Colleen Budde: What If the System Was Never Built for You?
From Think Outside the Lines by Shawn Feeney
May 27, 2026 · 34 min
About this episode
Colleen Budde discusses her journey from the corporate world to entrepreneurship and the challenges faced along the way.
Colleen Budde holds two mechanical engineering degrees, spent nearly a decade navigating the automotive and defense industries, and walked away from a combined household income of $300,000 — not because of a crisis, not because of a disaster, but because the system she was operating inside of was never going to bend. She and her husband purchased an Office Evolution franchise in January 2020, survived a pandemic with a newborn, found a building that would take a chance on them, and built something real. Today Colleen runs her coworking space alongside Budde Consulting Group, where she works with small business owners navigating the messy, honest, unglamorous middle of building something on their own terms. She also writes and builds community through her Mompreneur Facebook page and Substack — creating space for people at every stage of the journey to find each other and realize they're not doing it alone. This is a conversation about discomfort as information, time as wealth, and what it actually looks like to build a life the system never offered you. Connect with Colleen: 🌐 buddeconsultinggroup.com 📸 Instagram: @colleen_the_ 💼 LinkedIn: Colleen Budde In this episode, we…
People in this episode
Host: Shawn Feeney
Guest: Colleen Budde
Topics covered
- career change
- entrepreneurship
- women in engineering
- personal growth
- community building
Keywords
- mechanical engineering
- entrepreneurship
- pandemic
- coworking space
- Mompreneur
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Budde Consulting Group, Office Evolution
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