BIRD WILLIAMS: You're listening to Bird Means Business Episode 39.

Hey, party people, welcome to the Bird Means Business podcast. I am so glad you're here. Today I'm going to be talking about my transition from corporate to entrepreneurship, and it's going to be a good one. Before I jump in, I really want to just maybe say what might be the elephant in the room. I don't know if it's obvious to y'all but I, for the first time on the Bird Means Business podcast, I'm using a mic. A microphone y'all. This whole time, your girl has been talking, well, most of the time I've been talking just directly into my MacBook in a small closet in my house, that my husband tricked out to make a podcast studio, our guest bedroom closet. I've just been speaking directly into my Mac. And I don't know if I've made that clear because I was recently talking with a friend and he was like, "What? I listened to your podcast and had no idea." Yes, I talk about it in actually Episode 13. It's called "How I Launched My Podcast in Five Weeks with $9.95". And the thing is, I wasn't planning on having a podcast and had to adjust and adapt really quickly. I didn't have a budget for a microphone at the time. It was at the very beginning of my business launch. And so I just got scrappy and made it happen. And I share that because I can't tell you how much I hear, man I don't have the perfect website or the perfect fill in the blank, whatever it is, the perfect equipment, all the things like organized and perfect and so I can't start yet. And that is a lie. You can start, and you can figure it out along the way, and you can perfect it along the way. I always say that my definition of excellence is doing the best with what you have in your hands. And if what's in your hands right now isn't a nice fancy mic. I even have one of those I think it's called a pop filter. I don't know. I didn't know what that was before I started researching all this stuff, like in front of the mic to like help. All of that, I didn't even know any of that and that would have stopped me from making progress. So whatever those things are in your life or in your business, identify them so that you can just move forward. You know now here I am, Episode 39. I would not be here if I tried to have it perfect from the very beginning. So, that's just my little encouragement for you today before we jump in. 

I also want to say, I have some exciting news to share that you already know if you're subscribed to my email tribe. I'm rebranding! Yes, I'm rebranding the firm and I'm so, so, so excited. Y'all it's been such a wild journey, like ups and downs and craziness, delays. Beautiful deep revelations I've had as I really like tapped into what I'm doing. And what I want to share with the world and how I want to look to the world and all of that. So, yeah, I'm really excited to share more of my insights on what it looks like to rebrand. And what that process was like, in case you have branding questions. So it's coming and stay tuned. 

And if you want to be among the first to know, go and sign up to my email tribe. It's at birdwilliams.com/join. And it's just one email a week that I send out. I don't like spammy emails. Personally, it gets on my nerves so I don't do that to y'all either. But I include business tips and just fun stuff. So again it's birdwilliams.com/join. 

All right. So you might be thinking, Okay, I'm currently at a nine to five. I'm working my corporate job, but I plan to own my own business one day. First, I'll just want to say that that's a special place to be. There's so much that you can be doing right now to prepare for your future business. And this episode is definitely for you. Before I get started, I want to share my story of transition to kind of just provide some context. And then I'll go into kind of some more insights. 

So you know I graduated from the University of Texas at Austin and moved to New York City to work on Wall Street as an investment banking analyst. Now you have to understand, I had no idea what I was doing when I got there. I had not had an internship in investment banking. So it was a very steep learning curve. It's already a steep learning curve. But also take into account that I had no training at all. Whereas most people come into the program with having had an internship in the field. So it was wild. It was crazy. I mean there were so many ups and downs. But I ended up doing really well. And I had gotten the offer to stay on for a third year. An investment banking analyst program is two years, and you may or may not get the third year offer. I had gotten it, which was great. I had come into the job, wanting to potentially work in one of the overseas offices in either Hong Kong or London. And I had gotten my director to agree to that and so it was like things are great. Right? I mean I was getting paid. I was living in my favorite city in the world. But I wasn't fulfilled. And it was kind of like in the back of my mind I didn't think about it a whole lot. But it wasn't until I had gone home for Christmas. And it was just the feeling of sowing my roots somewhere and wanting to really like dig in deep and I knew that was not New York City. I knew that was not Hong Kong or London either. I basically knew that the path I was on was very temporary. And I wouldn't be able to sew roots or establish myself in a community for a few several years, you know whatever that looked like. And that was hard for me to really stomach. And so, I didn't know what I wanted to do and that was what was the scariest part. So some of you may relate. It was like, Okay, I know this isn't it, but I don't know what's next. And so what I did was I just made this simple list. And it was on a random piece of white paper. I remember I could visualize it. I worked on a trade floor. And so it was very open. There were no cubicles even. Everyone sat next to people in these long lines on the trade floor. I pasted this bad boy, this note, on my screen, which I had like three screens. But it was pretty bold of me to do that. Anyway, I made this list and it was just a list of random things that I really enjoyed doing, and there was no structure to it really. Some were like, volleyball. I loved volleyball, so random. Dancing. It was also things like planning and like all of the logistical things. And productivity. I love to be productive. It was just a random list. But there also were things that I just would do if I didn't need to be paid to do it. When I get into these types of activities, I can go all night and time would just pass by because I was just so in it. So yeah, I made this list and there was no aha moment initially. I made the list. I put it on my computer screen. And for months I kind of just meditated on it, but not intentionally. I just had it sitting up there as I was doing work. Of course, I'd glance over at it, that sort of thing. But one day, it clicked, and I realized I want to be an entrepreneur, I want to run a business. But here comes the next problem. I didn't have a talent or a business idea or you know a specific thing. I wanted to run the behind-the-scenes. So I began to kind of start like, well, who could I support in this role? So while all of this was happening and I was kind of figuring this part of my life out and what was going to happen next. At the same time in my current role on my job, I was crushing it. It's crazy, but when I came into my job, despite the fact that I was, probably the least qualified in my entire analyst class. I was put as the only analyst in two different groups, which is ridiculous and crazy. Usually, you go into a group and there are multiple analysts, multiple associates, and on and on. Well, I was in two very small teams. I was the only analyst, not in one group but in two. Crazy. So long story short, one of these groups, was just really me and a director. And over the years we've grown together, close, it was awesome. Well, we were a part of a team at our firm that secured this huge IPO. We were one of the book runners. My company was a book winner on this IPO, an initial public offering. I worked in equities. So, it was a big deal for the firm. It was a landmark transaction. It was like a $4 billion IPO. And I remember us having this huge ceremony to celebrate us being a book runner, our bank basically landing this deal. I was the only analyst in the US on the deal, so I was working with Brazil and London and Spain, and Mexico. And so it was a big deal and I had other analysts in my program coming to me saying, Woe, this is so crazy, like how awesome is it. Don't you feel great? And, y'all. I was like, No, this is not cool. Like, that was really the lightbulb moment for me, not so much that I wanted to be an entrepreneur because I had already kind of figured that out. But like, okay, this is not going to cut it. I have to like part ways because I just did not have this. I thought to myself, I should be excited. I should feel motivated. This should be like yes and it was not. I remember my hair was falling out. I had like a random white dot on my stomach, just appeared out of nowhere. You know, I'm black. It was like a white dot on my stomach, like what is this. I just knew like this is not what it is. I'm not motivated by this so I said okay. At this time of my life, y'all, this was the hardest decision I had ever made, was basically to leave. Because, first off, I had already accepted the third year offer. My personality, my moral standing, it felt bad to go back on the offer when I know so many other analysts had been turned down. It just felt wrong. I also felt like I was letting my team down. At that point, there was another analyst on my team and on one team it had grown but on the other, it was just me like I said to my director. So I felt like I'd be letting her down. And I was like, what will she do if I leave? And I mean it was just this really tough decision. But I got myself together and I knew what I needed to do and how important it was for me in my life trajectory. I will say that one of my directors sat down with me and told me this very poignant story of him, having a similar opportunity whenever he was an analyst. I think he might have been an associate actually. He sat me down over lunch. And this was a very odd thing for a director to do. But I really just thank God for him putting me around people who would even open up to me in this way, in these like really important moments. But he sits me down and he says, Ashley when I was in your same position, I had the same opportunity, to go work with my family in a food business with my brothers and my dad. Well, you know, I decided I had already made this life for myself. I think he said he was recently married and he wanted to you know be an investment banker and he liked the lifestyle. So he chose to do that instead and not work with the family business. Well fast forward however many years, his dad's getting ready to pass away. He's really sick and he's telling me that his brothers have these really deep bonds you know with their dad over the past several years as they've worked in this business together. But he, being away, and not being able to be home that much because the job is grueling. Not being able to really have that time with his dad in the past few years. I mean he's telling me this in tears like, I wish if I could go back then, I would have chosen to work with my family. And so I'm you know processing all of this stuff and knowing in my heart, like knowing in my knower, that I needed to part ways. And so I decided to have a conversation with my director on the other team where it was just me and her and y'all we cried. I remember we were at a Mexican restaurant having margaritas and we just cried, and she was so accepting and understanding, and actually gave me great advice, and even, like, helped me beyond that point, for four years really as I transitioned and started my own business. And we still keep in touch. Anyway, I say all that to say that I had really great people in my life, as I was navigating that, who weren't even really close to me or weren't even necessarily designated as mentors. But they were in leadership positions around me who were encouraging me in that way and so I'm really grateful for that. 

So like I said at this point I was trying to figure out who could I support in a business they wanted to do and my first thought was my mom. She for years had talked about having a tea room, where she would have little pastries and sandwiches and tea and sell tea pots and all this sort of thing. So that was my plan. I was going to be leaving this job to go and help my mom launch this tea business. So that was kind of the backstory that led me up to making the decision, understanding what it was I was going to do in business. 

So now I want to talk to you about all of the work you can do before you actually launch your business cause this is what I got into. There are five points I want to bring up. Things that you can do kind of before you actually launch your business as you're getting ready to transition from corporate to entrepreneurship. First things first, you want to have a business plan. And I know I talk about this a lot, but it's truly so important, because while you have your 401k and your insurance and your benefits, and even, like, more structured time. It's the best time to start working on your business plan, right? I jokingly say that about the 401k and insurance because it is real. Okay, whenever you don't have that. So you want to go ahead and plan for that. But yes, your business plan is important because it proves the idea you have to yourself. It makes you sit down and take the ideas and thoughts and plans out of your head and put it on paper, or even digital paper like in a Google Doc, or in spreadsheets, which is really important because you want to understand the money pieces. And you can say, okay, this is what it'll actually do when I pull all of these four pillars of my business together. And the four pillars are your foundation, your financial, your operations, and marketing. And so what you're going to do is say okay how do all of these things work together? And you're going to basically prove it to yourself, and also to investors or to a bank if you need financing. Also to a business partner if you're going to be working with someone else. You're going to lay out and really itemize and understand different roles and responsibilities, how your team works, and on and on and on. So, that is, first and foremost, super-duper important. Don't miss that step. Next, I would say research which is a part of your business plan, in a sense. But it's just doing deep research around whatever it is you're doing. So I had no understanding of the tea business outside of what my mom had shared with me over the years and just little things. But I don't know anything about tea. So I, while I was working my job in New York, took a weekend, took some time off, and went to Las Vegas and went to the world tea expo. And it was mind-blowing. I mean, I don't need to go into all of the details but as you can imagine it's just a convention of people who are obsessed with tea. All the different types and the different ways to do it and I can't even remember all the things because it was so long ago. But I learned and soak up as much information as I could, I was networking with different people in the industry to learn more, to get mentors around, you know that specific business, and on and on. So while you're working your nine to five, you can do all the research, however, that looks for your specific business. 

All right, so you have your business plan, you've done research. The next thing you want to make sure you focus on is your personal financial plan. In your business plan, you will lay out the financial implications of your business. I also want you to separately think about your personal financial situation, because it is very very very important that you understand that, where you are personally will affect your business. So if you're trying to be super selfless and say okay we're going to reinvest all the profits of the business back into the business. Well, that's great except that what does it actually cost you to live? What debt do you have? What are you going to need to take from the business in order to make this happen? Because if you're not taking care of yourself personally, your business will start to smell of it. Your team will start to feel it. You will be more stressed. It'll affect how risky you are with your business. So you want to make sure that you have a really good handle on where you are personally and how much money you really actually need to take from the business. That being said, you don't go out and take all of the money from a business. But you just need to really know where that line is drawn. 

And again, I've mentioned the 401k and insurance benefits and all those things. You can be very strategic with how you transition. I would strongly encourage you to hire a financial planner. I'll actually link my financial planner, Helen, she's amazing, in the show notes so that you can talk with her if you need someone. But there's so many different financial planners out there. I just know that she is top-notch, so I'll post her information. Her name is Helen Ngo. She was actually interviewed in Episode 27. But you want to make sure that you sit down with a personal financial planner and you say, okay, where am I? Where am I trying to go? How can I be strategic with this transition? That is so very key. 

And then next I want you to have a few mindset shifts. So if you've downloaded my free guide on the first 10 steps to launching your business. It's called "Ready, Set, Launch". You see that number one, the first step is having an entrepreneurial mindset. And so right now we're going to talk about three. There are a lot of mindset shifts. But three that you want to have as you transition from corporate to entrepreneurship. 

First is, I hear people all the time saying, "I want to be an entrepreneur because I'm my own boss. I don't have any bosses. I'm the boss." I get it, I get it. You want to be able to make decisions. You want to be able to be innovative and creative and all that. You know you want to be in control of your life, and of your business. But let me just say the other side of that. While no, you don't have any other bosses. You do have your team. As in, you do have staff and employees who are working under you and who will need and rely on you. You do have your clients, you know the people you serve, who know they're not your boss. But man, they can affect you in a lot of ways. I'll just give you an example. When we first launched The League. I remember I was going to a birthday party of a dear friend. We were all hanging in the lounge area, and a young man comes up to us and he's congratulating us for launching The League. And he said, "Man if I owned my own business, I would like make a policy that said something like no one can bring their dogs in, and I would walk around with my dog. I'd have my dog because I'm the boss and I could have my dog and but other people can't." And I was thinking in my head, and you wouldn't make it very long in business because it is very important that you reflect to your employees, to everyone that's associated with your business, your actual values. So if you say we don't want to have pets in the building, and then you bring your pet in, people are going to disrespect you. You're going to bring in a lot of confusion. And that's just not a good mindset to have. That's not why we're going into entrepreneurship. You want people to be behind you. You want your team to feel supported. You want it to be a team effort, not like, oh, I'm so cool like look at me. So that's the first mindset shift. No, you don't have a boss. But there are a lot of people, stakeholders in your business who are very important and who you should treat with respect and be conscious of. I'll just say it like that. 

Okay, so the next mindset shift is understanding that you have to define your structure and your schedule because there's no one to really hold you accountable to what you say you're going to do in your business unless you ask. Meaning, unless you have a business partner, the two of you are able to kind of keep each other accountable. Or a board of advisors that can do the same thing. Maybe you meet with them quarterly and they're able to check in with you. Or a business coach or mentor. But my point is that if you don't really think about it. Or I guess I didn't think about it until I became an entrepreneur and I wondered why I felt so frazzled. Not only is it my personality to have routine and to stick with some schedule and have like systems and structure to my life. But I just realized that our whole lives were kind of conditioned for a very structured process around work. So you know, even when it comes to school, as you're going through school there's class periods and teachers and this whole system. You go to college. It's the same thing. And then you get into corporate America, and you have policies and procedures and teams and sections and all of the things. There's structure to it. You have a workday schedule and that sort of thing, meetings, and all of this. Well, when you're an entrepreneur, all of that goes away. So unless you create it, it's not going to be there. So even with The League, I think I've mentioned before on the pod that Terry didn't like meetings. He didn't like meetings as much as I did in the beginning. Now he's great with it. But it took us a while before we were having actual weekly meetings every week. And it was not good, especially because we're married. We would bring our business into our home. We'd be talking about it basically all the time because there was no container. There was no time container for when we would talk about things, so if something came up we would just automatically talk about. Instead of saying, "Okay, that's not urgent. We can reserve it for our team meeting on Monday." So, you are going to have to be able to either create and define a structure and schedule for your life or have someone else do it. And then on top of that have people hold you accountable. Okay? 

Then the next mindset shift is just self-love and self-awareness. So there's self-love which you know we talk a lot about taking care of yourself. But also self-awareness. Being very honest with yourself about where you lack, where you need help, and so on. So the example here is kind of around performance reviews. Remember how I just was saying that in corporate America you have all these structures and policies and such? One of those is like performance reviews, whether it's every quarter or every year. I can't remember. It's been so long since I had one to my point. But there are no performance reviews when you're an entrepreneur. So there's no way to really know if what you're doing as a leader, or even as your business is good or not. I mean there are metrics like is the business growing, is revenue growing? But that doesn't always, you know directly say something about you as a leader. It doesn't translate that way. So, you know, we as leaders for our gym business, The League. We do have the structures in place. We have regular reviews with our team members individually, in addition to our group team meetings, where we basically ask one on one with our team, "How are things going?" We ask a lot of different questions. But one of the questions is, "Where can we improve as leaders? Where are we slipping? What can we do better?" We actually ask one on one for that feedback so that people can feel like it's just us, I can tell you there's something going on. We try to create a space for that. So you want to make sure that you are self-aware, in terms of where you can improve. But then also understand that, like, if no one's telling you that you're doing a good job, it doesn't mean you're not doing a good job. That was something that was really hard for me. If you know anything about the enneagram. I am an enneagram 1. 1 wing 9. And a 1 is called the perfectionist. I say that, frustrated a little bit, because I, I guess I'm kind of in denial. I don't want to be a perfectionist but I kind of am. Anyway perfectionist or reformer. And the idea of 1s on the enneagram is that we want things to be right. We need things to be right. So, I need to know, I need someone to say like, you're doing great because of X, Y and Z. And my husband is so generous in terms of compliments. He'll always encourage. "Ashley you're doing an awesome job." But it was like to me that falls flat. Like, well, how do you really know if I'm doing a good job? Like, you don't have any concrete examples, you know what I mean. And there were areas in the business that I worked on that he didn't so that he didn't necessarily see as much value in, you know. I'm like, over here updating our financials which he knows is great and he thanks me for. But basically, I was trying to get my validation from all of these other places. And you have to understand that your validation as an entrepreneur isn't going to come from those sources. That it has to come from within. You have to be able to look at yourself and say, hey, you're crushing it. You're trying your best. And you know yourself. You know how hard you're working. You know whether or not you're actually leaning into the feedback you're getting from your clients or your staff or whomever. Or if you're just brushing it under the rug and wanting to be right. Again there's self-love and self-awareness and that looks a lot different when you are an entrepreneur versus being in a corporate environment. 

Okay, so I want to address the question of, "Can I keep my nine to five in have two streams of income whenever I open my business?" Well, I would say it depends on the business. So this will only work if you have the time. If how you function in your business, allows you to do that, right? Because, for example, I can't imagine running any of my businesses, while working a nine to five because, oh really I have kids. You know like, yeah. Kids change the game. It's not like I can work a nine-to-five job, and then come home in the evenings and work on my business because I have kids. So you know, I want to have that family time in the evenings and I have to get some kind of sleep when I can before I get back up the next day. So it really kind of depends on your life structure and how much time you have. But I'll also just say, just to be fair and honest that I can't really imagine working a nine to five, period, and having a business. I'm the kind of person who I go all in, you know, whenever it comes to, you know, really anything. But especially when it comes to my business. And so when I think about my businesses, I'm preparing to scale from the beginning as best I can. So, if I were to launch a business, and have a nine to five, that would be fine. But it would be strategic and temporary, meaning I would be like, okay, I have this nine to five job. It works with my life currently because of x, y, and z. But it's temporary. And I'm being strategic with maybe how I use the benefits or what I'm learning in that time as I prepare to launch my business. I hope that makes sense. I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with having a nine to five, and having a business. It just really depends on your personality, how you see your business growing, the time you have to give to both, and the type of business that you have. So I say all that to say that if you have a nine to five, and you want to keep it because you enjoy what you do, which is awesome. And you want to have this other business too because you're interested in it. I can see that looking two different ways. One, maybe you're a silent owner, and you let other people run the business, basically. Or maybe you're willing to grow your team, more quickly, meaning you have whatever role you designate in the business. And you're able to quickly hire other people to run the business around your role as it grows. Because again, my point is what I'm trying to say is I want you to think about your business. Yes, it might just be easy to do on your own right now. But as it grows, because we want growth. How will you evolve in either your role as in transitioning out of your nine to five or in how you build up your team around you. So those are the kind of two different ways you can look at it. 

So there you have it. I hope this was helpful. I hope it gave you some ideas on what your transition from corporate to entrepreneurship could look like. What are some things that you can consider? How to get past some different roadblocks. And then just the mindset shifts and you know things that you can do before you actually transition out. I hope it's provided some context there and like always if you have any questions at all. If you're thinking, you know, I want to start making plans to build my business legacy while I'm working my nine to five and I really want to like iron out how that would work for me specifically. I have a consultation call, where I kind of just see where you are and you know what you need. Then I help give you a roadmap of next steps. So if you want to book your consultation go to birdwilliams.com/consultation. 

All right, thank you so much for tuning in. I hope that if this episode was helpful to you that you'll give me a review on Apple Podcasts, that you'll subscribe there as well, and follow us on Spotify. And if you know anyone who's transitioning or considering transitioning from a nine to five to entrepreneurship. Make sure to send them this episode. All right. Alrighty, talk to y'all next week.