twenty dollars and feed a family like she’s running a five-star kitchen.

This year, she’s taking computer classes. She’s working on her memoir. And we’re building her a column on everyday nutrition. Real food, real budgets, real life. She has decades of knowledge that people need and she’s not waiting for someone to give her permission to share it.

She’s 80.

If she’s building, what’s your excuse?

Here’s the thing about a line I keep coming back to. Not endorsing the source, just the idea: look at everything you know. Everything you can do. Someone out there needs exactly that. Not a version of it. Not a polished, perfected, fully-funded version of it. What you already know, right now.

Your expertise is not a free sample. It is the asset.

I’m on a mission to bring back Main Street. Current day style.

Not the nostalgia version. The real one, where people build businesses that serve their communities, create their own income, and stop waiting for a corporation to decide their worth.

There are a lot of us on this mission. And small business is how it happens.

Here’s what I’m telling everyone I work with right now.

Create before you need to. The best time to build a second income stream was before the layoffs started. The second best time is right now, while you still have the stability of a job to build from. Use that runway. Don’t wait until the decision gets made for you.

Know your number. Chris is right that liquidity is the real problem. Not rates, liquidity. That’s true at the macro level and it’s true for you personally. What do you need to survive the next 22 days? The next 30? If you don’t know that number, that’s where you start. Everything else comes after.

Stop depending on one source. One job. One client. One income stream. That’s not stability. That’s a single point of exposure. The people who come out of what’s coming ahead of where they started will be the ones who built multiple ways to generate income before they needed them.

Watch what’s actually happening, not what gets reported. Chris says follow the bond market, not the headline. By the time it’s a headline, it’s already happened. The signals are already there. Act on them.

If you have an idea, even a rough one, and you want to run a scenario by someone who has actually built from nothing, schedule a call.

Book a call here

Not a pitch. Not a package. Just a conversation with someone who has been at zero, built to seven figures, and knows what the path between them actually looks like.

The economy does what it does. It always has.

Your job is to build something it can’t break.

Built from nothing. Rebuilt from less.

If this landed, share it.

The people in your life who need to read this won’t find it on their own. Forward it. Post it. Drop it in a group chat.

Main Street doesn’t come back without the people who are willing to build it.

Share

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Sources & Further Reading:

Chris Naugle — LinkedIn | The Money School

Half of Fortune 500 companies founded during recessions — Startups Magazine

U.S. Unemployment Rate — 20-year historical data, Macrotrends

Unemployment Rate Projections 2026–2028 — CBO (January 2026), Federal Reserve (December 2025), OMB (August 2025)

A dear friend. We’ve both been navigating a lot. His mother is in the final chapter of her life. Alzheimer’s. He made the decision to walk away from a job that required in-office time so he could be present for this chapter. No hesitation. He just did it.

We talked about what it takes to keep showing up when everything is hard.

He said it simply: You have to keep doing your best. You have to keep showing up.

This week has been full of conversations like that one.

I had a call this week with a woman who has spent her career in medicine. Years in neuro and ortho. Helping people overcome one of the most debilitating things a human being can face. Pain. Not the kind you push through in a day. The kind that rewires you. The kind that makes you forget who you were before it.

She works at the intersection of neuroplasticity and pain. How the body memorizes pain channels, and how to retrain them. Moving people from feeling trapped by something that controls their every move, to becoming powerful over it. Her entire focus is forward motion.

We’re working on something together that I’ll share when the time is right. But that conversation stayed with me long after we hung up.

There’s a through line in all of it. The friend showing up for his mother. The woman who has dedicated her life to helping people overcome pain. What I’ve lived through in my own hard chapters.

Here’s what I want you to understand about resilience and grit. You are not born with them. You develop them. You build them in the hard chapters — the ones you didn’t see coming, the ones you weren’t sure you’d survive, the ones that required you to find something in yourself you didn’t know was there.

And the way you build them is not pretty. In spite of what social media might lead you to believe — the botox, the fillers, the hair extensions — no knock against any of it. But none of it will overcome your situation. None of it will overcome the pain. The hard chapters require something that can’t be injected or applied.

You have to get mad. You have to fight. Hit something, preferably a punching bag. Scream if you need to. Cry if you need to. Feel the full, ugly weight of it. But don’t stay there.

You then have to get up.

That is not toxic positivity. That is not a LinkedIn post about pivoting. That is the actual mechanics of survival.

Then — and this is where it turns — you choose.

“The greatest power that a person possesses is the power to choose.”

— Keith Harrell

You look at where you are. You reverse engineer it. What needs to change. Where you need to go. What has to happen next. And then you execute. One step. Then the next. You start making progress. You start moving forward. And eventually — not all at once, not on a timeline you get to pick — you get to the other side.

And from the other side, you can look back. Breathe. And sometimes, if you’re lucky, you can laugh at what you were navigating.

That’s when you know the grit took hold.

There is not one person who ever wrote a book that starts with: today I woke up and my life is amazing, and next week and five years and ten years from now it’s even more amazing. The best books — the best chapters of anyone’s life — are where they found strength when they didn’t know how they were going to survive. How they were going to overcome. How they were just going to be.

That is resilience and grit at its finest.

You fight. And then you find the laugh. Because the laugh is what carries you forward when nothing else will.

I remember one of my many experiences in the ER. A systemic infection. Moving toward vital organs. The medical team’s plan to help it drain meant creating a surgical track — adjacent to the rectum — so gravity and the body could do what the body does.

Do you know what that means in practice?

Let me enlighten you. After the surgical procedure to create this track, you have weeks of draining and healing. And sitting down in a normal chair is not a comfortable position.

Nursing staff. Daily. Cleaning a surgical track in a place that does not want to be disturbed. Ever.

My mother — an RN, medically trained, a fierce and talented woman — was offered the opportunity to learn the procedure so she could do it herself.

She said no thank you.

We had flown her out to help care for me, as we had done many times. She was in the other room of my one-bedroom apartment. Praying. While I cried and pleaded and made my feelings loudly and clearly known to God, the nurse, and anyone else within earshot.

That is a level of pain that makes you want to cry, scream, and punch someone. In that order.

And we laugh about it now. Hard. The image of her on the other side of that wall, hands folded to her face, while I was decidedly not holding it together. It is one of the funniest, most human memories I have from that particular chapter.

But first you have to get through it.

First you fight.

Keith Harrell understood this better than almost anyone I’ve ever known.

I met him at a conference where he gave the keynote. He was impossible to miss. 6’7”, with an energy that filled every room before he opened his mouth. We connected months later. Made a point to get together whenever he was in town. Dinners. Conversations that went longer than planned. The kind of friendship where time doesn’t feel like it’s passing.

He was a dear friend. I love and miss him.

If you weren’t on the speakers bureau circuit in the ‘90s and early 2000s, you may not know his name. You should.

Keith was known as “Dr. Attitude” — and he earned it. IBM. Microsoft. Coca-Cola. Fortune 500 stages across the country. The Wall Street Journal called him “A Star with Attitude.” The Nationwide Speakers Bureau put him on their list of 22 Guaranteed Standing Ovations. He was inducted into the Speaker Hall of Fame in 2000.

He overcame a stutter as a kid. He built a career that changed lives. He wrote Attitude Is Everything — and he didn’t just write it. He lived it.

He taught that your attitude shapes your reality. That while you can't always control what happens to you, you can always control your response to it. That attitude isn't just how you feel. It's the foundation everything else is built on.

“Attitude is 100 percent of everything you do. Your attitude today determines your success tomorrow.”

— Keith Harrell

He meant it. Every word.

Keith was diagnosed with spinal cancer in May of 2010. He died that October. He was 54.

And by every account from everyone who knew him — his family, his friends, the people who watched him face that final chapter — he met it the same way he met every other one.

With his attitude intact. Right up until the end.

That’s who he was.

His words echo with me. Especially now, when I look around and see so many people I care about navigating very challenging situations and circumstances.

So here is what I want to leave you with. From a man who proved it with his life, and a dear friend I still think about often:

Attitude is not pretending it doesn’t hurt. It’s not performing strength for an audience.

It’s the decision you make in the middle of the hard chapter — before you know how it ends — about who you are going to be on the other side of it.

Be encouraged. Be inspired. Go be amazing.

It’s been a rough couple of weeks. For many of us.

But attitude is everything.

Show up. Keep working your way through.

Keith would tell you the same.

If this resonated, subscribe to The Jenn Files. I write about business, money, resilience, and grit — cutting through the noise so you can build something that can’t be broken.

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Are you navigating a difficult situation? Considering a big change? What is keeping you up at night?

A plateau you’ve hit. A decision you keep circling but can’t make. A pattern that needs to break but you’re not sure where to start.

If you’re ready to stop spinning and start reverse engineering your way through — I’d love to connect.

Schedule a conversation

There is a version of the American healthcare debate you already know.

The one where both sides argue about coverage while premiums rise. The one where politicians hold hearings, give speeches, and fly home to their taxpayer-subsidized health plans. The one where insurance company CEOs collect eight-figure paychecks while the people paying their premiums skip appointments, ration medication, and hope nothing serious happens before they can figure out the math.

That version is not wrong.

But it is incomplete.

The part that has been left out is simpler and more devastating than anything being argued on cable news right now. The system is not broken. It is working exactly as designed. The question nobody is asking is — designed for whom?

The insurance industry spent $183 million lobbying Congress in 2024. That is your answer.

He Made a List.

A friend called me Friday. Someone I’ve known since my twenties. He has spent his career in hospitality — the industry that feeds us, celebrates us, marks every milestone worth remembering. The kind of person who knows your name, your story, your drink order from three years ago. The kind who makes everyone in the room feel like the most important person there.

He called to say goodbye.

Before the MRI results. Before the priest. Before the machines and the beeping — he had a list. The people who mattered most.

I made the list.

For the past month, he had been rationing his medication. Not because he wanted to. Because he had to.

When you have had an organ transplant, the anti-rejection medications are not optional. They are the difference between your body accepting what kept you alive and your body destroying it. One medication alone runs over $500 a month out of pocket. On top of premiums. On top of everything else a person navigates when no employer is picking up any part of the tab — and when small businesses can barely afford to offer coverage even if they want to.

In this country, Amazon receives billions in tax incentives to expand. The person building something from nothing gets a premium bill they cannot afford.

So he made choices. Quietly. Without telling anyone. Putting on the tough exterior that gets you through the day while something slowly goes wrong underneath.

My heart broke when I found out. Because I didn’t know. And that is exactly how the system counts on it working. People suffer alone because suffering out loud feels like failure. By the time anyone finds out, it is often too late.

The Gap Has a Body Count.

Last August I got pneumonia again. My second time in a few months. When you have had more than half of a lung removed, pneumonia is not something you push aside casually. It landed me in the hospital.

What I thought was a sinus infection turned out to be a raging infection that had moved into the bone in my skull. Mastoiditis. I ended up in the emergency room. Five rounds of heavy antibiotics later, I am still navigating the aftermath. My doctors have ordered a specialized brain MRI.

I have been waiting three months.

Not because I don’t know better. Not because I stopped fighting. Not because my head stopped throbbing.

Because the cost is $3,000 out of pocket and the system has no answer for someone like me.

And I cannot access the imaging I need to find out if the infection is improving or whether we need to consider additional measures.

That is not a personal failure. That is the gap.

Before anyone suggests socialized medicine is the answer — I have been on a waitlist as an “urgent” case to see a neuro-ophthalmologist for five months. Five months. Urgent. The problem is not simply who pays. The problem is any system — public or private — that calls something urgent and then makes you wait half a year.

There are really only a handful of paths forward:

• Universal coverage — with all the wait lists that come with it.

• True market competition — eliminating state lines, letting companies compete nationwide, forcing the math to actually work.

• Eliminate the fraud and corruption — bleeding the system dry before anyone sees a dime of actual care.

None of these are easy. All of them are better than what we have now. That is where Part III goes.

But first — the numbers.

The Machine That Needs You to Die.

Gen X Female. Non-tobacco. $63,000 annual income. No subsidies applied. Real search on stridehealth.com. March 2026.

I focused on PPO plans — because when you are navigating serious medical needs, a PPO is not a luxury. It is the plan that gives you access to the specialists and hospitals you actually need. HMOs restrict your network. When your health is on the line, network restrictions can cost you your life.

Someone will say: there are cheaper plans. And they are right.

But an HMO restricts your network. When you are managing a transplant, a bone infection, a neurological condition, a cancer diagnosis — your network is not a preference. It is the difference between seeing the specialist who knows your case and starting over with whoever happens to be in-network this month. PPO coverage is not a luxury for people with serious medical needs. It is the minimum viable option.

And even the cheapest HMO Gold plan in Florida for a 63-year-old runs nearly $1,900 a month. That is $22,800 a year. For someone earning $63,000 gross — before taxes — that is 36% of their income. Just for the premium. Before a single claim.

The cheaper plan doesn’t make the argument disappear. It just moves the number.

Now look at what age does to the math. Real searches. Same zip code. Same income. Same plan tier. Ten years apart.

Florida — PPO — Female — Non-Tobacco — $63,000 — Unsubsidized:

Age 52 (born 1973)

• Gold PPO: $2,505/month — $30,065/year — Max OOP: $6,250

• Platinum PPO: $3,255/month — $39,064/year — Max OOP: $2,525

Age 63 (born 1962)

• Gold PPO: $3,788/month — $45,467/year — Max OOP: $6,250

• Platinum PPO: $4,923/month — $59,077/year — Max OOP: $2,525

Under the ACA, insurers can charge older enrollees up to three times what they charge younger ones. In Florida, they are charging close to that ceiling.

At age 63 — one year from Medicare — a woman earning $63,000 a year is quoted $4,923 a month for Platinum PPO coverage.

That is $59,077 a year. Her entire gross income is $63,000. The premium alone consumes 94% of it. She has $3,923 left for the year. For everything else. Food. Rent. Utilities. Medication. Life.

And the Max Out of Pocket column. One hospitalization. One emergency room visit. One serious diagnosis. She owes another $2,525 on top of every premium and copay already paid.

Now look at Washington DC — where Congress lives and works.

Washington DC vs. Florida — Platinum PPO — Same Person — Same Income:

• DC, age 52: $1,458/month — $17,518/year — Max OOP: $2,100

• Florida, age 52: $3,255/month — $39,064/year — Max OOP: $2,525

• Florida, age 63: $4,923/month — $59,077/year — Max OOP: $2,525

Members of Congress do not pay the DC rate either. Taxpayers cover 72 to 75% of their premium. A member of Congress pays roughly $365 a month for Platinum-level coverage.

$365 a month. While a 63-year-old woman in Florida is quoted $4,923.

We are not asking for a handout. We are asking for what Congress has. Or put them on the same system the rest of us navigate. Let them open stridehealth.com with their own money. Let them feel the table.

And while we are at it — every elected official should earn the median income of the state they represent. They should live inside the same healthcare system they legislate. And when their term ends, so does the taxpayer-funded salary. The rest of us build without a safety net. We show up. We grind. We do the impossible in spite of every obstacle the system puts in our way. That is what resilience actually looks like.

Two Women. Two Systems. Only One of Them Is Working.

Yesterday, the White House announced that Chief of Staff Susie Wiles has been diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer — caught early, with an excellent prognosis.

I have had the privilege of working with Susie. She is one of the most accomplished women in American political history — and in January 2025, she became the first woman ever to serve as White House Chief of Staff.

And I am deeply grateful she has access to the world-class care she deserves — the White House Medical Unit, Walter Reed, Bethesda Naval, and federal employee health benefits covered largely by American taxpayers.

She deserves every resource available to her.

And that is exactly the point.

There are not one but two healthcare systems in this country:

• System One: Federal employees and elected officials. Insulated from the market. Subsidized by taxpayers. Designed to work. When something is caught early, it gets treated immediately.

• System Two: Everyone else. Exposed to every compounding failure documented above. When something needs imaging, you wait three months because the cost is out of reach.

The people running System Two have never lived inside it. That is not an accusation. That is the structural reality. You cannot feel what you cannot see.

Somewhere in America today, someone is rationing medication they cannot afford. Somewhere, a person is waiting three months for imaging their doctor ordered. Somewhere, a woman is deciding whether the mammogram is worth the out-of-pocket cost this month.

The difference between those stories is not character. It is not effort. It is not how hard someone worked or how much they deserve care.

It is a zip code and a job title.

370 Times.

The six largest health insurance company CEOs took home a combined $159.4 million in 2024.

• Andrew Witty — UnitedHealth Group — $26.4 million — 348x the median employee salary

• Gail Boudreaux — Elevance Health — $20.5 million — 370x the median employee salary

• David Cordani — Cigna — $23.3 million — 279x the median employee salary

• David Joyner — CVS Health / Aetna — $18.2 million — 299x the median employee salary

Source: Becker’s Payer Issues, SEC proxy filings, April 2025

370 times the median employee salary. For the CEO of the company deciding what gets covered and what gets denied.

The insurance industry spent $183 million lobbying the people who write the rules in 2024. Not to fix the system. To keep it exactly where it is.

That is not a broken system. That is a system working perfectly for the people who built it.

The Subsidies Were Never the Fix.

We did not arrive here because of one administration. This has been decades in the making — multiple presidents, both parties, administration after administration that chose the path of least resistance while the lobbying dollars piled up and the costs quietly compounded.

The enhanced ACA subsidies were not a fix. They were a bandaid. They masked an artificially inflated cost structure while insurance company executive teams collected hundreds of millions and rates kept climbing underneath.

When the bandaid was ripped off at the end of 2025, two things hit at once:

• The real unsubsidized price surfaced.

• Years of compounding rate increases — that never stopped — arrived simultaneously.

Premiums jumped 21% in a single year. That is not a coincidence. That is the bill coming due.

And it landed squarely on small business America and independent contractors — the people with no employer, no union, no government program standing between them and the full weight of a market that was never designed to work for them.

What happens next will determine whether small businesses and contractors can survive in spite of this. That is not an exaggeration. That is the math.

Eighty percent of this country voted for accountability. For the fraud and corruption to end. For a government that works for the people funding it. We want to provide for our families. We want the system to make sense.

We are still waiting.

$317 Billion Out. Zero Coverage In.

The United States is the only wealthy nation on earth that does not guarantee healthcare coverage to its citizens. Every other country in the G7 — Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom — has found a way to cover its people.

We write the checks that fund the world.

In FY 2024, the United States sent foreign aid to 179 countries. Here are the top recipients — and what they provide their own citizens:

Top US Foreign Aid Recipients — FY2024 — and Their Healthcare Systems:

• Israel — $6.82 billion — Universal coverage. No deductibles. Funded by national income tax.

• Ukraine — $6.5 billion — Universal coverage system.

• Jordan — $1.75 billion — National health insurance. Majority of citizens covered.

• Egypt — $1.5 billion — Government-subsidized healthcare for citizens.

Source: USAFacts, ForeignAssistance.gov, Commonwealth Fund, FY2024

Since 1951, the United States has provided over $317 billion in inflation-adjusted aid to Israel alone. We are not suggesting these countries don’t deserve support. Strategic alliances matter. We understand that.

We are asking one simple question: why is the country writing the checks unable to cover its own people?

We just want what members of Congress have. Or put them on the same system we navigate. Let them open stridehealth.com and run the same search. Let them feel the table.

We are not asking for a perfect system. Every system has tradeoffs. But right now we have the worst of every option — the cost of a market system without the competition, the complexity of a government system without the coverage, and the fraud of both running underneath it all unchecked.

Go South, They Said.

People are leaving New York, New Jersey, California — drawn by the promise of lower taxes and a perceived better financial picture. The tax savings are real for some people.

But before you pack the truck, run the full number.

Health insurance in Florida runs significantly higher than most states — the numbers above prove it. Homeowners insurance has become nearly unaffordable in many areas. Car insurance. Flood insurance. The cost of staying insured in Florida across every category is not what the headline tax savings suggest.

Here is something I did not expect to say: my cost of living in DC was technically lower than what I am navigating in Florida right now.

Not because Florida is expensive in the ways people think. Because the systems nobody talks about — healthcare, homeowners insurance, car insurance, flood insurance — compound in ways that don’t show up in the tax savings headline.

Before you move: if you are self-employed, between 45 and 64, or navigating any kind of health situation — model the full picture. What you save in taxes may not cover what you lose in insurance costs.

These are the cracks that reveal how broken so many systems truly are.

The Search Takes Four Minutes. Run It.

This series does not end with outrage and no direction. That is not how I am built.

Run your own numbers. Go to stridehealth.com. Enter your zip code, your age, and your actual income with no subsidies applied. Screenshot what comes up. Then enter 20001 — Capitol Hill. Screenshot that too. Look at both. Share both. That is the story.

Call someone. Not a text. A call. If there is a person in your life you have been meaning to check on — do it today. You do not know what list you might be on.

Ask twice. The first answer is almost always “I’m fine.” Ask again.

Know your full number. Write down what healthcare is actually costing you annually:

• The premium

• The deductible

• The out-of-pocket maximum

• The prescriptions

• The appointments you skipped

• The imaging you delayed

• The ER visit you prayed wouldn’t happen

Own the number. Then get angry about it.

Make noise. Call your representatives. Show up. Vote in every election — not just the presidential ones. The people deciding this are not personally exposed to the consequences. They need to hear from the people who are.

Talk about it. The silence around healthcare costs is part of what keeps the system in place. When people don’t say what they’re actually paying, nobody knows how broken it really is.

Say it out loud.

Part II: Follow the Money. It Goes Somewhere Ugly.

This is Part I of a three-part series — The Gap — on what it costs to be in the middle in America right now.

Part II — Follow the Money. Who voted against Medicaid expansion. When. What their top donor industries are. The lobbying dollars flowing between the insurance industry and the people writing healthcare policy. All public record. All traceable. Side by side. No spin required.

Part III — The Rebuild. Three options. Real tradeoffs. What would actually fix it and what it would cost to get there.

The system is not broken.

It is working exactly as designed.

The only question left is whether we are willing to change who it works for.

The Jenn Files covers business, money, resilience, and grit — cutting through the noise so you can build something that can’t be broken. If this hit something, subscribe. Share it with someone who needs to read it. And if you want to go deeper, become a paid subscriber — the work that goes into this publication depends on your support.

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Sources:

• Insurance industry lobbying spend $183M in 2024: OpenSecrets.org

• Premium comparison data: stridehealth.com, March 2026, unsubsidized rates, female, non-tobacco, income $63,000

• Age rating: ACA allows insurers to charge older enrollees up to 3x younger enrollee rates

• Premiums up 21% year over year: ValuePenguin, January 2026; CMS data

• Six largest health insurance CEOs combined $159.4M in 2024: Fierce Healthcare, May 2025

• CEO compensation ratios: Becker’s Payer Issues, SEC proxy filings, April 2025

• Congressional salary $174,000 base: public record

• Congressional health insurance taxpayer subsidy 72–75%: OPM, Congress.gov, No Labels, December 2025

• US foreign aid FY2024: USAFacts, ForeignAssistance.gov

• Israel $6.82 billion FY2024: USAFacts

• Jordan $1.75 billion FY2024: Al Majalla, ForeignAssistance.gov

• Total US aid to Israel since 1951, $317 billion inflation-adjusted: USAFacts; CFR

• Israel universal healthcare: Commonwealth Fund International Health Policy Center

• Jordan national health insurance: WHO Universal Health Coverage Partnership

• G7 universal coverage: Commonwealth Fund Mirror Mirror 2024

• Susie Wiles background: Britannica, Wikipedia, OpenSecrets

• Susie Wiles breast cancer diagnosis: White House announcement, NBC News, March 17, 2026

• 10 states have not expanded Medicaid as of 2026: KFF State Health Facts

• Enhanced ACA subsidies expired December 31, 2025: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

A young cat whose stomach hasn’t been quite right. A dog whose eyes are diminishing — and whose back legs and hips are showing signs of hip dysplasia and pain. A young pet who has needed blood transfusions just to make it through.

And then there are the pets whose owners have been told everything looks fine. But something still feels off. That nagging feeling that there’s more to the picture than the last vet visit showed.

Their people are showing up. Every single day. Because that’s what you do.

This week, we lost two dear friends. One was 55. The other was 82. And then tonight, another dear friend called from a hospital bed to tell me he’s back in.

I know what it’s like to be in a hospital. IVs in both arms, veins starting to collapse, doctors talking about putting in a port. I’d joke with the nurses about how they were making it difficult to work — because when you’re a small business owner, you do what you have to do to keep a dream alive.

By all accounts, I shouldn’t be here today. But I am. In large part because a few doctors were willing to look at things differently. To try something else. To say — let’s look at this from another angle.

That changed everything.

And in the middle of all of it — the grief, the hospital calls, the hard conversations — our pets are right there.

Loyal. True. By our side.

They don’t know about the business. They don’t know about the losses. They just know you.

They always show up.

Callie laid with her dad until the very end. Stayed right beside him. That’s what our animals do. They show up in ways that most humans can’t — without agenda, without hesitation, without ever needing to be asked.

I’ve always cared for pets. Long before it became a small business, long before the certifications and the coaching. It’s just who I am.

But those hospital rooms taught me something I carry with me every day. A different lens can change an outcome. Sometimes all it takes is one person willing to ask a different question.

Your pet deserves that same willingness. Someone who will look at the full picture, ask the questions that haven’t been asked, and build a plan around your specific animal — not a generic protocol.

That’s what this session is.

The Ask.

Would you consider becoming one of the founding 100?

The founding membership is $100 a year. One dollar more than annual. But what comes with it is the part that matters.

Every founding member receives a complimentary Integrative Pet Health Coaching session.

Before we connect, I want to see everything you have available — labs, imaging, bloodwork, medical reports from your veterinarian, what you’re currently feeding, what a typical day looks like, what you notice, what concerns you. Then I get to work. I build a personalized guide around your specific animal. We schedule a time to connect — video or phone — and walk through everything together.

Not just to live longer. To thrive.

That session is valued at $350. It’s included with your founding membership.

Become a Founding Member →

Not ready to go paid?

If you know someone who is carrying a lot right now — someone whose pet isn’t feeling their best, someone who needs a different perspective on their animal’s health — you can gift them a free month.

Send them in.

Gift a free month

It’s Friday. The week has been a lot.

Hold your people close. Hold your pets closer.

They always show up.

— Jenn

The Jenn Files covers business, money, resilience, and grit — cutting through the noise so you can build something that can’t be broken. Subscribe at thejennfiles.com.

For ongoing integrative pet health resources, visit integrativepetparent.com.

You did that.

You showed up. You shared it. You said yes, this is real and it needs to be said. This conversation is spreading because you are spreading it.

Thank you. Now let’s keep going.

You built something.

Maybe it’s small right now. Maybe it’s growing. Maybe you’re somewhere in the middle — real revenue, real expenses, real decisions landing on your desk every week that nobody prepared you for.

And then the renewal notice arrives.

You know the one. The envelope you open standing at the kitchen counter, or the email you click on a Tuesday morning before you’ve finished your coffee. The one with the new premium number.

You read it twice. Because the first time doesn’t make sense.

I wrote about this in Sticker Shock. The math that hits you when health insurance stops being a line item and starts being a crisis. The moment you realize the system you thought was protecting you was never designed with you in mind.

That piece resonated because you’ve been there. Most of you are there right now.

This one is about what you do next.

We Are the Economy

Before we talk about who to call, let’s talk about who you are.

There are 34.8 million small businesses in the United States. They employ 59 million Americans. 45.9% of the entire workforce. They represent 43.5% of GDP. They pay 39% of all private sector payroll. Over the last decade, small businesses created 55% of all net new jobs in this country.

99.9% of all American businesses are small businesses.

And here’s the number that should be in every conversation about insurance, taxes, and the cost of building something: when you spend $100 at a local independent business, $43 stays in that community. Spent at a national chain or online, that same $100 leaves $13 behind. Local businesses recirculate money through their neighbors, their vendors, their employees, their community. More than three times the local economic return.

We are not a niche. We are not a footnote. We are the backbone of this economy and the lifeblood of every community we operate in.

No business owner I have ever met said oh good, higher premiums. Not one. Every dollar absorbed by an insurance increase is a dollar that doesn’t go back into hiring, into inventory, into the community, into building something that lasts.

That’s not a political statement. That’s just math.

So when the system squeezes small business owners — and it is squeezing, hard — it isn’t just hurting the owners. It’s pulling money out of communities. It’s slowing job creation. It’s taxing the engine that actually runs this country.

Now let’s talk about who benefits while that’s happening.

The six largest health insurance CEOs collected $159.4 million between them in 2024 alone. The top earner was Andrew Witty of UnitedHealth Group — $26.3 million. One person. One year. At Elevance Health, the CEO earned 370 times more than the median employee at her own company.

Your premium went up.

Your state’s insurance commissioner, the public official whose entire job is to protect you from exactly this, earns somewhere between $86,000 and $222,000 a year in public salary.

Do the math.

We the People

The system wants you frustrated. Frustrated people give up. They pay the bill, swallow the denial, and go back to absorbing the cost.

That’s the design.

The corruption is real. The deal-making is real. The revolving door between regulators and the industry they’re supposed to regulate is real. Both parties have let it fester for decades.

We are fed up. We want fairness, accountability, and transparency. We want it all out in the open.

We the people are getting stronger. We are getting smarter. We are learning how to play this game.

You think we’re joking? You think we’re not strong enough?

Watch.

The Person You’re Looking For

Every state in this country has an insurance commissioner.

Their job, the one they are paid to do, the one they are legally obligated to do, is to protect you. The office is established by state constitution or statute. It exists because the law says it has to. They regulate the insurance industry in your state. They enforce the rules. They investigate complaints. They have authority to take action when insurance companies aren’t playing by the book.

In 11 states, that commissioner is elected directly by voters. California. Delaware. Georgia. Kansas. Louisiana. Mississippi. Montana. North Carolina. North Dakota. Oklahoma. Washington. If your state is on that list, your insurance commissioner answers to you at the ballot box.

We the people elected you in. We the people can take you out.

In the other 39 states, the commissioner is appointed, typically by the governor. Which means they answer to someone who answers to you.

Either way, there is a human being with a name, a phone number, a public office, and a staff whose entire job description includes handling exactly what you’ve been dealing with.

Most people have never heard of them.

Now you have.

How to Find Yours

Go to content.naic.org/state-insurance-departments.

Every U.S. state, the District of Columbia, and all five U.S. territories have a Department of Insurance dedicated to helping consumers. It takes 60 seconds to find yours.

You’ll get a name. A website. A phone number. A complaint portal.

Use it.

If your insurer unfairly delays or denies your claim, or does not honor your policy or state law, your Department of Insurance can investigate. They can request corrective action. They can take enforcement action when laws are violated. They track complaint patterns across companies, and those patterns matter when regulators decide whether to approve rate increases.

Your complaint isn’t just about you. It goes into a record. It adds to a picture. It is one of the mechanisms this system has to hold insurers accountable.

File it. Every single time.

The Second Lever

Beyond the commissioner, there are state legislators who sit on insurance committees.

These are the people who write the rules the commissioner enforces. They set the parameters. They decide what’s permissible. They hold hearings. They have constituent services offices built to hear from people like you.

Find your state legislature’s website. Search for the insurance committee. Find the member who represents your district.

Write them a letter. Not an email. A letter. Show up to a town hall. Call the constituent services line.

Tell them what your premiums cost. Tell them what you were denied. Tell them what you’re paying for coverage that doesn’t cover what you need.

They answer to voters in a way insurance executives never will. So make them answer.

We Are Done.

We the people are paying attention now.

We are tracking votes. Reading donor lists. Filing complaints. Writing letters. Showing up to town halls. Building paper trails. And we are not going away.

We built businesses from nothing. We made payroll when it hurt. We kept going when there was no playbook. We are not people who roll over.

Done with the denial letters written by algorithms. Done with premium increases mailed on a Friday with no explanation. Done with being told to appeal a decision made by someone who never looked at our file. Done with the lies, the abuse, the backroom deals dressed up as policy.

The people making these decisions are not sitting in some impenetrable fortress. They have offices. They have bosses. They have re-election cycles and appointment reviews and public records obligations.

We are holding you accountable. All of it. In the open. Where everyone can see.

Your Next Move

1. Find your commissioner. Go to content.naic.org/state-insurance-departments. Write down the name. Bookmark the complaint portal.

2. File the complaint. Denied claim. Unexplained premium spike. Coverage dropped without notice. Document it. Submit it. Keep every copy.

3. Find your legislator. Look up your state’s insurance committee. Find your district’s rep. Write one page. What you pay. What you were denied. What you need them to do.

4. Do not stop. Do it again next year. Accountability is built through repetition, not a single call. They are counting on you to get tired. Don’t.

The question everyone is asking after Sticker Shock and now this: how do we actually get premiums down? Not the sponsored answer. Not the broker pitch. The real strategies, the real structures, and an honest look at what it would actually take to fix this market. That’s next.

The system is designed to make you feel powerless.

You’re not.

You just need to know where to look.

One more thing. See this dog? This is Bella. She came from an unethical breeder/hoarder situation. When you’ve seen what neglect does to an animal, you don’t just want to love them better. You want to know better. Building a pet business from scratch and watching what people didn’t know about their animals’ health made that even clearer. That’s why I got my Integrative Pet Health Coaching certification.

Founding members of The Jenn Files receive a complimentary session with me — a $350 value. You send me your pet’s information, I build you a personalized guide, and we get on a call. Founding membership is $100, less than half the regular rate of $240. Only a few more days at this price. If you’ve been thinking about it, now is the time.

If this resonated, subscribe to The Jenn Files. I write about business, money, resilience, and grit — cutting through the noise so you can build something that can’t be broken.

Sources

• SBA Office of Advocacy, 2024 Small Business Profiles

• Bureau of Labor Statistics — Small Business Job Creation, 2013–2023

• Civic Economics — Local Multiplier Effect studies (via American Independent Business Alliance)

• Fierce Healthcare — 2024 CEO compensation, six major national health plans

• Becker’s Payer Issues — CEO-to-worker pay ratios, 2024 proxy filings

• S&P Global Market Intelligence — Cigna/UnitedHealth CEO compensation, 2024

• Ballotpedia — Insurance Commissioner salaries, elected vs. appointed by state

• content.naic.org/state-insurance-departments — State insurance department directory

If you’ve been reading The Jenn Files for any length of time, you know that’s not like me. I show up. It’s one of the things I’m most consistent about.

But yesterday I couldn’t write. I needed to cry. So I did.

Randy Skoglund passed away just after midnight on March 9th. He was at home, surrounded by his family.

He was 55.

I wrote about Randy a few weeks ago. The award-winning digital strategist, the founder of Orange Hat Group, the guy who helped me figure out my first Google ad campaign when my pet services company was just an idea with a lot of hustle behind it. His family used our service. That’s the kind of people the Skoglunds are.

When I wrote that piece, Randy had just entered hospice care. His wife Kieta posted the update. Reading her words, “he would want me to thank all of you,” I had to put my phone down and just sit with it for a while.

55 years old.

At the same time, another family dear to mine is preparing to say goodbye to someone who lived to 82.

I grew up in Des Moines. My brother and I grew up alongside this family’s kids. Our parents have been close for decades, the kind of friendship that outlasts zip codes and job titles and every version of the life you thought you’d be living by now.

Their son posted today. He called his father’s passing:

“not a sad goodbye, but a celebration of his temporary life here.”

His sister posted a photo of a bench. A small metal plaque.

Dad. Loved and Remembered.

That’s it. That’s the whole thing.

I’ve read that line from their son a dozen times today. For those of us who share a faith in God, the belief that this life is temporary and Heaven is real, those words are comfort. For those who are still working out what they believe, or who have walked away from faith entirely, I won’t pretend I have all the answers for you.

What I can tell you is what I know to be true for me: both of these men are in Heaven. And that certainty doesn’t take away the grief. It just means the grief has a container.

If you’re somewhere in the middle, not sure, or curious, or maybe just cracked open by a week like this one, I want to offer something simple. You don’t have to be in a church. You don’t have to have it all figured out. God doesn’t need your perfection. He just needs your sincerity.

Lord, I believe you are real. I believe Jesus died for me and rose again. I’m not perfect and I don’t have everything figured out. But I’m asking you into my life. Forgive me. Lead me. I’m yours.

That’s it. No performance required. Just a conversation with someone who has been waiting to hear from you.

Two men. Two families. Two different numbers on the calendar.

I want to be careful here, because I don’t think 82 means a life more fully lived than 55. Or 55 more than 30. Or 30 more than 20. A life well lived isn’t a function of years. Tragedy strikes at any age. Loss is loss, no matter the number on the banner. What we can control is what we build right now, in this season, at this age, with the time we actually have.

Neither number tells the whole story.

What tells the story is what held.

Randy held. His wife’s words held. His family’s grace in the hardest days held. The community that showed up, all of you who sent messages his family read to him at the end, that held.

And an 82-year-old man who raised a family, a beloved wife, children, grandchildren, who can look at his death and call it a celebration. That held too.

I wrote in February that what falls apart reveals what holds.

I still believe that. But I’ve been sitting with another question.

What are you building alongside the business?

Because the business will have seasons. Revenue goes up and down. Markets shift. Clients leave. What you build alongside it, the relationships, the people who will sit with you, the ones who will read your messages to you at the end, that’s the part that doesn’t depreciate.

Randy knew that. His whole career was about connection, helping people and organizations reach each other. He lived it too. The proof is in every message Kieta has been reading him.

And then there’s Gary.

Gary Karr, whose birthday piece started all of this back in February, messaged me today to make sure I’d heard the news about Randy. We don’t talk every week. We don’t talk every month. But the moment it mattered, he showed up. That’s the friendship that picks up exactly where it left off, every single time. I consider him one of my dearest friends.

That’s what I mean by what holds.

If you’re in the middle of your build right now, head down, pushing hard, telling yourself the relationships can wait until you hit the number, I’m not here to lecture you.

I’ve been exactly there.

This past Friday, one of my dearest friends said goodbye to her cat. It was a hard week for a lot of people I love.

But I will tell you what I know now that I didn’t know then: the people are the asset. Everything else is just the vehicle.

Chase what lasts.

Randy’s memorial service will be held in Alexandria, VA on March 21st. A celebration of life will follow a private burial in West Des Moines, IA on April 10th. Details will be posted on CaringBridge as arrangements are finalized.

To Kieta and the Skoglund family, thank you for sharing him with us. We are better for knowing him.

If this resonated, subscribe to The Jenn Files. I write about business, money, resilience, and grit, cutting through the noise so you can build something that can’t be broken.

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You probably saw a few posts. The floral bouquets. The brunch photos. The captions about celebrating the women in your life. And then, right on schedule, the other posts — the ones reminding everyone that this day is supposed to be serious. That it’s about inequality, labor movements, voting rights, and the long list of rights women still don’t have.

Becca Bloom wrote a sharp piece about this yesterday. She’s right. Both sides are correct. Celebration and seriousness have always coexisted in women’s history. That tension isn’t a contradiction. It’s the whole story.

But I want to talk about the day after.

There are women I want to tell you about.

Ann McLaughlin Korologos and her husband Tom were clients of my pet care business. Our team cared for who they loved — two yellow Labs named Sam and Winston.

Secretary of Labor under Reagan. Confirmed by the United States Senate 94 to 0. Chair of RAND. Chair of the Aspen Institute. Board member of Microsoft, Fannie Mae, and Kellogg. She received the President’s Citizen Medal from Ronald Reagan himself.

She was the kind of woman who walked into every room already having done the work — and the room knew it. She owned an art gallery in Basalt, kept horses, and according to everyone who knew her, was three steps ahead of the room without anyone realizing it.

Ann passed away in 2023. Tom not long after.

When she left her post as Secretary of Labor, her successor was Elizabeth Dole. The first time in American history that one woman had directly replaced another qualified woman from the same party in the same Cabinet seat. Ann didn’t just hold the door open. She handed it off.

I know Elizabeth Dole. Not from a distance. During her presidential campaign, I had the opportunity to be in the car with her — more than once. The curtain was down. And the woman I got to know — gracious, kind, exactly who she presented to the world — was the same in private as she was in public. That kind of integrity is rarer than people think.

The press wrote about how she looked. They called her a novelty. She was polling second in the nation.

That wasn’t ancient history. That was 1999.

Here’s what doesn’t make the posts.

The women who built things while the world was busy arguing about whether they belonged. The women who were sharp, exacting, difficult, and brilliant — and got called every name in the book for it. The women who pioneered methods now used around the world, whose names most people couldn’t tell you.

One of them saved my life.

Twelve hours on an operating table. Seven of them in active surgery.

There was a war room. Literally — a room where her team used 3D modeling to map what they were dealing with. They would go in. Dissect millimeter by millimeter for hours. Hit a dead end. Come back out, reconfigure, and go back in. Again and again. The mass was intricately woven around my pulmonary vein. Every move had consequences. One wrong decision and I lose the entire lung. Another wrong decision and I don’t come home at all.

She and two other surgeons, each renowned in their own right, worked in meticulous dissection. What preoperative imaging hadn’t fully revealed, they discovered when they got inside. What they thought was a straightforward removal became something else entirely. The mass hadn’t just attached. It had woven itself in, strangling surrounding structures, explaining six episodes of pneumonia over two prior years that had never made sense until that moment.

I’m alive because she didn’t flinch.

She has pioneered surgical techniques now used and taught around the world. Her methods have saved lives she will never meet. Her work lives in operating rooms on multiple continents.

Her bedside manner? Horrible.

Cold. Blunt. Not warm. Not soft. Not the kind of doctor who holds your hand and explains things gently. She told me what she needed to tell me, and she left.

And I have never been more grateful for a woman in my life.

Here’s what I’ve learned about women like her.

We get read wrong. Constantly.

The sharpness that looks like arrogance is precision. The bluntness that feels like coldness is focus. The edge that gets called difficult is the same edge that keeps people alive — in operating rooms, in boardrooms, in every room where the stakes were high and the welcome was conditional.

Women have had to be twice as good to get half the credit. That’s not a slogan. That’s a job description that got handed down through generations without anyone writing it on paper.

Think about what it took just to get here.

American women couldn’t vote until 1920. In Afghanistan today, they technically can — and practically can’t. The Taliban’s return in 2021 stripped women of rights they legally held. Male guardians required for travel. Violence at polling stations. The law says one thing. The street says something else entirely. In Pakistan, Nigeria, and across regions where Sharia law governs daily life, the gap between the legal right and the lived reality is wide enough to swallow a generation.

Having the right on paper and having the right in practice are two entirely different things.

Before 1974, a woman in the United States couldn’t get a credit card in her own name. Before 1988 — 1988 — she couldn’t take out a business loan without a male relative signing off on it. Husband. Father. Brother. The Women’s Business Ownership Act changed that. It was signed into law the year some of the women reading this were born.

Let that land.

Sara Blakely had the idea for Spanx in the late 1990s. She spent two years hearing no from every manufacturer she approached. She launched in 2000 with $5,000. Twelve years after women gained the legal right to get a business loan without a man’s signature. She built a billion-dollar company on an idea, $5,000, and a law that had only existed for twelve years.

My sister-in-law says it plainly: you can have it all. Just not at the same time. That’s not defeat. That’s the real math. The version that doesn’t get put on a motivational poster because it’s too honest and too true and too useful to fit in a caption.

And yet.

Anastasia Soare arrived in Los Angeles from communist Romania in 1989 with little English and almost no money. She learned English by watching Oprah on television. She had studied the Golden Ratio in art school — a mathematical principle of balance and proportion used by Leonardo da Vinci — and realized it could be applied to eyebrows. The salon she worked in didn’t believe it was a viable standalone service. In 1992 she rented her own room. Her brand peaked at a $3 billion valuation. Oprah and Michelle Obama call her the Queen of Eyebrows. Years after learning English from Oprah’s show, she shaped Oprah’s eyebrows on that same show.

Nobody saw it coming. She did.

Since 2015, the number of self-made female billionaires has jumped 81%. Their combined wealth now tops $1.7 trillion. Women-owned businesses represent 42% of all businesses in America, employing over 10 million people. Women now earn 58% of college degrees in the United States. More than half of medical school students are women.

Not because the doors were open. Because women got very good at opening doors.

That takes courage.

I built a company from zero to seven figures while fighting for my life. Literally fighting — the kind that happens in a war room with 3D models and three surgeons mapping a mass that had decided to weave itself around your pulmonary vein.

I’ve sat in rooms where I was sized up by my appearance, my hair, everything except what I actually knew. I’ve watched women get dismissed, talked over, and underestimated by people who would have benefited enormously from paying attention.

The women who made it through those rooms didn’t do it by softening their edges. They did it by being so undeniably good that the room had no choice but to adjust.

That’s what my surgeon did in medicine.

That’s what Ann did in Washington.

That’s what women have been doing in every field, for a very long time.

Here’s what I know about the women reading this.

Some of you have an idea. A business, a pivot, a next step you haven’t said out loud yet because the room didn’t feel safe enough or the timing didn’t feel right or you’re not sure it deserves air yet.

It deserves air.

The women who came before us didn’t fight for the right to get a business loan so that our ideas could stay quiet. They fought so we could walk into a room, sit at the table, and build something real.

If you’re ready to talk it through — to have someone sit across from you and be a genuine sounding board for what you’re building — that’s exactly what I do.

The first step is just saying it out loud.

A small group of founding members get access to everything — including me. That window is still open, but not for long.

Yesterday was International Women’s Day.

Today is the day after.

The flowers are on the table. The posts have scrolled past. The world is moving on.

But the women who are building right now — the ones in the OR at 6am, the ones running payroll, the ones who kept building when the room wasn’t ready for them — they didn’t stop yesterday and they’re not stopping today.

Becca said it best: go do the work that actually changes the next chapter.

Build something undeniable.

If this resonated, subscribe to The Jenn Files. I write about business, money, resilience, and grit — cutting through the noise so you can build something that can’t be broken.

→ thejennfiles.com

She knew exactly what she was doing.

Sophie would take her beef rib bone, set it down just far enough away from her body to make it look like she wasn’t that interested. Like maybe she was done with it. Like maybe she’d leave it for someone else.

She wouldn’t.

The moment another dog in our pack even glanced in that direction — took the smallest break from their own bone — Sophie would materialize. Full gangster mode. All of these are mine.

She ran that con every single time. And it worked every single time.

I’ve been giving dogs beef rib bones for years. I started buying them at Whole Foods when I was building DCDS, keeping a batch on hand for the dogs in our care. Now I grab them at Costco — same bones, better price — and keep them in my freezer for Bella.

The routine is simple. Buy the rack, separate the ribs, wrap each one in parchment paper so they don’t stick together, and freeze. Every few days or so, Bella gets one.

She has me trained. After bath and grooming time, she goes directly to the freezer and sits. She doesn’t ask. She doesn’t bark. She just sits and stares at the freezer door with the absolute certainty of someone who knows exactly how this ends.

She’s not wrong.

Here’s why I love this treat — and why I’ve recommended it for years.

Beef ribs are one of the best natural options you can give a dog. The bone itself is a raw meaty bone, which means it’s safe to chew. Raw bones are flexible, not brittle like cooked bones. As your dog works through it, it acts like a toothbrush — scraping plaque off teeth in a way that no dental chew in a plastic bag can replicate.

Beyond the dental benefit, there’s the mental stimulation piece. A dog working a bone is a dog in a flow state. Focused. Calm. Satisfied in a way that a five-minute walk doesn’t always achieve. For high-energy dogs especially, that kind of sustained engagement matters.

And it’s a high-value treat. Which means it’s useful. Bella is so locked in on beef rib bones that she even has me trained at this point. She’ll go over and literally sit next to the freezer after she has had a bath or brushing as if to say - it’s time, mom. The bone. That’s not a coincidence. That’s conditioning working exactly the way it should.

A few details worth knowing before you start.

Always give raw, never cooked. Cooked bones splinter and become dangerous. Raw bones flex. That distinction matters.

Supervise the first few times, especially with a new dog or one that tends to gulp rather than chew. You want to know how your dog handles it before you walk away. I normally make it a plan to only give meat bones when I am nearby and can oversee.

Size matters. The bone should be large enough that your dog can’t swallow it whole. For small dogs, a single separated rib is usually right. For larger dogs, you may need larger raw bones — knuckle bones, marrow bones — but that’s a different conversation.

And always make sure fresh water is nearby. Chewing is work.

Sophie ran her bone con on every dog who came through our doors. Didn’t matter if they were twice her size. Confidence, she understood, was its own kind of currency.

Bella just sits by the freezer and waits.

Two different personalities. Same absolute certainty that the beef rib bone is coming.

They’re not wrong to believe that.

If this resonated, subscribe to The Jenn Files. I write about business, money, resilience, and grit — and on weekends, how to elevate the care for our furry companions. Cutting through the noise so you can build something that can’t be broken.

That’s the oath every veterinarian takes.

Every single one.

Hold that for a moment. Because what I’m about to share is going to change how you think about your next vet visit.

We got our first family dog when I was in third grade. Christmas morning. I don’t remember a single other gift from that year.

And since then, I’ve always had pets in my life. Always. They’ve been a constant through every chapter, and each one holds a very special place in my heart.

Bella has been my greatest challenge.

She came from an unethical breeder hoarder situation. Lived in a crate for over three years, pushing out litters. She didn’t know what grass felt like under her feet. Didn’t know pavement. Had never walked on a leash. Had never run. Socialization wasn’t delayed. It was absent. Everything had to be taught from scratch. Pavement. Gravel. Stairs. The fear of an adult dog encountering stairs for the first time and not knowing what to do. How to meet another dog. What a toy was. That running was allowed. That she could roll, sleep on a sofa, curl up next to a human who wasn’t going to hurt her.

She had to learn how to be a dog.

And beyond all of that, she was sick. Skinny. Shaved down to the skin to get the matted fur off. Infections everywhere. She had given up on life and on humans doing right by her.

Her body showed every bit of it. Chronic infections: ears, skin, eyes. Her immune system was so compromised she couldn’t fight off the basics. She was a mess, inside and out.

People who meet her today cannot believe she is the same dog.

What changed? Real food. Real nutrition. Targeted support for her immune system. Treating the root cause instead of chasing symptoms in circles. Asking why her body kept failing. Not just which medication would quiet it down for another thirty days.

This experience, combined with my training in integrative pet health and growing a pet services business, changed how I think about animal care entirely. And it’s why what I’m about to tell you matters to me personally, not just professionally.

Do you know who owns your vet?

Not your vet. The practice. The building. The business model behind the appointment.

Because there’s a very good chance it isn’t your vet.

Let’s start with Mars. You know them as the candy company: M&Ms, Snickers, Skittles. But Mars made a deliberate pivot years ago. They saw an opportunity to dominate the pet market entirely, and they executed on it with precision.

Today, pet care drives roughly 60% of Mars’s $50 billion in annual revenue. It is now larger than their candy business. Since entering the veterinary space, their revenue has soared 284%. They own Banfield, over 1,000 locations. VCA, another 1,000-plus, acquired for $9.1 billion. BluePearl Specialty and Emergency hospitals across 29 states. Vet diagnostic labs. Pet food brands including Pedigree, Whiskas, and Royal Canin. And they’re investing in AI-driven pet health diagnostics.

One company. Your dog’s food. Your dog’s vet. Your dog’s lab results.

That’s not a coincidence. That’s a business model.

And Mars is just one player. JAB Partners, a Luxembourg-based private equity firm better known for coffee and bakery chains, owns National Veterinary Associates and Ethos, over 1,000 more practices. Harvest Partners owns Vetcor, nearly 1,000 more. Private equity has poured over $51 billion into the veterinary sector in recent years.

When you add corporate and private equity ownership of vet practices together with the fact that an estimated 95% of common pet food brands are owned by just six global conglomerates (Mars, Nestlé Purina, Smucker’s, Colgate-Palmolive, Diamond, General Mills), the influence over your pet’s entire health ecosystem is staggering.

The numbers are devastating. About 30% of general veterinary practices are now under corporate ownership, up from 8% a decade ago. For specialty care, emergency medicine, oncology, cardiology, that number jumps to 75%. The companies controlling the food are largely the same ones controlling the care.

There’s a searchable database at privateequityvet.org, over 7,000 practices in the US and Canada known to be under corporate or private equity ownership. You can look up your clinic. Most practices don’t rebrand when they’re acquired. The name on the door may be the same one it had for twenty years.

You’d never know.

Follow the Money

Here’s a number worth sitting with.

KKR, the private equity firm that owns PetVet Care Centers and 456 veterinary practices across the country, paid its two Co-Chief Executive Officers a combined $137 million in 2024. That is not a typo. One hundred and thirty-seven million dollars. Filed with the SEC. A matter of public record.

The median salary of the veterinarian treating your pet: $125,510. The two CEOs of the firm that owns their clinic: a combined $137 million.

And that number, your vet’s number, is effectively frozen. In real, inflation-adjusted terms, veterinarian compensation today is roughly what it was in 2004. Twenty years of education, debt, emotional labor, and clinical skill. Compensated at 2004 levels, while the firms that now own their practices report record returns.

Mars is privately held, so their executive compensation stays behind closed doors. But their results don’t. Pet care now drives 60% of Mars’s $50 billion in annual revenue, a 284% increase since they entered the veterinary space. Candy built that company. Your dog’s vet visit is funding what comes next.

And here’s the part that should make you genuinely angry.

When you call around for a second opinion on a quote, when you try three different clinics in your area and find that the prices are surprisingly similar, there’s a reason for that. In many markets, those three clinics are owned by the same conglomerate. Different names on the door. Same ownership structure. Same financial targets. Same pressure on the vet inside.

You think you’re comparison shopping. You’re not. You’re calling the same company three times.

That’s not a market. That’s theater.

The Person Behind the White Coat

Now let me be clear about something, because this matters.

The majority of veterinarians went into this field because they love animals. They took that oath and they meant every word. The problem isn’t your vet. The problem is the system they are increasingly being asked to operate inside.

I was sitting with the owner of an independent practice recently, a veterinarian who built something from scratch because he genuinely believed he could do it differently. We were talking about the realities of running a clinic, and he walked me through the math. The number of patients they need to see each day just to keep the lights on. Just to make payroll. The margin between a thriving practice and a closed one is razor thin, and it is measured in appointment slots.

And then he told me about a dog that had come in that morning.

The owner brought her in panicked and knowing something was wrong. By the time they got her on the table, and looked under ultrasound, it was clear. An aggressive tumor. Ruptured. She was bleeding out internally, and there was nothing to be done.

He became a doctor and a counselor in the same moment. Reading the imaging, reading the owner, finding words for something that has no good words. Walking them through what was going to happen. Staying present for the goodbye.

And then.

He washed his hands. Took a breath. And knocked on the next door.

A routine appointment. A healthy dog. A family who had no idea what had just happened in the room next to them, and shouldn’t have to.

Veterinarians have one of the highest suicide rates of any profession, more than double the general population. That number doesn’t come from nowhere. It comes from people who entered medicine because they love animals, who carry the weight of loss as a professional standard, and who are now doing it inside a system that measures them in throughput and billable services.

The corporate takeover didn’t just change who owns the building. It changed the conditions inside it. Production quotas. Metrics. The pressure to upsell diagnostics. Independent vets trying to compete with the buying power of billion-dollar conglomerates while still honoring the reason they got into this in the first place.

Then add the rescues. The underfunded shelters bringing in animals who needed care weeks ago. The pet parents who have been googling and using AI at 2am and come in terrified and sometimes angry. The ones who can’t afford the treatment their pet needs, and the vet who has to navigate that conversation while the next appointment is already waiting.

It can be a vicious cycle. And the people caught inside it mostly got there because they couldn’t imagine doing anything else.

That's not someone to fight. That's someone worth fighting for.

What’s Happening in the Exam Room

There are aspects worth understanding about what happens inside the appointment itself.

A Chihuahua and a Great Dane do not receive the same dose of a human medication. But standard vaccine boosters? Often administered at the same volume, regardless of body weight or size. There’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to biology. There shouldn’t be one when it comes to vaccination either.

The link between repeated vaccination and injection-site tumors is not a fringe concern. It is documented science. The European Advisory Board on Cat Diseases has published formal guidelines on feline injection-site sarcomas, aggressive and invasive tumors that develop at vaccine sites. A causal relationship between certain adjuvanted vaccines and sarcoma development was established epidemiologically and led to the formation of a dedicated task force in 1996. The research has been ongoing for thirty years.

Vaccines are not the enemy. But automatic, annual, same-dose-for-every-animal boosters without ever asking whether the animal actually needs them — that’s where the questions should start.

On spaying and neutering: The guidance has changed. The old advice was spay or neuter early. What we know now is different. Wait until at least two years of age. And when possible, consider procedures that preserve the hormonal system: an ovary-sparing spay rather than a full removal, or a vasectomy rather than full castration. The endocrine system matters. Sterilizing an animal too early has consequences we are only beginning to fully understand. Your vet may not bring this up. Ask anyway.

On titer testing: Before your pet receives another round of automatic boosters, ask about titer testing. It’s a blood test that measures whether your animal already has sufficient antibodies, whether they actually need the vaccine or whether their immune system is already doing its job.

Here’s what most corporate practices won’t tell you: it doesn’t have to cost several hundred dollars. Have your vet draw the blood vial, usually around $20. Ask them to spin it. Drop it in a prepaid mailer and send it to an independent lab. Results come back in about a week. Total cost: around $80. That information is worth far more than a reflexive booster your pet may not need.

What If We’ve Accepted the Wrong Ceiling

Here’s a question worth sitting with.

When did we decide that ten or twelve years was just how long dogs live?

It wasn’t always the answer. Not all that long ago, dogs routinely lived into their late teens. Record holders have lived to 29 and 30 years old. These aren’t flukes. They’re data points. They tell us something about what’s possible when an animal is fed real food, kept out of the chronic inflammation cycle, and cared for by someone paying close attention and asking the right questions.

So here’s the question nobody is asking loudly enough.

If we are doing everything right, if the veterinary industry has never been bigger, the pet food market has never been more sophisticated, and we have never spent more money on our animals, then why are dogs living shorter lives than ever before?

We have accepted a lifespan for our animals that is a fraction of what may actually be possible. And we’ve done it so thoroughly that we don’t even question it anymore. Ten years feels normal. Twelve feels like a gift. Fifteen feels like a miracle.

What if it isn’t a miracle? What if it’s just what happens when we stop asking why and trust a system run by the almighty dollar?

The chronic ear infections. The allergies. The itchy skin. The tumors showing up in six-year-old dogs. The arthritis in animals that should still be in their prime. We manage these things. We medicate them. We accept them as the cost of having a pet.

But some of the oldest, healthiest animals alive have one thing in common: someone in their life was paying attention. Asking questions. Feeding them real food. Not just managing symptoms. Working to prevent them.

That’s not wishful thinking. That’s a different standard. And we’re allowed to want it.

The conversation that should be happening in every vet visit looks like this: What does the bloodwork tell us? What are they eating, really eating, and what is that doing to their body at a cellular level? What symptoms keep recurring, and why? Are there signs of chronic inflammation we haven’t connected the dots on yet?

That’s not fringe thinking. That’s asking better questions. And those better questions are what transformed Bella from the animal I brought home, broken, infected, shut down, into the dog people meet today and refuse to believe is the same one.

Real food made a staggering difference. Targeted immune support made a difference. Understanding what her body was actually fighting, instead of managing symptoms with another round of medication, made the difference.

That’s what integrative pet health is. It is not anti-veterinary. It is pro-informed. It fills the gaps that a fifteen-minute corporate clinic appointment doesn’t have time to address.

If you’re looking at your pet right now and wondering whether you’re missing something, whether the chronic ear infections or the recurring skin issues or the low energy are being managed instead of solved, that’s exactly the right question.

And if you want to go deeper, real food, root-cause thinking, what an integrative approach actually looks like for your specific animal, that’s exactly what I do.

I’m a certified Integrative Pet Health Coach, and I work with pet owners who are done with the symptom cycle and ready to ask better questions.

Bella did.

If this resonated, subscribe to The Jenn Files. I write about business, money, resilience, and grit — cutting through the noise so you can build something that can’t be broken. That includes the health of the animals who share your life.

Sources

• Fortune / Yahoo Finance — Mars veterinary revenue, 284% growth since entering vet space, VCA acquisition ($9.1B), Mars pet care as majority of company revenue

• Student Doctor Network — Mars pet care now 60% of $50B annual revenue; nearly 3,000 veterinary hospitals worldwide

• privateequityvet.org — Corporate ownership of 30% of general practices, 75% of specialty practices; searchable database of 7,000+ practices

• American Economic Liberties Project / Save Our Pets Act — Corporate and PE ownership estimates; 75% specialty

• Pitchbook via AAHA — $51.6B poured into veterinary sector by private equity

• The Nation — 95% of common pet food brands owned by six global conglomerates

• KKR & Co. Inc. SEC proxy statement, fiscal year 2024 — Joseph Bae total compensation $73,087,375; Scott Nuttall total compensation $64,195,805

• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, May 2024 — Median annual wage for veterinarians: $125,510

• American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA), 2025 — Real inflation-adjusted veterinarian salaries roughly equivalent to 2004 levels

• European Advisory Board on Cat Diseases (ABCD), Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery, 2015 — Feline injection-site sarcoma guidelines

• Vaccine-Associated Feline Sarcoma Task Force, formed 1996 — Epidemiological causal link established 1993

• Guinness World Records — Bluey, Australian cattle dog, verified oldest dog at 29 years and 5 months (1910-1939)

There’s a moment every growing business owner hits.

You’ve got real revenue. Maybe a team. Things are starting to feel like a business — not just a hustle with a bank account. And then someone says the words: health insurance.

And you get the quote.

$1,500 a month. Per person.

That number hits like a lead balloon. Because nobody — not the business coach, not the accountant, not the podcast you’ve been listening to for three years — prepared you for what this actually costs. They talked about hiring. They talked about payroll. They talked about culture.

Nobody talked about this.

I’ve spent years working on the inside of healthcare policy — HHS, among other places — and I’ve watched this system from both sides of the aisle. I understand the argument that everyone deserves coverage. I also understand the argument that free market competition drives down cost and drives up quality. Both arguments have merit.

Here’s the truth neither side wants to say out loud: the system is broken. It was patched together with subsidies that were never designed to be permanent, and now those patches are coming off at exactly the wrong time for small business owners.

If you’re building a business right now, you need to understand what’s actually happening. Not the sales pitch. Not the sponsored content. The real math.

What Just Changed (And Why It Hits You Specifically)

For four years — 2021 through 2025 — the federal government ran enhanced ACA subsidies that kept marketplace insurance artificially affordable. A 55-year-old self-employed business owner earning $70,000 might have been paying $200 a month for decent coverage.

Those subsidies expired January 1, 2026.

That same person is now looking at $600, $800, maybe more, depending on their state, their age, and where their income lands relative to the federal poverty line. One dollar over the threshold and you fall off the subsidy cliff entirely. No gradual phase-out. Just gone.

Here’s the number that stopped me: nearly 40% of the people losing subsidy eligibility are self-employed. That’s five times the rate of the general population. This isn’t a problem hitting corporate America. It’s hitting you.

And if you’re in the 50-to-64 bracket — too experienced to be young, too young for Medicare — you’re in the hardest spot of all. Premiums are age-based. A 64-year-old can be charged three times what a 25-year-old pays for the same plan. No Medicare yet. No subsidy cushion. Just the full freight, due monthly.

A to Z Without a Bridge

There’s an argument that letting the subsidies expire puts money back in taxpayers’ pockets. I understand the logic. And honestly, I think I understand what’s being attempted: break down a system that doesn’t work so something better can be built in its place. I’m not against that goal.

But you can’t jump from A to Z without a transition plan.

Right now we’re somewhere around D. And the people standing in that gap are small business owners, self-employed workers, and anyone in the 50-to-64 bracket who just watched their premium more than double overnight. According to KFF, average premiums rose 114% when the subsidies expired. That’s not a tax cut. That’s a cost shift. And the people absorbing it didn’t get a vote on the timing.

The bridge matters. The people in the gap matter. That’s not a political statement. It’s just math.

Let’s Talk About Who Isn’t Feeling This

Members of Congress technically buy their health insurance through an ACA exchange. Sounds fair, right? Same boat as the rest of us.

Except it isn’t.

The federal government pays roughly three-quarters of their premium through a stable employer contribution — funded by the taxes you and I pay — that has nothing to do with the ACA subsidies that just expired. When those subsidies went away on January 1, it wasn't members of Congress who saw their premiums double. It was self-employed workers, small business owners, and families who had nowhere else to go.

The people who voted on whether to extend those subsidies — or not — don’t personally feel what happens when they don’t.

Let me write that again.

The people who voted on whether to extend those subsidies — or not — are NOT part of the same system. They do not personally feel what happens when they fail to act.

This isn’t a partisan point. It’s an accountability point. Any elected official who votes on healthcare policy should be subject to the same market they’re legislating. They shouldn’t be able to vote their own pay raises. They shouldn’t receive lifetime benefits after two terms while the rest of us build our own retirement from scratch. And they shouldn’t have access to investment structures that everyday Americans can’t touch.

The separation between what they experience and what we experience is exactly why nothing changes.

And while we’re here — let’s talk about the pre-existing conditions argument, because it gets used to justify the entire ACA framework. People credit Obamacare with ending the pre-existing condition rider. What most don’t realize: that was always just a vote. One vote. It could have happened — and should have happened many years earlier — without overhauling the entire system. Some states had already eliminated pre-existing condition exclusions before the ACA existed. It was a solvable problem that got used to justify an unsolvable one.

I know this personally.

Before the ACA, I had a plan I liked, with no pre-existing exclusions. It was affordable, it was mine, and while it ticked up a little each year with age, it stayed under $300 a month. It didn’t cover pregnancy — because I didn’t need pregnancy coverage. When the ACA went into effect, my plan had to go away. The reason? It didn’t include maternity coverage.

Today my health plan runs around $2,500 a month. Higher deductibles. Higher copays. More “not covered” responses than I can count.

I found that out firsthand during a double lumpectomy. Four surgeons. We opted to do the reconstruction at the same time — no implants, just a reasonable request to make things look somewhat uniform. Everything was preapproved. Or so I thought. Afterward, during recovery, I received notice the reconstruction part of the surgery was denied. I was furious.

I raised hell. Let me get this straight — the insurer had originally authorized a double mastectomy. When my surgeon made the call in the operating room and didn’t need to take it all, suddenly they wanted to dictate what they would and wouldn’t cover on the back end? I was supposed to just walk around like that was fine? That a reasonable outcome after ‘breast-conserving surgery’ wasn’t a covered medical necessity?

I later asked a physician friend about prostate surgery. He told me that in most cases, a penile implant option is automatically offered and covered as part of the procedure.

I’ll let you sit with that inconsistency for a moment.

There’s more — birth control, IUDs, the little blue pill, pain management. But that’s another article.

The system doesn’t fail by accident. It fails by design — because the people designing it aren’t living inside it.

I’m not saying any of this to be angry. I’m saying it so you understand why waiting for Washington to fix this isn’t a strategy. Your ability to learn to work and build a business in spite of Washington is what you must master. And then fight like hell to vote in people who will actually change the broken systems and hold them accountable. They work for you.

The greatest power isn’t at the presidential level. It’s at the state level, and in who goes to Washington. The problem is that too many of them get swallowed into the system and start to justify their broken promises. They promised two terms. Here they still are. Now they’re part of the machine they once ran against.

Build anyway. Vote accordingly.

The People Profiting While You’re Panicking

Here’s what the numbers actually look like.

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In 2024, the CEOs of the six major national health plans earned a collective $159.4 million in total compensation. That’s not revenue. That’s not company performance. That’s what landed in their pockets while you were getting a denial letter during recovery from surgery.

The breakdown:

• UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Witty: $26.3 million

• Cigna CEO David Cordani: $23.2 million — 279 times the median Cigna employee salary

• Molina Healthcare CEO Joseph Zubretsky: $21.9 million — 268 times median employee pay

• Elevance Health CEO Gail Boudreaux: $20.5 million — 370 times the median Elevance employee salary of $55,372

• CVS Health CEO David Joyner: $18.2 million — 299 times median employee pay

And while those numbers were being locked in, the same companies were pouring money into stock buybacks and dividends. Cigna alone planned over $10 billion in returns to top investors. Elevance committed $3.3 billion to shareholder payouts.

This is the system. $159 million in CEO compensation in a single year, stock buybacks in the billions, and a denial letter waiting for you when you came out of surgery. That's not a broken system. That's a business model.

The Dirty Secret About “All Your Options”

When you start shopping, you’ll feel like there are a lot of choices. There aren’t.

Each state regulates its own insurance market. In practice, that means a handful of carriers — sometimes fewer than ten — are operating in your state’s small group market. And major players have been quietly exiting. Humana stopped offering group plans entirely. Cigna and Oscar ended their co-branded group offering. In some states, multiple carriers have left the small group market in the same period.

What looks like a menu of twenty plans is usually three or four carriers building different cost structures on the same foundation. Higher ER costs here, lower specialist copays there, different deductible configurations. It’s not real competition. It’s one rack of clothes in different colors.

Here’s a comparison that makes this land: when auto insurance was deregulated and carriers were allowed to compete across state lines, the market opened up. More plans. More competition. Actual pricing pressure. Health insurance doesn’t work that way. It’s state-by-state, carrier-by-carrier, and the concentration of players in most markets is striking — and not in a good way.

Cross-state competition isn’t a radical idea. It’s just one that doesn’t serve the existing power structure. Until that changes, you’re working with a limited menu and you need to know it.

And while we’re talking about what doesn’t work: the one-size-fits-all mandate has to go. A 28-year-old healthy single founder does not need the same plan as a 47-year-old with two kids and a chronic condition. Forcing everyone into the same structure doesn’t create equity. It creates resentment, workarounds, and people going uninsured because the only option available doesn’t fit their life. Let people choose what they actually need coverage for. That’s not a political position. That’s common sense.

The If/Then Map

Here’s how I’d think about it. No sales pitch, just decision logic.

If you’re pre-revenue or early-stage (under $75K in the business): Health insurance isn’t the first fire to put out. What you can do: check the ACA marketplace for individual coverage, understand your subsidy eligibility based on actual projected income, and look at short-term plans as a bridge — with eyes open about what they don’t cover. Do not make payroll decisions based on coverage you can’t sustain.

If you’re growing and have W-2 employees: This is where the math gets serious. You’re not legally required to offer coverage until you hit 50 full-time employees, but the talent conversation starts well before that. A few structures worth understanding before you commit to a traditional group plan:

• PEOs (Professional Employer Organizations): Companies like Justworks or TriNet pool employees from multiple small businesses to access larger-group rates. The catch: you give up some HR control, the pricing can be less transparent than it looks, and exiting is rarely as clean as entering. Know exactly what you’re agreeing to before you sign.

• ICHRA (Individual Coverage HRA): You set a monthly contribution amount. Employees choose their own individual plan on the exchange and get reimbursed. More flexibility, simpler administration, fully compliant. Worth understanding.

• Payroll platforms with benefits layers: Gusto, ADP, and others have built-in benefits marketplaces. The convenience is real. The depth of options varies significantly. Know what you’re actually getting — not what the demo makes it look like.

If you can afford to offer coverage: Do it. Not because it’s legally required — it isn’t, under 50 employees. Do it because the talent market is brutal and the people you want to hire have options. A meaningful employer contribution toward health insurance does more for retention than a ping-pong table ever will.

One of the things I wish I had done earlier in scaling my pet services company was offer a vehicle benefit and health insurance sooner. I held back because of the fear other business owners handed me — the risks, the costs, the potential liabilities. Be informed. But if you’ve done the math and you can withstand 24 months at those rates if everything went sideways, jump off the cliff. Benefits reduce turnover. They build loyalty. They signal that you’re building something real.

Questions to Ask Before You Sign Anything

The broker is not always your friend. The platform is not always transparent. Here are the questions that will tell you what you’re actually working with:

On the plan itself:

• What is the total monthly cost — employer portion and employee portion — for each coverage tier (individual, individual + spouse, family)?

• What is the deductible, and when does it reset?

• What’s the out-of-pocket maximum, and does it apply per person or per family?

• Which hospitals and specialists are in-network in the areas where my employees actually live?

• Is my primary care doctor in this network? If there’s an emergency and I need a specialist, am I required to stay in-network?

On the business math:

• If I contribute X per employee per month, what does that cost me annually at current headcount — and what does it look like if I add three people?

• Is the employer contribution tax-deductible, and what’s my actual net cost after that?

• Am I required to offer coverage to part-time employees, and at what hour threshold?

• What’s the minimum employee participation rate required to qualify for this group plan?

On the structure:

• Am I locked into this for 12 months, or is there flexibility if the business changes significantly?

• What happens to employees’ coverage if I have to reduce headcount?

• If I go with a PEO, what exactly am I giving up in terms of control — and what does it cost to exit? What fees are associated with leaving?

• Is there a better structure for my specific employee demographics: age range, health needs, geography?

The bottom line question: Can I sustain this cost for 24 months if revenue is flat? If the answer is no — don’t commit to it yet. A benefit you have to pull back is worse for morale than one you never offered.

The Reframe

The sticker shock is real. And the instinct is to put it off — we’ll figure it out when we’re bigger.

Here’s the problem with that: the longer you wait, the harder it gets. The talent you want to attract is making decisions right now about where to work. And if you’re in the 50-to-64 bracket yourself, your personal health insurance situation is directly tied to how you structure your business income.

The system isn’t going to get simpler. The subsidies may or may not come back — that’s a political question, not a certainty. What you can control is how clearly you understand your options at every stage of growth, so you’re not making a panicked decision in the middle of a hiring push.

Know the math before you need it.

The noise on this topic is loud. Sponsored comparison sites. Broker-referred content. Benefits platforms that overpromise and underdeliver.

None of it tells you what I just did.

That’s why I write this.

The people who actually control your state's insurance market are findable. Reachable. And more accountable than you think. More on that soon.

If this resonated, subscribe to The Jenn Files. I write about business, money, resilience, and grit — cutting through the noise so you can build something that can’t be broken.

Sources

• Fierce Healthcare — 2024 CEO compensation analysis of the six major national health plans ($159.4M collective total)

• S&P Global Market Intelligence — David Cordani / Cigna CEO compensation and pay ratio, 2024

• Becker’s Payer Issues — CEO-to-worker pay ratios across major payers, 2024 proxy filings

• Insurasales / SEC proxy filings — Andrew Witty / UnitedHealth Group compensation, 2024

• Jacobin / public filings — Cigna and Elevance Health stock buyback and dividend figures

• KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation) — ACA subsidy expiration impact; 114% average premium increase; self-employed share of subsidy-eligible population

• CNBC — Subsidy cliff analysis; premium increases for 50-to-64 age bracket, 2026

• healthinsurance.org — Subsidy cliff mechanics and 2026 marketplace rules

• No Labels — Congressional health insurance structure and employer contribution analysis

• Washington State Office of the Insurance Commissioner — State-level carrier approval data, small group market, 2025

• Stretch Dollar / Fierce Healthcare — Major carrier exits from small group market (Humana, Cigna/Oscar), 2024-2025

The morning after, we were standing in a hotel lobby. The funny part is that while I remember this moment so vividly, I honestly don’t remember what city we were in.

Three of us. Veterans in advance, communications, and operations. People who have done this long enough to know that the job isn’t glamorous, it’s surgical. My colleague, the primary lead on the event, had barely slept. The other colleague and I had been pulled in as reinforcement, leapfrogging ahead from other events, because when you’re running events back to back, sometimes you just need more people who already know how to run toward the fire.

We were sleep deprived, running on fumes. And we had just pulled off something extraordinarily complex in front of an audience that had no idea what it took.

That’s the thing about working with people who truly know the job. You don’t have to explain yourself. You don’t have to ask twice. Everyone knows their lane, everyone watches the edges, and when something starts to slip, someone’s already moving to catch it before it hits the floor. We weren’t just a team that day. We were a system.

We found a copy of the New York Times.

There it was. Front page. Above the fold. The photo took up most of the front page, and below the fold was the guts of the article.

The event. The confetti. The dignitaries, the celebrities, the crowd, the moment — captured and packaged and delivered to breakfast tables across the country as something that had simply... happened.

We looked at it for a moment.

My colleague, one of the most brilliant operators I’ve ever worked alongside (and I am fully aware I’m biased), looked at the front page and calmly said something to the effect of: “We made the cover of the New York Times… well, there’s that.”

Then we laughed.

Because what else do you do? You are exhausted, sometimes underappreciated, thinking in terms that very few people truly get, and about to go out and do it again.

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She walked right past me.

Soaking wet. Dripping water across the living room floor like she’d just crawled out of the ocean. Fur matted flat against her body, tail dragging, paws leaving little puddles with every step.

My cat, Lyra, had been in the pool.

I was sitting twenty-five feet away. Laptop open. Deep in whatever I was working on. I didn’t hear a thing. Not the splash. Not whatever happened after. Not the part where a six-year-old special needs cat on palliative care assessed an entirely new situation, one she’d never been in before, found the step, and got herself out.

I heard none of it.

What I got was the aftermath. A drenched cat walking past me with a look that said everything. I handled it. No thanks to you.

She didn’t stop. She didn’t meow. She just kept walking to the back bedroom, where she began the meticulous business of drying herself off. Lick by lick. On her terms. Without my help, because clearly I’d proven I wasn’t going to be any.

Here’s what you need to know about Lyra.

She’s a homebody. While our other cat treats the backyard like his personal wilderness, Lyra is the one who sticks her head out the door and watches from the threshold. Cautious. Deliberate. She knows her limits, which is exactly why she has the freedom to be outside when I’m home and the door is open.

She’s also special needs. Severe seizures. The kind that require serious medication and an integrative protocol we’ve built alongside her prescriptions. It’s kept her going longer than anyone expected. Last year, I didn’t think we’d make it to Christmas. She rallied.

We are on borrowed time, and we both know it. So when she wants to go outside and sniff some grass, feel the sun, maybe pretend she can still chase a gecko? She gets to do that. Because the alternative, locking her inside to keep her “safe” while she slowly disappears, that’s not living. That’s just dying with better optics.

I can only imagine what happened. She must have spotted a gecko. That particular temptation, the one thing that could make her break her own pattern, and she went for it. Threw caution out the window. Chased it straight into the pool.

And then, completely alone, in a situation she’d never been in before, she figured it out.

Twenty-five feet away, I didn’t know any of it was happening.

That’s exactly how businesses fail.

Not with a loud crash. Not with some dramatic moment where you see it coming and brace for impact. Quietly. Incrementally. The water turns. The clients go. The reputation shifts, and you’re still sitting there thinking everything is fine because nobody’s made it your emergency yet.

I think about a pool service company we used.

When we moved in, several neighbors on the street used the same company. Part of how we were introduced to them was that relatives of the owners actually live on our street. It felt like a natural fit. Things were fine at first. Weekly service, chemical levels good, pool looked great. Then the gaps started. I’d come home and wonder: was the pool even cleaned this week? I’d message them. The response was always the same: Yep, all good.

So I took their word for it.

The water started to turn. Levels were off. I couldn’t tell you the last time someone had actually shown up and done the work they were billing me for. Finally, out of frustration, I messaged a neighbor further up the street, someone I mostly only see driving by. Their response? They’d let the company go months earlier. Same story. Chemicals off, inconsistent service, no-shows, zero communication.

And then the detail that stopped me: the neighbors who canceled live right next door to the relatives. They had to have that conversation, the awkward, there’s-no-good-way-to-say-this conversation, with people connected to them by family. And they had it anyway. Because the service had dropped far enough that it was worth the discomfort.

Here’s the other part: the company they switched to charges more per month. They made the switch without hesitation.

That tells you everything. Price was never the issue. It was never about the money. It was about whether the work was actually being done and whether anyone bothered to prove it.

When I offered to share what I knew about elevating the customer experience, the response from the pool company was immediate: Oh, we’re good. Everyone is happy. We have plenty of business.

Until you don’t.

If you are in the service business, and I spent years building one from zero to seven figures, there are things that are non-negotiable. And they’re not complicated.

Every service gets documentation. Every visit gets proof. Every client gets communication and gratitude.

The technology to do this isn’t just available. It’s expected. Your client should never have to wonder if you showed up. The answer should already be in their inbox before the thought crosses their mind.

And here’s the math most service business owners get wrong: they think in terms of one job. One visit. One month.

That pool service was $150 a month. Multiply that by twelve. That’s $1,800 a year, per client. Now multiply that by four. Because it wasn’t just us. Four homes on the same block quietly let this company go. Same story across every single one.

Four homes. Same street. That’s $7,200 a year walking out the door, and that’s just the base rate. Before seasonal extras. Before repairs. Before referrals.

Here’s what makes it worse: a tight cluster of clients on one block is a service business’s dream. Minimal drive time. Maximum efficiency. You can run four stops in the time it takes to drive across town for one. That route wasn’t just revenue. It was profitable revenue. The kind operators spend years trying to build.

They didn’t lose four pool cleanings. They lost $7,200 a year, a perfectly efficient route, and the referral network of an entire street. And they earned a reputation they can’t outrun, because people talk. Especially in neighborhoods. Especially in Florida.

The splash is never as loud as you think it’s going to be.

Lyra got herself out of the pool.

She found the step. She walked inside, dripping. She handled a situation she’d never been in, alone, while I sat twenty-five feet away completely unaware.

She’s a fighter. She’s been proving that her whole life. But that’s not a business strategy.

You don’t get to sit twenty-five feet away from your clients, your operations, your reputation and wait for something to climb out on its own. Sometimes it’s completely silent. Sometimes the only evidence is the trail of water across the floor and a look that tells you everything you missed.

By then, the hard part is already over. The question is whether your business handled it, or whether it didn’t.

A note on outdoor cats: Lyra and Houston have access to a fully enclosed, secured backyard, and only when I’m home with the door open. Our fence and backyard were intentionally designed with the cats in mind to give them safe outdoor time. They are never outside unsupervised, and they are never allowed to roam freely.

I am not an advocate for letting cats roam the neighborhood. The risks are real and the statistics are not good. If you want to give your cat the gift of fresh air and sunshine, and you should, it matters, look into catios. They’re having a moment for good reason. A safe outdoor enclosure purpose-built for cats gives them everything they need without the dangers that come with unrestricted outdoor access. Do your research, build it right, and give them the world on your terms.

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