Latest / Chatting with The Experts with Paula Okonneh / Success beyond Corporate America

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Success beyond Corporate America · Chatting with The Experts with Paula Okonneh

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Hello, and welcome to another episode of Chatting with the Experts where I speak
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with incredible women, women from Africa, from the Caribbean, and in the diaspora.
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These women share with me a mission, which is to educate women, to empower
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women, and to encourage women globally.
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Today's episode is called Corporate to Calling, Building the Bridge from
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Corporate to Entrepreneurship, and my guest who will join me in a minute
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says, corporate success doesn't have to be abandoned to pursue your calling.
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It can be leveraged.
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She is a career advancement coach and corporate transition strategist, who
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helps high performing professionals move from corporate surviving
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to entrepreneurial thriving.
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She has a background in entrepreneurship and corporate leadership, and
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equips ambitious leaders to design the next best move with
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clarity, confidence, and purpose.
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In other words, she turns adversity into strategic advantage and builds
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careers that are rooted in legacy, in alignment, and intentional success.
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Welcome Jraya Nicole to Chatting with the Experts.
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Thank you.
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Thank you.
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Hi Paula.
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How are you?
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Hi.
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Good.
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You're doing such a phenomenal job.
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'cause we hear a lot about people in corporate.
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Mm-hmm.
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But we don't hear about how they transition from
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corporate to self-employed.
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And that's what you're here to talk about.
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That is what I'm here to talk about.
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Because I will just start off by saying there is a particular kind
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of loneliness that comes from being successful at the work you've outgrown.
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Mm-hmm.
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So that, that is what we are talking about today.
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That is the gap that I now have built my career on closing.
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So I noticed offline we talked about success survivors and you say that
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success survivors, because in other words they've been successful in
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corporate, but this is a brand new road.
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And so you will mention that they feel misaligned in spite
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of their corporate achievements.
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Let's talk about that.
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Why should they feel that way?
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Well, it's an interesting dynamic and for many, they find themselves
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feeling guilty because they have, in fact, achieved so much.
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And I do work with driven, wonderful, ambitious men and women who, they've
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mastered the corporate game, but they've quietly started to wonder
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if it's even the right game.
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Mm-hmm.
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They climb the ladder, but is it leaning up against the right wall?
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So, to your point of success survivor, these are individuals,
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professionals, they've accomplished by every external measure.
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I'm here in the United States, the American Dream, the advanced
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degrees, the specialties, the higher than medium salary.
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Yet Paula, they find themselves disconnected from the work or the
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title that they have achieved, and most importantly, the version of
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themselves that they've spent all of these years building in front of family
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and friends who believed in them.
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Mm-hmm.
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So when I use the term success survivor, that leads to the path that will be
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discussing today, which is the unlearning to turn that adversity and that inner
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turmoil into second act success.
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Mm.
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Mm-hmm.
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So,
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is there a signal that you actually see?
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I mean, what is it that you see in them, or what is it that they see
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in you that makes them come to you?
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So, the one thing is the relatability because I have been successful as both an
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entrepreneur in the rights of the metrics of achieving that six figure salary,
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which is often a coveted milestone.
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And I also was able to replicate that success in corporate.
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Mm-hmm.
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So I have a vantage point to be able to support professionals
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to reverse engineer that outlook that have only known corporate
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and aspire to have more autonomy, flexibility in their own working life.
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And they've understood that money success can only do so much for you.
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There's a yearning.
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So what I've identified and here's what most career advisors, let
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me tell you what they miss here.
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The real barrier, it isn't confidence.
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'cause I work with highly competent people.
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It's courage.
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It's not even capital.
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Because they have the resources.
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It's infrastructure.
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So hear me out here.
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These are high achieving men and women that are aspiring to exit corporate,
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but they don't have a strategy on converting all that they work for,
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decades of exceptional performance into a viable position, business,
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or next move in their career.
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Mistakenly I believe, it's drawn because what I position
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is you are not starting over.
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You are not starting over.
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The skills that made them indispensable employees.
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Sometimes that doesn't automatically translate into entrepreneurial traction.
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They were the expert at the job.
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But there's a different type of packaging that needs to happen to do
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that in a entrepreneurial capacity.
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So, and without that bridge and that understanding, I see too
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many talented professionals, they stay stuck in that outgrown role.
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That's the first option.
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Or they leap and they don't have a plan.
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They leap.
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And that usually ends up in those that left corporate,
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they end up returning back.
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Because they just didn't have a strategic exit.
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So I treat corporate to call in.
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I use that as a bridge for these individuals and through my framework
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it's a strategic exit, but I like to call it the beautiful exit.
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That's actually part of my program.
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It's a comprehensive guide on leaving, corporate success and
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entering entrepreneurial as an authority figure, right?
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So I help people identify all of those skills that they developed, let's
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call it their corporate currency.
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Yes.
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Let's call it that.
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All of those skills, that expertise, the background, we don't start over.
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We design that runway so they can step into that entrepreneurship with
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the same precision and authority that they brought to the boardroom, that
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they brought to the conference rooms.
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So it's not a reinvention, it's a translation, if you will.
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So, that's the gist of it.
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Yeah.
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So they're translating it is like change of currency from the corporate
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currency to the entrepreneurial currency in other words.
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Absolutely.
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You help them to see that.
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It is currency, but it's just one is like how you have USD and you have the Euros.
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One that you're just taking one currency into the next.
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So, hmm.
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And it's so needed.
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So needed.
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So needed.
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It's so needed.
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Absolutely.
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Absolutely.
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And you've mentioned success survivor, and I think this is important to
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note, when the difference between burnout and misalignment, because
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they require different solutions.
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They cannot be treated the same because burnout, by definition
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is a depletion problem.
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You're tired.
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You're exhausted from doing too much, but misalignment, that's an identity problem.
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You're drained because you're doing work that no longer fits where you're going.
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So the burnout for my success survivors.
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You know, the burnout piece, rest and a vacation could fix that.
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Perhaps even a new role in a different company or a lateral move.
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But the other, which is the misalignment that requires redirection.
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So treating misalignment like burnout, that is one of the most common
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and I wanna say costly mistakes that these professionals make when
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they're at that crossroads, they take a vacation, get promoted.
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You know, they add on new responsibility and they, you know, bonus here.
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But Paula, what they find out is the emptiness returns, it comes back.
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So we have to have the fix to match the diagnosis.
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Got it, got it, got it.
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So, and that's an interesting, you know, burnout is not misalignment.
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Burnout can be fixed, as you said, with good nutrition, vacation, rest.
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Yes.
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Misalignment is an identity problem.
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Yes.
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So my question is that, do you find that being that you are like
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the strategic exit, well you're the corporate exit strategist.
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Mm-hmm.
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Do you find that quite a lot of your clients experienced burnout
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and that made them feel that they needed to, you know, change and move
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into the entrepreneurial capacity?
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Or do you think that they discover whether I'm misaligned and
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therefore I need to quit corporate and move, become an entrepreneur,
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whether solo or within an another?
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I mean, doing it with somebody, a partnership of some sort.
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That's a great question.
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And it's a mix of, a little bit of both, but I will say the majority that are
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seriously considering entrepreneurship to the point where they seek my services,
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usually it's misalignment because they've had several cycles of burnout and
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they've identified that the fixes for burnout, which we just listed, which are
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wellness routines and rest and vacation.
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It's not working.
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It's not working.
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So, you know, that's the thing.
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We then, once we identify, okay, this is something that a new role, a new job.
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That's where the calling element act, that's when you start to
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answer the call on your career.
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Because once we understand, okay, the calling is on you, then we
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go into building out that runway.
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Got you.
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Thanks for cutting that up.
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Yeah, big difference.
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And I mean, as you said, misalignment because they've had so many
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burnouts and they're like, right, I need to know what my purpose is.
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I need to know what my calling is.
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Can you help me?
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Mm-hmm.
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And I'll give you an example.
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You know, one company, I, I worked for a regional company and I assumed
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the answer would be, oh, I have a new role in a US Fortune 50 company.
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Mm-hmm.
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And I, you know, in my own personal life, I still felt the same cycle
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of burnouts and unfulfillment that I did at the regional level.
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Hmm.
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So the prestige of working for such a high, you know, company with big
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notoriety here in the United States.
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I still was unfulfilled, right?
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So it's a thing.
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So, and let me just say this, just to kind of build a little bit more
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on the definition of the bridge to entrepreneurship because this
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is important when it comes to the profile, is that the person that is
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exceptional in corporate, the, you know, the strategic thinking, usually
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high standard visionary leadership.
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Eventually, you create friction within corporate environments that are built on
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the backs of compliance and consistency.
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Not transformation.
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So when I'm asked, you know, look, Jraya, you have corporate to calling.
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Corporate to calling, leans into being a transformative professional.
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That's the calling and usually that starts to either outgrow a corporate setting.
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This isn't a problem with the said person, Paula.
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It's a mismatch between a growth-oriented leader and a structure
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that stopped growing with them.
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That is why I say success survivor, because there is a guilt that comes to a
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lot of men and women that have achieved high success and have had a high amount
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of support or you know, whether it be from their own private circle or whatever
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leadership teams they built within, or just whatever their perception of success
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had been in their mind up until then.
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The thing about that is that guilt of putting themselves first becomes,
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it's an unfamiliar envi... They just been on autopilot for years and
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years, sometimes decades for some of the professionals I work with.
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And that guilt to turn the tide towards entrepreneurship.
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Mm-hmm.
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That takes some unlearning, some new beginnings.
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Right?
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Yes, I can see that.
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Yes, because it's like they've given... sometimes the corporate
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life has become their identity.
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Yes.
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And they feel loyal to whatever corporation or
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organization they've been in.
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And it seems, from what I'm hearing from you, like they turn their back on that.
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Something that has helped build them to where their career, growth and
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you know, the whole identities is associated with that, and suddenly
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they're just, you know, putting it behind their back and moving on.
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Is that what I'm hearing from you?
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That's exactly what you're hearing.
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Absolutely.
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And for them to see it not as personal failing.
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Mm-hmm.
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But I helped them see it as this is your first act of entrepreneurial thinking.
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Yeah.
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Outside of the box that you got it.
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Spot on.
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Mm-hmm.
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Mm-hmm.
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And for some that, you said quite a few of them that you've named or you
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pointed out that quite a lot of these individuals have a growth mindset.
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So in other words, you are helping them to see that it's because they're growing,
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because of their growth mindset that they have outgrown where they were.
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Right.
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For so many years or decades or however long it's been.
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Now it's time to do something different.
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But that's scary.
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Very scary.
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Very scary.
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So much so that some people, they won't do it.
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Yeah.
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They won't do it.
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They won't chase the reward that entrepreneurship can produce in
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their life and in their family's life because the risk of the comfort that
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they are currently in is too great.
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But let me tell you why dissatisfaction is often the first signal of evolution.
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The first signal because first of all, let me just say, for those
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of you watching, tapping in with us, I am not anti-corporate.
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I had great times in my corporate tenure.
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I utilized my entrepreneurial background and was able to... I often say I
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didn't climb the corporate ladder.
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I took the elevator.
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You'll hear me say that.
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I love it.
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I had great success in corporate, had it did great things for my family.
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It afforded me to see parts of the world and relocate to cities that I would
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have not, you know, been exposed to.
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So corporate is not an enemy, but I'm also of the understanding that
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we shouldn't paint it as a friend.
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And let, give me a second here, because we've been conditioned,
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I say we collectively, those of us that have climbed the ranks
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through corporate structures and since we've been conditioned to
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villainize being discontent.
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I talk about this a lot in my book Choice Destinations, which is a
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lot of the psychology, when you're standing at the crossroads, thinking
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about becoming an entrepreneur.
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A lot of people start to view that them aspiring to wanna do something
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on their own as an entrepreneur.
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They see it as ingratitude.
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Mm-hmm.
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They start to see it as corporate treason because they, you know, I use these
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terms, but I mean it corporate like they're turning their back on a system
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or organization and it becomes a negative event versus, I often call it, it's
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again, the first language of calling.
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And it's to be honored and acknowledged.
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So the reframing is a huge part of the beginning of making this decision.
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So I work with individuals that decide a timeline for those that are
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transitioning to entrepreneurship.
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Maybe this season the runway is not strong enough for them, and once they've done
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their audit . But two, three years down the line, this is what they wanna do.
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But the thing is having a strategic plan, I have some professionals
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that say, you know what, Jraya, I'm going to be going in three months.
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Let's put this plan together.
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So it's a very personal choice.
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And the reason why I'm a corporate exit strategist is because we work
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through all of these things, unpack before, so you can make a confident
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choice walking towards the unknown.
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It is truly a faith walk.
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I'm sure Paula, I know you know.
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It is truly a faith walk walking into entrepreneurship, but here's the
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question I ask all of the people I work with, what will happen if you stay?
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Mm.
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What will happen if you stay?
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If you stay?
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Okay.
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And that's a pertinent question because it makes the individual
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sit down and evaluate.
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Yes.
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On both sides.
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You know, this is what I know and this is what I don't know.
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And you've mentioned something, you encourage the strategic
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exit versus the reckless leap.
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There's a big difference, and I mean, you've gotta think this through because
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when you become your own entrepreneur, you don't have IT department,
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you have to do your own payroll.
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You know, talk about, you are your own marketing and sales department.
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Those are big responsibilities that are suddenly yours.
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Yes, very big.
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Now we do lead with strengths because there are some myths at this crossroad.
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It's not a true starting over, not for the professionals that I work with.
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They're highly tenured.
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Even five and 10 years of corporate experience is gold to take into
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an entrepreneurial capacity.
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But you said something important here.
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You are aware of many hats.
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Multiple.
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So I bring the... I call it your career sweet spot, right?
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Because following your passion can be great and it can be dangerous.
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Okay?
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So if it's not matched and complimented with these two other elements.
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So the one thing is, yes, what lights you up?
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What are you passionate about?
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Absolutely.
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When you're thinking about leaving corporate, think about what lights
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you up, what are you passionate about?
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You know, what is on your mind and pulling you?
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Mm-hmm.
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The second part is you match that and I mentioned it earlier, your corporate
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currency, that's your skills, the background, your education, all of the
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things that snowballed in your life that made you who you are at this moment, but
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what you just and is the most important, Paula, about wearing all the hats.
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Will the market pay you for it?
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Mm.
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Because
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will the market pay?
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Because the runway that we build are profitable pathways.
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That's the part about the strategy.
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That's the part about the strategy is building a profitable
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path.
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Profitable.
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That's the keyword there.
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Absolutely.
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Absolutely.
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So we translate the corporate currency, the passion.
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You put that with a profitable pathway where the data backs it.
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The data backs it.
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I am a doctoral candidate, so I live in the numbers.
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The data backs that, and it's been validated and I show people how to
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do that while they're still employed.
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That's important.
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That's important because that was the next question I was gonna have to talk
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about the fear also of burning bridges.
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The fear also of, well you, we kind of touched on it... feeling disloyal.
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Mm-hmm.
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But you know, even when you go into solo entrepreneurship or any
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other form, if it's a partnership, you need those connections and
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you may need those connections.
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And so that could be a scary thing in that am I burning my bridges or will I
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be able to continue building my bridges, or will I be able to build bridges?
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Well, we don't wanna burn bridges because corporate currency
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definitely extends to our network.
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So the strategic exit, I refer to it as a beautiful exit, and one of the
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basis of that is the relational runway.
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Relational.
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So.
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here's some of the elements of the runway.
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Here is the financial runway that buys you time, the reputational runway,
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that's gonna open some doors for you.
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You because sometimes your reputation of being in the room
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before you get in the room.
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This is when people will promote you and speak about
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you, and you're not even there.
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You have advocates.
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So we talk about that.
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But what you just touched on again, is the relational runway, your network, because
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those are your first network of referrals.
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Those are your cheerleaders, your advocates, your sponsors,
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your early clients, that's how you gain and sustain momentum.
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Mm-hmm.
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So that's the difference from, from a strategic and beautiful
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exit versus a reckless leap.
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So we are not burning bridges, we building them strong.
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Building bridges.
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Right.
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So what I'm hearing from you is that you help them see the relational
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runway and the financial runway that lead... in otherwise you create the
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profitable pathway from these two runways or a better way, the runway,
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which are... Of course that's the relational one is big when you start it.
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Huge.
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But you need those connections.
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You need them to sponsor to be the, as you said, not just the sponsors,
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but to be the mentors sometimes.
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Mentors, advocates.
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Advocates.
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Advocate.
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Yes.
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And know cheerleaders.
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You need that.
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Absolutely.
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Yes.
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So we talk about all those dimensions because that's how you close the gap.
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Yeah.
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And that's why, you know, in the comprehensive, in my frameworks,
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you leave well and you enter strong.
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That's the basis of it.
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Yes.
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We discuss all of that and it's a calculated move rather
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than an emotional reaction.
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We don't wanna make decisions from desperation.
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No, we don't wanna do that.
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Well, you know, Jraya, we could talk forever.
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Looking at the guests who have joined us, I know they have
26:27
even more questions than...
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okay
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. Than I do.
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But this is so interesting.
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But if someone's looking online, if they didn't join us in as an audience member,
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how can they get in touch with you?
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Wonderful.
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So I'm Jraya Nicole on all platforms, LinkedIn, Instagram,
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YouTube, and I am on Spotify, Corporate to Calling is the podcast.
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You can listen in, leave commentary.
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I'm excited to support however I can.
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I'm always in the comments, so, but that is how you can find me, Jraya Nicole.
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Lovely, lovely.
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Thank you, Jraya Nicole.
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And for those of you listening online, all viewing this, if you'd
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like to be a guest like Jraya Nicole, please reach out to me on my website,
27:15
just Chatting with the Experts.
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I'm also on LinkedIn.
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Please visit my business page, just Chatting with the Experts,
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Facebook Chatting with the Experts.
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And we are also on Instagram as at chat_experts_podcast.
27:35
Oh my gosh.
27:35
We also, how could I fail to mention this?
27:38
For those of you who are listening and viewing this, we have so many other
27:44
videos that you can listen or you can listen on view on our YouTube channel,
27:49
which is Chatting with the Experts.
27:52
Please, please, please do not hesitate to learn, to be educated, to be empowered
28:00
and encouraged by these phenomenal women, women experts who are sharing
28:06
their knowledge and strategies with you.
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And with that, Jraya, we are gonna open up the floor for those who
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joined us so they can ask you the questions that I forgot to ask.
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And you get an opportunity to network with them as well.
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Wonderful.
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Thank you so much again for saying yes to being a guest and Chatting with the
28:28
Experts, and we'll open up the floor now.