I always knew I was destined for much more than a 9-5 paycheck, but because I was programmed to think the corporate life was the safe route , I reluctantly climbed the corporate ladder for 10 years working for Fortune 500 companies and some of NYC’s hottest startups.
Even though I was great at recruiting top talent for these organizations and enjoyed working in human resources, I got bit by the entrepreneurial bug when I was a little girl, watching my father build one successful business after another. I suppose apples truly don’t fall far from trees because I knew that I was destined for much more than the corporate title I received immediately after completing my college degree.
A week before Christmas of 2017, I was sat down in a small conference room with a dark blue envelope on the table and was told that due to “budget cuts” my position was no longer needed. After hearing those words, I felt equal parts sick to my stomach and relieved.
Being let go of job is probably one of the worst feelings ever and it happening a week before you’re planning on buying gifts for your family was one of the most disheartening feelings ever.
As I was packing up my belongings (and my pride) I made a bold decision to never allow for anyone to determine my fate (or my worth for that matter) ever again.
Now that my “stable” income vanished overnight – it was time to get super scrappy on a limited timeline. I didn’t have time to learn something new, but I knew exactly what companies were looking for in their hiring process and what landed job seekers in the “yes” and the “no” piles. I decided I was going to use these ten years of corporate experience and start to coach people on how to find jobs. My new title was ‘career coach’.
To my surprise, there were people that were happy to pay me for this knowledge online. Initially, it wasn’t much, but with each person I helped, my confidence grew, as did my income. My testimonials began piling up and as a result, so did my referrals. Giving people the most quality service was the key to my initial success. After about three months, my calender was fully booked.
After about six months, I noticed a pattern. My clients kept running into the same problems and I felt like I was repeating myself like a broken record. I also could only take on a certain amount of clients per day. I wanted to help more people, at a much more affordable price point and I knew I could do that by creating an online course. And so I did it. To date, I’ve had over 100 people successfully go through the program.
Launching (and now relaunching) the course put major cash injections into my business and has allowed me to step away from taking on as many one-on-one clients. This also gave me space and freedom to experiment with other sides of my business, at the same time, continuing to provide the same results as they would get working with me privately.