A woman who quit a job paying over $200,000 a year explains why she's happier earning less than a quarter as much

Business Insider

March 28, 2016

Sonia Thompson headshot

(Courtesy of Sonia Thompson) Sonia Thompson.
In 2012, Sonia Thompson had it all.

Working in marketing for Johnson & Johnson, she was earning over $200,000 a year, living alone in a three-bedroom townhouse outside of Philadelphia. Things were good.

"I had this job that I loved — for a while — I had a house, I had all the things people say you should have," she remembers. "I felt like I was living the American Dream."

Things were good ... but not great.

"I was in my early 30s and I had this feeling that there had to be more," Thompson recalls. "It was great when I was acquiring the things, holding this high-powered job, but there was an emptiness there. I thought there had to be more than these physical things and this money. There has to be more to life than getting a mortgage and going to work every day to pay it off."

Her revelation wasn't exactly unexpected. In the first of her nine years working for the healthcare company, she had realized that the corporate life wasn't for her. One day, she knew, she would want to strike out on her own. As her salary rose over the years, she didn't inflate her lifestyle along with it, instead choosing to put her spare cash into savings for some day down the road.

"Someday" came when she returned from a two-week trip to South Africa in early 2012. It was the longest trip she'd taken in nine years working for her employer, and coincided with the completion of a manuscript for her book, "Delight Inside: Build Your Dream Business That Keeps Customers Coming Back for More." Once she received an annual bonus of about $30,000 a month later, she had two years of living expenses saved and was ready to branch out on her own.

Thompson left her six-figure job and sold her 1,600-square-foot home with the idea of building a consulting business around the frameworks outlined in her book.

"Because I had that two-year cushion of savings, I didn't feel like, 'Oh, my gosh, I have to make money right now,'" Thompson says. "I had to learn about the type of business I wanted, and I could think strategically instead of taking whatever I could get. That buffer was able to give me what I needed."

She began doing one-on-one consulting work with clients she found through her network, which turned into the business she runs today: TRY Business School. Now, she offers individual coaching packages ranging from $199 for a single session to a six-month program for $500 a month, as well as a series of courses that range in price from $147 to $497 and a free summit.