Latest / You're Overqualified Podcast - Career and Leadership Strategies for Women / 125. How to Translate Your Work Experience Into a Business (No Matter What Industry You're In)

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125. How to Translate Your Work Experience Into a Business (No Matter What Industry You're In) · You're Overqualified Podcast - Career and Leadership Strategies for Women

• 0:01
  Hi, I'm Danny Tan and welcome to the You're Overqualified
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  podcast, the podcast that's here to remind you that you are
• 0:07
  overqualified, especially what it is that you're doing.
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  So just know if you need that friendly reminder and that
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  nudge, that is why we are here. I am Danny Tan, I'm a leadership
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  coach and the founder of She Belongs Here, an organization
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  that helps women, especially 1st and 2nd Gen. women understand
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  that they definitely belong. And we do, right?
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  We do. We belong in creating that
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  space. And some background on me is
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  that I've pivoted crews five times.
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  I worked in PR sales, merchandising, e-commerce, all
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  to move into entrepreneurship. I'm a former VP of a building
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  art organization that now focuses solely on helping women
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  with their careers and businesses.
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  And the reason why is because I found so many different ways to
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  Sunday of how I didn't feel like I belonged, whether it was being
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  the only woman in the room, being of mixed identity and
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  background. I'm Asian, Latina, I'm Puerto
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  Rican, Filipino, Chinese, whether is being a first Gen.
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  first graduate College in my immediate family, so many
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  different kinds of first or paving the way and there's so
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  many of us, right. But The thing is like bringing
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  that unity together and coming together to figure that out.
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  And so in today's episode, I'm going to focus on is how to
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  utilize and take your corporate skills and experience and turn
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  them and translate them to entrepreneurship and building a
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  business. Because here's the thing, we are
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  so hard working. We're so dedicated, we're so
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  ambitious and driven. And we over index for
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  organizations day in, day out. It does not matter if you work
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  for a nonprofit for profit in the tech sector, in the fashion
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  sector. I've seen it all, like hundreds,
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  hundreds, hundreds of clients. I've worked with the group
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  setting in a private setting, one on ones with organizations.
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  And time and time again, we are constantly over delivering and
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  over exerting ourselves for somebody else's dream.
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  And that's OK. If that's what you want to do,
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  that's totally fine. I will never knock and shame
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  what somebody is happy with what they're what they want to move
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  forward with. Like that's totally fine.
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  But the thing that I want to reiterate is this, if you were
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  somebody who has had like this itch of I'm always the person
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  that everyone goes to when some when everything's going to blow
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  up and there's a big fire, everyone comes to me to solve
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  it. Whenever there is something
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  that's not working, everybody comes to me to comes to me to
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  solve it. Whenever there's something of
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  like a team member that's not performing well, everyone comes
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  to me to try to help fix it and solve it and train them.
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  When there is no system, I'm asked to make the system.
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  And so I just want you to start to realize that if you're
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  noticing that there is this constant pull or this constant
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  need for your time and energy, that is a very big signal that
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  you are a very, very specialized, experienced person
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  who really needs to understand. Do you always and forever want
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  to utilize your gifts and talents for somebody else's
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  dream or do you want to build something for yourself, Right.
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  The reason why I say this is because a lot of the times of
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  the conditioning that we are either raised with or that we
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  are in, in the environment of kind of tells us that we have to
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  either do one thing, stick to one thing, be reasonable, you
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  know, not rock the boat, make sure that we're not being
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  financially insecure and keeping our paycheck steady.
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  There's so many different narratives that we are fed of
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  what security looks like and what the norm in the standard
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  is. And I am somebody who is always
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  trying to push the freaking norm.
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  So if that's not your jam, move on to the next podcast.
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  But if this is your jam, then let's go.
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  So don't get me wrong, as somebody who climbed the ladder
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  and went all approaches 11 years, going from a sample
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  coordinator to a VP, there was a lot that I had to understand how
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  to play the game, how to do the end of the politics piece.
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  And So what I would say is this is you and your experience,
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  whether you're working in the whatever industry you're working
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  in, right? The jobs that you're having, the
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  career path, the trajectory that you're having, every single role
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  is building on skills and experience that you're going to
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  have underneath your belt to build something for yourself.
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  And so I want you to be super cognizant of that.
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  I don't want to think that if you're trying to build a
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  business for yourself that you have to burn everything down
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  that, oh, my degree was a waste of time or the job that I had
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  in, in, you know, the nonprofit space is a waste of time or the
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  job that I had in HR was a waste of time.
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  No, it wasn't. Those are all skills and
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  experiences that you learned that you can now leverage for
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  your business. And I've heard it time and time
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  again. Well, I don't know what I'm good
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  at or this is just general knowledge or I don't know who
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  else it would help or I'm just giving advice to my friends.
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  No, The thing is, is that once we have developed the skill sets
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  and experience about something, we really under play and don't
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  even realize how talented we are when it comes to it.
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  So you may say to yourself, Oh my gosh, I have worked in the HR
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  space for so long. And so I have this knowledge of
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  people ask me questions about HR, whether it's about the
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  recruitment process, whether it's about, you know, what their
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  rights are as an employee, whether it's questions about
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  what it's like to be put on a performance plan and all these
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  different questions. But to me, it's just general
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  knowledge. How is that helpful?
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  And the that's The thing is that when you have been so in the
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  weeds of what it is that you do, you don't necessarily understand
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  how that can be turned into a business.
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  And you can translate those skills over to that.
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  You can translate those skills into consulting for
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  organizations that maybe have hiring issues, translating it
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  over to people who potentially need help with the job search
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  and they don't know and understand ATS.
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  What does that even mean? Resumes, cover letters,
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  interviewing, right? You could also leverage that for
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  those who are business owners who need help when it comes to
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  understanding how to build out their teams, right?
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  How to hire, how to build that out, how to understand the laws
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  and regulations as an employer. There's so many different things
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  that you can do from your lived experience of what you've done
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  to build it into a business. The same thing goes for my
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  nonprofit folks. Like I hear a lot of like it's
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  about the mission, it's about the values, it's about the
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  mission, it's about the values. That's totally fine.
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  I mean, so it is it is for me too.
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  But The thing is, is that I think a lot of nonprofit folks,
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  which I've had many will believe like, oh, if I build a business
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  for myself, it's selfish because I am worrying about making
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  money, but I also want to be mission forward.
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  And you can be both, right? Like, I'm sorry, but a broke
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  nonprofit is not helping anyone. They have to get funding.
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  They have to get grants, they have to fundraise money.
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  And so they're not necessarily moving a mission forward just by
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  having values. They actually have to generate
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  some kind of money to go ahead and help the cause with.
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  That's their fundraising and that's the grants, you name it.
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  And so it's a same thing when you're someone who's going from
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  that nonprofit space for building a business for yourself
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  is understanding how can I take the things that I've learned
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  from the nonprofit space, which could potentially be learning
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  how to fundraise, learning how to build relationships, learning
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  how to identify organizations that can help you that have a
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  potential ways to give education or, you know, give supplies.
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  Being able to identify those pieces is really important.
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  Maybe you did marketing with a nonprofit, right?
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  Being being able to understand who it is that you're trying to
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  attract when it comes from marketing perspective and
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  utilizing that. So taking all those pieces and
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  building it for your business. So this is what I want you to
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  think about. And these are the key takeaways
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  of this conversation is if you're somebody who knows
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  they've always wanted to build something for themselves, but
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  they have no idea where to start, right?
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  And this is the work they do with my clients.
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  This is the first thing we do. I have many, many, many, many a
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  person, a woman who come in and they say to me, I have been
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  super successful at what it is that I do, helping my team,
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  helping my manager, helping my Co workers, helping everybody
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  else either make money, reach their goals, give all my time,
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  overextend myself. And now I want to build
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  something for myself. I want to be able to have
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  something for myself in the future.
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  And I'm very much in the in the camp that you don't have to burn
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  it all down and quit your job to go ahead and build a business.
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  I feel like that can be very, very risky for those of us who
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  may be our risk averse, who came from places that doesn't feel
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  financially safe to do that. And that's OK.
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  And so how can you step one, learn and understand, do the
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  Recon on your skills, on your experience, take inventory in
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  that to actually start to understand what are the skills
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  and experiences that I have that I can utilize and leverage to
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  build my business? And you might say to me, Oh my
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  gosh, Jenny, that sounds so boring.
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  I don't want to do the same thing that I'm doing now, but in
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  my own business. No one's saying you have to do
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  that, right? And here's The thing is that if
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  you're someone who's been thinking about building a
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  business for themselves and you have no idea where to start,
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  this is where you start because it's what you know.
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  So start with what you know and then it can always evolve.
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  But first you see the Recon And so this is what I do with my
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  private clients and one-on-one coaching.
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  I work with my clients either for three to six months.
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  It just truly depends on your goals and how high touch of
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  support you need. But a lot of times even if they
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  do three months, they resign for another three months.
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  So that's usually again, because it's a good time together and
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  they're usually working through and achieving really well.
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  I mean, if you've achieved super well in corporate, could you
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  imagine yourself in coaching? You're going to crush it.
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  And so when my clients are in the, you know, the private
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  coaching experience with me, what the first thing we do is we
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  set your top three goals. So your top three goals might
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  look like something like I want to understand what my experience
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  and skills are that I can translate to a business.
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  I want to understand what's a potential business that I could
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  do. OK, now I want to go ahead and
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  start building the foundations of building a business while I
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  still have my 9:00 to 5:00. And those are some ideas that we
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  go ahead and work through. So then we're talking about, I
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  have them go through a skills assessment where we go through
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  and breakdown what their experience and skills are.
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  They go through that assessment to understand what it is that
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  they can utilize and leverage for their business.
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  Then we go ahead and do the market research assessment where
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  they're doing an assessment on what is out there in the market
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  in comparison, their skills for their potential business they
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  want to build. And then we do a proof of
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  concept of that. And the last piece is building
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  out the foundations of that. What does that look like?
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  Especially with the 9:00 to 5:00 When I was building my business,
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  I did that for two years while I had my VP job.
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  So I was like responsible for, I don't know, four to five
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  different websites and brands. While I was also building my
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  business, while I was also volunteering, I was also being a
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  person. So I don't say that they say
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  that you have to work 24 hours 24/7.
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  I did not. I definitely had time and space
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  to do that, but you have to be able to be really strategic with
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  that. And the best part was that I was
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  able to leverage a lot of my corporate and experience and
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  relationships and move them into my business.
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  And so that's what helped my clients with a lot too.
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  So I have one client, for example, who is more in the
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  health tech space. And so she's actually looking at
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  how can I utilize the relationships that I've built in
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  this space through some, you know, different groups that
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  we've had her connect in. She letters up for consulting,
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  right? I had another client before that
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  who worked in the retail space and she wanted to think that was
• 10:00
  being more creative and focus more on her artistry.
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  And so we talked about how can she move what she's been doing
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  in that space into the creative artistry that she's been doing.
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  And so, OK, understanding the things she's already learned
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  from a skill set and experience wise of being organized,
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  understanding trends, understanding what's out there,
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  understanding her audience, and then utilizing that in order to
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  get her booked out for her arts and her creativity, which was
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  amazing, was so fun. It was an amazing project.
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  And so I have another line too. She also was primarily in the
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  nonprofit space, looking to go ahead and build something from
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  her house herself from a design perspective, right?
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  So building out websites for for organizations.
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  So she wanted to be mission driven, but also be able to
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  generate revenue. And so in the time of us working
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  together in within one session, charity had landed a contract of
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  3K. So that's what I'm saying.
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  Like in the course of us just working together, a lot of the
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  times you have the pieces, we're just making it more strategic
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  and putting it together. So stop sleeping on it because
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  we can very easily work together and make this a plan and a dream
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  for you too. And the reason why I do this, I
• 11:01
  always bring it back to my why and my mission and what it is,
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  is because I myself, as somebody who didn't necessarily have the
• 11:08
  path laid out for her, was really trying to figure it out.
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  I was trying to figure it out. I try to find a mentor here, a
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  mentor there, invest in a coach here, invest in a coach there,
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  ask people some questions, had endless networking and market
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  research conversations just to get where I am today.
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  And here's The thing is that what I found is if I kept
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  letting somebody else be the keeper of the keys to my
• 11:28
  success, I was going to constantly be disappointed
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  because the end of the day, no one's going to be able to work
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  as hard as me, be able to understand the things that I
• 11:36
  want to do as best as me. I don't want somebody else to be
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  beholden and hold the keys to my future and what it is that I
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  want. And so that's the biggest thing
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  that I found out in corporate, even being a leader and be able
• 11:47
  to be in control of being able to hire people and develop them
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  and make pushes for people and, you know, negotiate my salary.
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  And I had doubled my salary at one point.
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  It didn't matter. I still ultimately knew that
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  somebody else was going to be in control.
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  And yes, even when you're an entrepreneur, you're not fully
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  in control of every single little thing.
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  But the thing that is so powerful, there's nothing more
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  powerful than knowing that you know how to build a business,
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  you understand your skills and experience, you understand how
• 12:12
  to speak to the value and how to market them.
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  You understand who it is you want to help and how you can
• 12:16
  help them. And then when you help them and
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  you see that that is something that you carry with you for a
• 12:21
  lifetime. And so being able to do that is
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  just a magical thing. This has to be your end all be
• 12:25
  all. You can always try that out and
• 12:27
  see if it is that you want to do it or maybe it's something that
• 12:29
  you end up not wanting to pursue, but better to try.
• 12:31
  If you've been thinking about it over over, over again and you
• 12:34
  can't shake it, that means it's time to tackle it, right?
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  You just have a fear that is coming up.
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  And that's what we talked about in coaching, right?
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  I get told a lot of the times I'm like a coach therapist.
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  I don't claim to own that I am a therapist, but I do get told
• 12:47
  that many, many times because I'm truly a mixture of facts and
• 12:51
  feelings. I don't just go off of feelings.
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  I also go off of facts and data and our feelings are signals
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  that we typically need more data and so I'm always here to help
• 12:58
  with that. Hopefully you found this
• 12:59
  helpful. And if you want to work
• 13:00
  together, I highly recommend you go to mywebsite@danitan.com.
• 13:04
  That's DANITA n.com and go to contact and you can go ahead and
• 13:09
  book a call with me. But can you discovery call with
• 13:12
  me looks like this. We are together on that call for
• 13:15
  the 1st 30 minutes. I'm asking you questions.
• 13:17
  I really want to run a diagnostic of what are your
• 13:21
  goals, what have you kind of tried, where are you essentially
• 13:24
  stuck and what support you're looking for.
• 13:26
  And then I make a custom recommendation to you based off
• 13:30
  of those things of what it would look like to work together in a
• 13:33
  plan we would tackle during our time together.
• 13:35
  And then you decide if it makes sense.
• 13:36
  And I decide if it makes sense too.
• 13:38
  I don't truly take on everyone. I take on people who feel like
• 13:41
  the right fit for me and also the right fit for them.
• 13:43
  And so just know that it's a very, very low stakes
• 13:46
  conversation where you can just go ahead and just meet me and
• 13:48
  say hi. But then also understand what
• 13:51
  it's like to work together in coaching.
• 13:52
  Know that if you make a call, it does not make a commitment to
• 13:55
  having to do coaching, just making a commitment that you're
• 13:57
  taking a step forward towards what it is that you want to do.
• 13:59
  All right, hopefully found this episode helpful and I hopefully
• 14:03
  will catch you next week. All right, have a good one.