Latest / You're Overqualified Podcast - Career and Leadership Strategies for Women / 124. Why You Don't Have to Quit Your Job to Start Your Business

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124. Why You Don't Have to Quit Your Job to Start Your Business · You're Overqualified Podcast - Career and Leadership Strategies for Women

• 0:01
  Hi, welcome to the year Overqualified podcast.
• 0:03
  And I'm Danny Tan, leadership coach and founder of She Belongs
• 0:06
  Here. Just to give you a friendly
• 0:08
  reminder that you do belong here.
• 0:09
  And being a former VP of a billion dollar organization,
• 0:13
  moved to full time entrepreneurship and leadership
• 0:15
  coaching for everyone, but especially women and especially
• 0:18
  especially women of color who are first and 2nd Gen.
• 0:21
  This is a podcast for you to remind you that you are more
• 0:24
  than overqualified. And so for today's episode,
• 0:26
  we're going to talk about funding your business with your
• 0:29
  9 to 5. And so I just got off a workshop
• 0:32
  from just the other day where I was speaking to a group of women
• 0:36
  who have their day job. They're nine to five, and
• 0:38
  they're looking to utilize that strategically to help them fund
• 0:42
  their side businesses and get them up and running so they can
• 0:45
  eventually have an exit plan, exit strategy to move into
• 0:47
  entrepreneurship full time. So I thought, hey, why not talk
• 0:50
  about it here on the podcast too.
• 0:52
  So let's dive in on how to strategically use your 9:00 to
• 0:55
  5:00 to really launch off your business, right?
• 1:00
  And I'll get a little background on myself.
• 1:01
  And so when it came to building my business that I do now when
• 1:05
  it comes to leadership coaching, right, the first thing that
• 1:08
  happened was I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I knew I
• 1:10
  wanted to build some kind of business.
• 1:13
  So when I was working in corporate, I was AVP of digital
• 1:16
  e-commerce and merchandising. And so my day-to-day came down
• 1:20
  to helping identify brands that were underperforming and turn
• 1:23
  them around and help them perform.
• 1:25
  Whether that was through merchandising, site strategy,
• 1:28
  tech stack, inventory, assortments of people
• 1:31
  development, hiring the right people, developing the right
• 1:33
  people, marketing strategies, you name it.
• 1:36
  And so by doing that, I really understood how to take a
• 1:39
  business that maybe is not performing well and make it
• 1:42
  successful because I was please measure to year over year growth
• 1:45
  on many, many levels. That's that was always
• 1:47
  important. But I always found that my
• 1:49
  favorite part about what I did was the operations, the systems
• 1:52
  developing people, helping them be able to learn new skills, be
• 1:56
  able to grow a lot when it came to what it is they did.
• 2:00
  So maybe it was like helping them present and speak in
• 2:02
  meetings. Maybe it was helping them get
• 2:03
  visibility with leadership. Maybe it was helping them learn
• 2:06
  how to analyze metrics in a certain way.
• 2:07
  Maybe it was helping them figure out how to do something in a
• 2:10
  more efficient way that was taking them 10 hours to reduce
• 2:12
  it down to five hours. It was just always my favorite
• 2:14
  part of my job. And so with that, I knew I
• 2:17
  wanted to do something more. And that's when I figured out,
• 2:19
  OK, what can I build a business around that will help me
• 2:22
  continue to expand on the parts that I love about my job?
• 2:24
  And so that's when I started working with a coach and a
• 2:28
  mentor on which developed for my business.
• 2:30
  And so when I did that, the first two years of my business
• 2:33
  where I was building out, you know, she belongs here.
• 2:36
  Then it was named something different.
• 2:37
  I had done it for two years while holding my corporate job.
• 2:41
  And so this is a part that I think is really interesting is
• 2:43
  that a lot of advice or feedback that we may be given is if you
• 2:47
  want to go all on your business, just, you know, quit your job
• 2:50
  and go all in and on your business.
• 2:52
  But that can go really scary, like emotionally, physically,
• 2:56
  mentally, and so many different ways, especially if you're
• 2:58
  somebody who maybe didn't come from a place of financial
• 3:01
  security. Maybe it was really scary.
• 3:04
  The idea to or it is really scary the idea to give up your
• 3:07
  secure day job where you have a paycheck and benefits and you
• 3:11
  know, a steady stream of income to just go all in on in your
• 3:13
  business. That feels like it's new.
• 3:15
  And so I just want to normalize that you do not have to full
• 3:18
  stop go all into your business without a plan.
• 3:21
  I think it's really important to create a plan.
• 3:23
  And so I want to just kind of highlight what those plan points
• 3:26
  will be. And so a lot of the women that I
• 3:28
  work with, they work with me because they're coming to get
• 3:31
  promoted, negotiate their salary, get into a higher level,
• 3:34
  get into a leadership position, practice your visibility
• 3:37
  practice to be able to their ability to present and speak in
• 3:39
  rooms. But the other parts that I don't
• 3:42
  always talk about all the time is once they've hit in a certain
• 3:45
  threshold in their career, they want to plan for their future.
• 3:49
  And so when they're planning for their future, they're thinking,
• 3:51
  I don't know if I want to work for an organization, I've been
• 3:54
  making them so much money or I've been getting them so much
• 3:57
  funding, or I've been getting them, you know, so many things
• 3:59
  that I want to do it for myself. And they want to essentially
• 4:01
  future proof for themselves what an option could be.
• 4:04
  And so when they're building their businesses, the safest way
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  I say like energetically to show up to building your business is
• 4:10
  by having a current paycheck coming in.
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  And so that's why I usually recommend for them like a way to
• 4:16
  exit, like an exit strategy or a way to fire yourself essentially
• 4:19
  in the long term. So you set up for yourself goals
• 4:22
  of when do you want to be in your business full time by have
• 4:25
  some target dates. So I at the time had set 2
• 4:29
  target dates for myself. So I usually have my clients set
• 4:30
  some timelines of OK, what is your first goal for when you
• 4:34
  want to be all in on your business?
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  And what is like your second your second goal.
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  So they have two dates typically that we outline of what they
• 4:41
  want to achieve for when they're going all in their business.
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  Then based off of that, we create a plan of what do you
• 4:47
  want to have in your business reserves saved So that way you
• 4:49
  feel secure that if you don't have a single sale for a few
• 4:51
  months, you're OK. And then what do you want to
• 4:53
  have in your personal reserves saves that way if you don't have
• 4:55
  any new sales come in, what do you have there as well?
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  I do this because it's really important that when we quit our
• 5:01
  jobs and we go all in our business, we may emotionally not
• 5:05
  be ready yet and that secure that insecurity or that
• 5:07
  financial instability might make us nervous and those fears will
• 5:10
  start to come out. So I always think it's really
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  important to understand financially collecting the data
• 5:16
  of what it is that you need to feel good about making that
• 5:19
  move. And so we do that part first of
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  what is the timeline for your exit strategy or exit plan?
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  And then what are the numbers that you feel you need from your
• 5:27
  business perspective and from your personal perspective in
• 5:30
  order to hit that? And then what are your saving
• 5:33
  targets, right? So how are you saving in order
• 5:35
  to hit those reserves in order to hit that exit timeline?
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  And so that's what we do together in coaching.
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  So that what you want, you understand your personal
• 5:42
  expenses, you entertain your business expenses, you
• 5:45
  understand how much you want to have saved.
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  So do you want three months, six months, 12 months for either
• 5:49
  one? And then how do you create a
• 5:51
  savings plan that makes sense for that?
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  And it's super crucial to know your numbers because that's why
• 5:56
  businesses typically fail, right?
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  They're failing because we have our eyes covered.
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  We don't want to look at the numbers and numbers look seem
• 6:02
  really scary. They feel really scary, which
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  they do, right? But also it's a part of
• 6:05
  business. It's just a part of what it is
• 6:07
  that we have to do when we have to execute and it's skill that
• 6:09
  we have to learn. And so in order to not fail, the
• 6:12
  best thing to do is to know your numbers.
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  And I was asked that question yesterday was like, what's the
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  number one thing that I kind of see that happens that drops off
• 6:19
  when it comes to, you know, business owners and starting
• 6:21
  out. And the biggest thing is just
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  not knowing your numbers, like period.
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  But that's besides me coaching leaders who are building their
• 6:27
  own consulting businesses or coaching businesses.
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  It's also when I was in corporate and I was helping
• 6:31
  brands that were unsuccessful, not profitable become
• 6:34
  profitable. It was because they were blind
• 6:35
  to their numbers. And so that's the biggest thing
• 6:38
  that I help my clients with when it comes to starting out their
• 6:40
  own business. So they may be new director, new
• 6:44
  VP, new senior manager in their current role.
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  And you might be saying to yourself, well, how are they
• 6:48
  managing that plus building a business?
• 6:50
  Well, I did both. And so I have all the strategies
• 6:53
  and tips that I'm, I'm giving them on how to do both.
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  And so we do a lot of time audits.
• 6:57
  We do a lot of time blocking. We also make sure that we have
• 7:01
  the schedule that makes sense for what is they want to
• 7:02
  achieve. And then we also have those
• 7:03
  financial plans for them. And so it's so super important.
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  That's how you create a plan that's successful.
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  I always say, like people say, oh, I'm too busy or I don't have
• 7:11
  enough money. We prioritize the things that
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  are important to us. So if it is something that you
• 7:15
  truly want to do, you create the priorities to make it happen,
• 7:17
  which is what we do within coaching.
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  And it's that accountability that you're looking for to make
• 7:20
  that happen. And so that's why I love the
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  work that I do because I have women coming in who are like,
• 7:25
  yeah, I want to do the thing, let's make it happen.
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  I'm like, OK, well, by making this commitment to work with me,
• 7:30
  you know you're going to make it happen because that's why we're
• 7:32
  here. Hello.
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  And it's so much fun. So that would be one of the
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  biggest things that I would say when it comes to how can you
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  strategically use your 9:00 to 5:00 to start your business, to
• 7:42
  kick it off. And so that can be that it is
• 7:45
  creating reserves for your personal expenses and
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  potentially your business expenses.
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  So you have that there. So when you do decide to lunch
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  off, you feel a safety and security around the other things
• 7:55
  that you can do is really doing that in order to create reserves
• 7:58
  for your personal, but for your business, every single sale that
• 8:00
  you have come in, just keeping that and holding it and saving
• 8:04
  it, right. So for the first two years of my
• 8:06
  business, I didn't use a penny of any of the sales that I made.
• 8:09
  So for first years of business, everything that I made in my
• 8:11
  business just stayed in in the business account.
• 8:13
  And then for my personal, I was taking any savings that I had
• 8:16
  and making reserves for emergency funds for my personal.
• 8:19
  So when I left the two year mark, I had my business was
• 8:22
  self-sufficient in its savings and then my personal was all
• 8:24
  saved up. So if I did not have a sale for
• 8:26
  six months, I was going to be totally safe.
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  And that's way longer than it needs to be, right?
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  Like you're going to be totally fine because after you've been
• 8:34
  accruing this and doing this, you're going to be totally OK.
• 8:35
  So when people ask me like, how can I do it strategically, this
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  is some of the things that I would definitely say a lot of
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  the times too, is that we don't necessarily know what to invest
• 8:43
  in. And so a lot of the time like,
• 8:46
  oh, I have to invest on the website, I have to invest on, on
• 8:48
  creating the LLC, I have to invest in my first hire.
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  Listen, you need to invest in understanding how to make money,
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  period. If you don't know how, if you
• 8:57
  know how to generate revenue, which is acquiring a client,
• 9:00
  which is going to pay you and you're able to do that, then
• 9:02
  that funds everything else. And so the other thing that I
• 9:04
  would say is you're 9 to 5 is going to give you the ability to
• 9:09
  experiment and explore, right? So when you're in your business
• 9:12
  full time, you may be trying to figure out what's the right
• 9:14
  marketing channel. How do I make sure I'm running a
• 9:17
  sales call properly? How I'm making sure I'm
• 9:19
  marketing the right person properly?
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  How do I there's so much more weight when you're just in your
• 9:24
  business and you don't have a backup, which is your, your day
• 9:27
  job. Well, you're like, Oh my gosh,
• 9:28
  this sales call has to go perfectly.
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  I have to land it. I have to make sure like every
• 9:34
  single marketing piece makes sense.
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  I want to make sure every investment that I make makes
• 9:37
  sense because you don't feel like you have like that fall
• 9:40
  back or that runway. And so it's amazing when you
• 9:43
  have your 9:00 to 5:00 and you're doing the experimentation
• 9:45
  phase of your business of trying to figure out what is my
• 9:48
  marketing channel? Who is my ideal client?
• 9:50
  Who can I do market research calls with and talk to?
• 9:53
  What kind of service do I want to offer?
• 9:55
  How do I want to price it? You get to do that in a place of
• 9:58
  experimentation and have fun with it versus stressing about
• 10:01
  is this the right thing? I have to make every single
• 10:03
  thing count. There's so much more pressure
• 10:05
  that shows up and it shows up energetically and people can
• 10:08
  kind of smell that and it's, it is what it is, but it's just the
• 10:10
  truth, right? Because we need it so much
• 10:11
  harder. And so I would just say like the
• 10:14
  ways that you're 9 to 5 can benefit you is financially, yes,
• 10:18
  to help fund and create savings to create that, that safety for
• 10:21
  you. The other pieces too, is it
• 10:23
  gives you some breathing room for some experimentation where
• 10:25
  each investment doesn't feel so heavy or so, so important that
• 10:28
  you can really start to figure out what makes sense for you.
• 10:30
  And the last piece is too like there is so much mindset work
• 10:35
  that comes with having a business.
• 10:37
  There is so much mindset work. I would say that's the biggest
• 10:39
  overhaul that I had to do when it came to building out my
• 10:41
  business was doing the mindset work.
• 10:43
  If you have fear of visibility, if you have fear of being seen,
• 10:46
  if you have fear of speaking up, if you have fear of talking
• 10:48
  about your value, if you have fear about sales, if you're
• 10:51
  about, you know, being helpful, all of those things will come up
• 10:54
  times 10. And so if you have your, your
• 10:57
  day job, you're 9:00 to 5:00 to help fund whatever it is you
• 11:00
  might need, whether it is therapy, whether it is, you
• 11:02
  know, a coach, whether it is mentorship to help you with the
• 11:06
  mindset blocks are going to come up to give you the foundational
• 11:09
  mental like health and support to be successful at your
• 11:12
  business. That can be super important.
• 11:13
  I would say the majority of the coaching that I got within my
• 11:15
  first two years of business were mindset focus.
• 11:18
  Yes, I was given strategy. Yes, I was giving things to
• 11:20
  execute and to do. But the biggest thing that was
• 11:23
  holding me back from actually making it happen was the mindset
• 11:25
  piece. Because when we have had our 9
• 11:29
  to 5 corporate job there to keep us, you know, secure of I'm just
• 11:33
  going to do the work and I get paid no matter what.
• 11:34
  And in business, you're like, wait, I have to take certain
• 11:36
  different actions, certain different strategies, test them
• 11:38
  out to see what happens. It can be super scary because a
• 11:41
  lot of the times we are the face of our business and also we are
• 11:44
  the key decision maker of our business or the sole decision
• 11:46
  maker of our business. And so that will bring up a lot
• 11:49
  of things when it comes to our mind and our mindset.
• 11:52
  And so I always say if your business can help, if your, if
• 11:55
  your day job can help fund you to get the security that you
• 11:58
  need, whether that's through being resourced through a
• 12:00
  therapist, a somatic coach, you know, a business coach, a
• 12:03
  mentor, then have that be there to help give you that
• 12:06
  foundation. Because the foundational mindset
• 12:08
  of all of this, this is super crucial for you to be able to
• 12:11
  take action. So the other thing I always like
• 12:13
  to send as a reminder is if you have set a goal and time is
• 12:16
  going by and you have not achieved that goal, it is not
• 12:18
  because you do not have time. Let me say it again.
• 12:22
  You have set a goal and a lot of time has gone by.
• 12:26
  It is not because you do not have the time.
• 12:27
  There is something there that is blocking you, whether it is
• 12:30
  mentally, emotionally, and whether you're having a fear,
• 12:33
  whether you're having insecurity, whether you're
• 12:34
  having a worry. And So what you actually need is
• 12:37
  some support there to make it happen.
• 12:40
  Either that's a coach helping you undercover uncover what is
• 12:43
  going on there, or that is a therapist helping undercover
• 12:46
  what's going on there. But that's going to be the
• 12:47
  crucial thing because let me tell you the amount of times
• 12:51
  where I was like, oh, I'm just too busy.
• 12:52
  Oh, I just can't do this. And then when we got to the root
• 12:55
  of the problem, I, you know, found out that I have a fear of
• 12:58
  this. I have a fear of that, you know,
• 13:00
  And so it's super, super crucial that you keep the receipts on
• 13:05
  what it is you're actually taking action on.
• 13:06
  So I have one client, for example, who she got a promotion
• 13:09
  within one month of us working together and then she wanted to
• 13:12
  build her consulting business. I kept telling her, I need you
• 13:15
  to go out there and start doing some market research and having
• 13:17
  conversations with people to figure out who your ideal client
• 13:19
  is to put yourself out there. I need you to join specific
• 13:21
  kinds of memberships where your ideal client would be so that
• 13:23
  way you can go ahead and start to hang out with them.
• 13:25
  And she kept being like dragging her feet about it, dragging her
• 13:27
  feet about it because she didn't feel comfortable initiating
• 13:30
  those conversations. And so I asked her, you know,
• 13:33
  you want to make this happen. You have a timeline of when you
• 13:35
  want to make it happen by you're not taking action on what is the
• 13:37
  reason? Oh, I just don't have time to
• 13:38
  prioritize it. No, it's like what?
• 13:40
  Let's dig deeper. And so we did some exercises on
• 13:44
  what it was to uncover it. So we sit together, we just a
• 13:46
  different, this is what I call like the, the uncovering the
• 13:49
  fear, and I call it the evidence ladder.
• 13:50
  And so when we did that, we found that the true piece was
• 13:53
  that she knew what goal she wanted to have, but she didn't
• 13:55
  feel like she had the evidence in the OK and the safety in
• 13:58
  order to make it happen. So we'd always ladder that out.
• 14:01
  So I call it evidence ladder. So then we went and sort of with
• 14:03
  what is the smallest step to take forward with that, because
• 14:05
  we found that there was a fear that she felt like she didn't
• 14:08
  have enough evidence to combat. And so that's what we kind of
• 14:10
  talk about there. So just understanding that
• 14:12
  there's ways to make this happen, but it can come up.
• 14:15
  And so you know, whether you are a client who has just gotten
• 14:19
  promoted and you are moving into consulting or you're a client of
• 14:22
  mine who you have your day job, but you know you want to build
• 14:25
  up that coaching business on the side and you're just trying to
• 14:27
  figure out where to start. That's the plan and the
• 14:29
  accountability that we take. A lot of the times we don't have
• 14:31
  it figured out. Like I have clients who come to
• 14:33
  me on the call, on our discovery call, we're scoping out what it
• 14:36
  would be like to work together. And they're like, I just know
• 14:38
  that I want more, but I'm not sure what it is.
• 14:40
  I'm not sure how to get there. Okay, come to the call.
• 14:43
  Don't ever feel like you have to come to the call with everything
• 14:45
  figured out. That's why you're coming to
• 14:47
  coaching. And so I feel like a lot of
• 14:48
  people have a fear of just naming the fact that they want
• 14:51
  more. And so I would just say to
• 14:52
  yourself, if you know that you want more, that is enough.
• 14:56
  And so I would recommend that you come talk to me because I
• 15:00
  definitely want to help you. And I think there is just so
• 15:02
  much power. There is power in utilizing your
• 15:05
  nine to five. You have worked so freaking
• 15:07
  hard, right? You worked so hard to climb the
• 15:09
  ladder, whether that is to become a people leader, whether
• 15:12
  that is to still be a really strong individual contributor,
• 15:15
  whether that is to be amazing at what it is that you do.
• 15:18
  And so you've worked so hard by developing the skills and the
• 15:21
  experience and the credibility to do the work that you do right
• 15:23
  now. And so why would you not now
• 15:26
  leverage that for yourself, for your future?
• 15:28
  And yeah, you could say like, oh, I have more time.
• 15:31
  Listen, I just told you that it took me two years of doing both
• 15:34
  at the same time to fully go into what is it I want to do
• 15:36
  comfortably. And I didn't even tell you that
• 15:39
  I had thought about building a business since 2018.
• 15:41
  And it took me until 2023 to make it happen because I was
• 15:44
  trying to do this on my own with my mindset work.
• 15:46
  And I did not, I did not succeed.
• 15:48
  I needed to have help and support, which is why I do the
• 15:50
  work that I do now because I think it's so important that we
• 15:53
  use our day job jobs to gain the skills, gain the experience, get
• 15:57
  that essential, like basically in real time MBA from work to
• 16:01
  develop the skills and the experience and the connections.
• 16:04
  And then how do we leverage that now for ourselves?
• 16:06
  And now we're able to fund ourselves, found our lifestyle,
• 16:09
  fund what it is that we want to build for ourselves, be able to
• 16:12
  do that for our families, for our friends, hire who it is we
• 16:14
  want to hire, help who it is we want to help.
• 16:15
  And that is ultimate freedom, ultimate freedom.
• 16:18
  And if you decide you don't want to do it anymore, that's OK too.
• 16:20
  But at least you've experienced and tried it.
• 16:22
  And so I highly recommend that you go to mywebsite@dannytan.com
• 16:25
  DAMIT am.com and book a discovery call with me on that
• 16:29
  call. We'll talk about what it is
• 16:31
  you've been itching to do. What is it you've been thinking
• 16:33
  about that maybe you have not taken action on?
• 16:35
  And I'll talk about, you know here, what it will look like to
• 16:38
  potentially work together and then what our time would be like
• 16:41
  and what you can accomplish. Like, why would you not want to
• 16:43
  start the business? Start the business.
• 16:45
  You've been thinking about it like no more.
• 16:46
  I always say to people that if you've been thinking about it
• 16:49
  and you've been sitting on it for a while, it will always come
• 16:51
  back. So why not just explore it?
• 16:53
  So I recommend you book a call with me and we meet and
• 16:55
  hopefully you found this episode helpful when it comes to
• 16:57
  different strategies of how you can utilize your 9:00 to 5:00 to
• 17:00
  really help launch your business and create it from a place of
• 17:03
  safety and security. Not feeling you have to like
• 17:04
  dive all in and go all in. And I will catch you next week
• 17:07
  and have a good one.