Is this the end of my career break? I’m back from two creator events in Boise with my brain absolutely BUZZING, and a question I'd been avoiding for almost a year staring me right in the face.

This episode is me finally telling you what I've been working on and what it means for what's next.

In This Episode:

• Why I almost skipped the $2,500+ investment that ended up changing everything
• The pattern I kept noticing in Boise that I couldn't ignore
• The skill I buried in the attic after my layoff, and why I'm pulling it back out
• An honest update on the money I've made during this career break

Resources & Links:

Episode 6: Money or Freedom? The Two 6-Figure Offers That Almost ENDED My Career Break (published February 10th)

Episode 9: From 6-Figures to $1,127 in Gig Work: 3 Humbling Months of Being "Busy" (published March 3rd)

Let's Connect:

Follow me on Instagram: @alisonkinsey or send me an email: alison@alisonkinsey.com.

Connect with Alison on LinkedIn.

I also help entrepreneurs and thought leaders launch and grow their podcasts through my boutique podcast editing agency, Podcasting for Creatives.

I’m still REELING over this. Airbnb invited me to fly to San Francisco for an all expenses paid experience at their headquarters for their 2026 Summer Release.

This is far from a play-by-play. I’m taking you behind the scenes of the most interesting aspects of this trip, what surprised me the most, the people I met, and why this brand activation meant SO much more than a free flight.

In This Episode:

• A reality check that had me questioning everything and feeling defeated
• How the Airbnb team caught me off guard (in a good way)
• The 2 Airbnb stays (out of 100) that didn't exactly go as planned
• What Airbnb got right about hospitality, community, and making people feel seen

Resources & Links:

Watch the 2026 Airbnb Summer Release Event on YouTube (I was in the audience!)

Let's Connect:

Follow me on Instagram: @alisonkinsey or send me an email: alison@alisonkinsey.com.

Connect with Alison on LinkedIn.

I also help entrepreneurs and thought leaders launch and grow their podcasts through my boutique podcast editing agency, Podcasting for Creatives.

A very unexpected invitation pulled me across the country, so here I am, popping in from my hotel room in San Francisco.

This episode will feel like a spontaneous, casual voice note, but we’re also talking about opportunities… and how you can create more of them if you just send the damn email!

In This Episode:

• The email draft I sat on for WEEKS and what happened when I finally hit send
• Carly Valancy’s reach out experiment and her overall success rate
• What exactly led to me getting a mysterious invite to San Francisco
• The deeper fear that hides underneath the possibility of rejection

Resources & Links:

Follow Carly Valancy on LinkedIn and check out her Substack article where she shares more about her Reach Out experiment.

Let's Connect:

Follow me on Instagram: @alisonkinsey or send me an email: alison@alisonkinsey.com.

Connect with Alison on LinkedIn.

I also help entrepreneurs and thought leaders launch and grow their podcasts through my boutique podcast editing agency, Podcasting for Creatives.

Did you notice I went quiet? No episodes, no social media, no showing up. Life got heavy in a way I wasn't expecting, and honestly… I needed a minute.

This episode is part nostalgia, part grief, and part reminder that the scariest leaps are always the ones worth taking.

In This Episode:

• Why I’ve been grieving the past few days, and the pit in my stomach I felt when I was at TEDx
• The weird butterfly effect of leaving home and accidentally building an entirely different life
• Losing my dog unexpectedly, and the spiral of thinking about alternate timelines and “what if” moments
• The moment my car’s alternator failed on a busy California freeway - and why we almost gave up

Let's Connect:

Follow me on Instagram: @alisonkinsey or send me an email: alison@alisonkinsey.com.

Connect with Alison on LinkedIn.

I also help entrepreneurs and thought leaders launch and grow their podcasts through my boutique podcast editing agency, Podcasting for Creatives.

I did NOT expect a 6-week pottery class to turn into a bigger conversation about quitting, intuition, and the things we stay stuck in for way too long. But that’s exactly what happened.

What started as a small creative experiment on my career break ended up showing me how much resistance I was feeling and what kinds of creative experiences actually light me up.

In This Episode:

• What resistance reveals about creative expansion vs. adding another open tab to your life
• My unexpected visit with a reiki healer a few months before I got laid off
• The complacency I felt in the final stretch of my tech career, even while still liking my job
• The internal tension between leaving a stable job for entrepreneurship, and sunk cost fallacy

Let's Connect:

Follow me on Instagram: @alisonkinsey or send me an email: alison@alisonkinsey.com.

Connect with Alison on LinkedIn.

I also help entrepreneurs and thought leaders launch and grow their podcasts through my boutique podcast editing agency, Podcasting for Creatives.

For 8 months, I’ve been avoiding the job market, questioning if I want to “enter the arena.” And it’s because the stories I'm hearing are genuinely jaw-dropping.

The rules have changed in 2026. We can no longer reactively apply to hundreds of jobs. Our networks matter more than EVER, and I’m ready to share all of my theories.

In This Episode:

• My “life admin” week, and why I skipped last week’s episode
• Why the traditional job search feels more broken than ever
• The two arenas you can choose to play in, and why one of them is a crowded, exhausting dead end
• Why the "white picket fence" version of a career might be the thing we need to question

Resources & Links:

Episode 8: A $107K Portfolio Career, “Boring” Businesses, & the Rise of Unconventional Work

Let's Connect:

Follow me on Instagram: @alisonkinsey or send me an email: alison@alisonkinsey.com.

Connect with Alison on LinkedIn.

I also help entrepreneurs and thought leaders launch and grow their podcasts through my boutique podcast editing agency, Podcasting for Creatives.

Last week, I REALLYYYY stretched myself by saying “yes” and speaking on stage at a local podcaster’s panel.

I'm going to take you into my head for the entirety of it - the anticipation, the "day of" investments I made, what it felt like minutes before walking on stage, and how podcasting has shaped who I am as a person.

In This Episode:

• Live clips from my introduction on stage, along with some panel highlights
• The three “power words” I wrote in my journal before I got on stage
• The $60 and $13 investments that changed how I showed up
• The unexpected part of committing to this experience that drained the most energy
• Did I get paid? And was it worth it?

Resources & Links:

This is the bronzer I used for a sunkissed glow on stage:

Too Faced Chocolate Soleil Melting Bronzing Stick

Let's Connect:

Follow me on Instagram: @alisonkinsey or send me an email: alison@alisonkinsey.com.

Connect with Alison on LinkedIn.

I also help entrepreneurs and thought leaders launch and grow their podcasts through my boutique podcast editing agency, Podcasting for Creatives.

Nobody talks about what happens when a high salary stops feeling like enough. I was making over $200,000 a year and STILL attaching my sense of worth to every paycheck, every commission, every win.

This is a vulnerable episode that goes deep into the complex layers of lifestyle creep, what it was like to earn at a high level and why I was still chasing “more” even when I was already maxed out.

In This Episode:

• The debt that “ballooned” to 5-figures overnight when I was in my early 20’s
• How I got caught in an unexpected shame spiral because of lifestyle creep
• The “overemployment” rabbit hole I fell into while already burned out

Related Episodes:

Episode 1: I Lost My $200K Tech Job… and Everything I Thought I Wanted

Episode 5: We Scaled Podcasting for Creatives to 22 Clients… Then My Husband Ended Up in the ER

Let's Connect:

Follow me on Instagram: @alisonkinsey or send me an email: alison@alisonkinsey.com.

Connect with Alison on LinkedIn.

I also help entrepreneurs and thought leaders launch and grow their podcasts through my boutique podcast editing agency, Podcasting for Creatives.