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Balancing two careers at once is tough—just ask Amy Beth Nolte.

In addition to leading the Moss Adams onboarding program, onboarding program manager Amy Beth is also co-owner of Rainy Day Bees, a small Seattle beekeeping and pure raw honey business she manages afterhours. You could call her a busy bee.

“Dividing your attention between two of your passions takes up a lot of mental space,” she said. “However, they both fuel each other in ways I never could have imagined.”

Planting the Hives

Amy Beth and her husband, Peter, are avid gardeners with a passion for bugs. Fourteen years ago, the pair was lucky to receive a beehive as a gift—little did they know that gift would fuel their passions and define the next decade of their lives.

Unfortunately, their space was limited, and they had nowhere to plant the hive.

“We wanted to place the bees in places they could flourish,” Amy Beth said. “We knew we didn’t have the room, so we thought we’d ask people in our neighborhood.”

The pair took to Facebook to ask friends and neighbors for help, and it wouldn’t be the first time Amy Beth and Peter reached out to their community for support. The more they cared for their hive, the more they discovered their love for beekeeping and raw honey, but limited space kept them from expanding their operations. When the pair decided to get a new hive, they were able to place it on the rooftop of Peter’s work.

That’s when they discovered something unexpected.

“Hives in different neighborhoods produced a different taste in the honey,” Amy Beth explained. “We hadn’t seen anything like that before. We had an authentic, unique, and local angle for our honey.”

Their discovery and continued passion for beekeeping pushed them to start Rainy Day Bees as a hyperlocal, pure raw honey business.

Busy Bees

After seven years of trying to balance their jobs and run a small business, Amy Beth and Peter soon realized Rainy Day Bees required more attention and hands. Peter decided to leave his job to become a fulltime beekeeper and they hired their first employees.

About three years after Peter left his job, Amy Beth joined Moss Adams. “Running a small business can really drain your money,” Amy Beth noted. She dedicated her weekdays to the firm, and her afternoons and weekends to the bee business.

“My career at Moss Adams began fueling us. Without it, we wouldn’t have been able to weather storms that hit our business,” Amy Beth said.

However, balancing two careers was more difficult than she anticipated. Amy Beth’s responsibilities required much of her mental real estate, and she was constantly thinking about her employees’ and new hires’ well-being, which meant sidelining her own.

“I had to learn to divide my attention properly,” Amy Beth said. “I needed to find time to focus and put all the pieces together, which was difficult to find. Over time, I realized I could unwind while gardening and tending to the bees. It helped to step away from the world and process my tasks for both of my jobs.”

Amy Beth’s full-time role at Moss Adams also provided valuable experience that improved how she showed up for her team at Rainy Day Bees.

“Working with our new hires taught me how to be a better leader,” Amy Beth said. “That’s how I understood why it was critical for our business and our employees to set realistic goals, offer the right tools to advance, and create a positive work environment.”

Supporting the Queen Bee

Amy Beth credits the workplace flexibility, supportive firm culture, and growth opportunities at Moss Adams for her ability to balance and thrive in both of her roles.

“Working from home granted me time to plan out my days more methodically,” Amy Beth said. “I’m transparent with colleagues about my time, such as when I utilize my lunch hour to check in with our employees at Rainy Day Bees. I can support and achieve my career and business goals thanks to Moss Adams.”

The firm’s client-centric advisory approach also informed Amy Beth technique for attracting and retaining customers for Rainy Day Bees. She’s applied all learnings to her small business, and having a relationship with Moss Adams has reinforced the importance of keeping up with taxes and accounting.

“We struggled doing our own taxes and realized we needed help with our finances,” Amy Beth said. “Spending time building new hire trainings on ‘how to be a client-centric advisor’ helped me see that our business didn’t need someone to just do our taxes, we needed an advisor who could also give us the value and support we needed to grow.”

Growing the Colony

Rainy Day Bees was recently awarded a $60,000 grant from the Washington State Department of Agriculture. They used half of the grant for a label finisher and the other half for new honey harvesting equipment, allowing them to extend a new label and extraction service line to other companies.

Despite the growth of her small business, Amy Beth plans to stay at Moss Adams. Now that she’s found a way to balance both careers effectively, she can’t imagine choosing one over the other—not when mentoring new hires and co-leading her small business have both become her passion.

In fact, she’s hopeful her careers may merge one day.

“I’m still waiting for the day we are allowed to use the roof of our Seattle office to place one of our hives,” Amy Beth joked.