Here’s my story of quitting corporate America to start a business…. I’ve been running my own online business full-time for over two years now. And my journey to leaving the corporate world happened in five stages over the course of about four years, from starting a lifestyle blog several years ago, to quitting my job after a yoga retreat to Bali. It’s been an interesting ride!

So let’s dive into the story of how I quit corporate America…

Stage 1: Starting a Lifestyle Blog While Working in Corporate Sales

In 2014, I started a lifestyle blog to talk about all of my random interests online. I talked about fashion, food, travel, personal development, everything! lol!

I intended it to be just a hobby and I didn't even know people were getting paid for blogging. I was just totally doing it just for fun because I was bored in my 9-5 job in corporate sales. At work, I felt like I was doing the same like routine tasks every day. So during my free time, I was always on the search for another career path to get out of sales.

During that time, I even hired a career coach to help me get more clarity on which direction to take, too.

But once I started my blog, I started to notice people running businesses online. And that was appealing to me because I liked the flexibility that an online business would afford me, with being able to work from anywhere and being able to set my own schedule.

To get my lifestyle blog up, I created my own website. So because I was in the head space where I was considering online business as a future goal or for my career change, I thought web design would be a great skill that I could offer to clients in a business that would lead to me quitting corporate America.

Stage 2: Learning Web Design & Procrastinating

Once I knew I wanted to start an online business selling web design services, I started looking for web design courses that I could take in the evenings after work to improve my skills. It was important to me to take these classes because I really wanted to elevate my skills because I knew that if I wanted to offer web design services on a professional level to do it full-time, then I was going to have to be really good at it. That lifestyle blog website that I designed was pretty bad, so I had to step it up!

This was the website design for my lifestyle blog, when I was just starting out in 2014. Hideous, I know!

I ended up taking two evening classes. One was a web design certificate program. And one was a visual design class at General Assembly.

But one big mistake I made was staying in that “learning phase” for WAY too long. I undercharged because I wasn’t confident enough in my skills yet and I kept telling myself I still needed to “learn” before I could charge more, so as a result, I made less than $2,000 over a 3ish year period.

I was still blogging and marketing myself as a web designer and even a photographer, too, so I was building a small audience online, but I just didn't have much money to show for it because I kept undercharging and I wasn’t marketing myself consistently enough. I spent a lot of time being “off and on” with the business during this phase too, due to a lack of confidence and this made quitting corporate America seem nearly impossible at this stage.

Stage 3: Secured a New 9-5 Job Selling Marketing Software to Entrepreneurs

In the next phase, I got a job working in a company that makes marketing automation software for entrepreneurs, called Infusionsoft. Since that job was really intense with an aggressive quota and uncapped commission potential, I put my business on the backburner and I basically stopped working on my business, once I started that job.

At the Infusionsoft corporate headquarters in Arizona for training, when I first started the job in September 2017

The job provided a really cool transition because prior to that, I was working in a corporate sales job where the company sold consumer products. So in that job, I definitely wasn’t learning anything related to entrepreneurship. At that company, I really had to hide the fact that I had a business.

(I actually ended up getting fired from that company, too! lol)

So once I got hired for my new job at the software company, where they were selling to entrepreneurs, they actually liked the fact that I was working on a side business because they knew that it would make me more relatable to the clientele that we were talking to.

So since I could literally see my paycheck getting higher, if I made more sales with the uncapped commission there, I went all in on that job. I wanted to make as much money as I could in a short time period. And doing that helped me save six months of living expenses and pay off my credit card debt in less than a year working there.

That job also taught me a lot about online marketing because I was required to talk to entrepreneurs every day about how they were marketing their businesses. This really demystified entrepreneurship for me and it made leaving the corporate world much more realistic and less intimidating. Before, I was thinking it was going to be so complicated and so hard to create a full time business.

But eventually…

The culture at that job went downhill. And I got a demotion while almost everyone on my team got fired.

I tried to look for a different job to pivot out of sales, but still to stay in the software industry, so I wouldn’t have to deal with crazy quotas anymore. But I couldn’t get hired for any of the jobs that I was applying to. So at that point, I was at a crossroads.

I asked myself if I wanted to take the six months of money I had saved to see if I could get my business going or if wanted to get a new skill for the corporate world by going to one of those six month coding bootcamps to become a Developer. At that point I’d been in sales for seven years, so I was just totally ready for quitting corporate America to do something else and even though I could’ve easily gotten another sales job, I was tired of it. Sales can be a great field to make money fast, but the stability of your job can be really unpredictable and I was tired the constant job searching.

Stage 4: Pushing Through Fear to Quit My Job

I decided I wanted to take my six months of savings to work on building a full-time business. But I was really, really scared to actually go through with it and quit! I was going to work every day, in a horrible mood about being demoted, but I was so afraid of all the unknowns of starting a business that I couldn’t bring myself to quit.

At that point, I had a yoga retreat to Bali scheduled that I’d already paid for like eight months before the demotion drama happened. It was my first little international trip. And I went by myself and I met new people on the retreat. I knew the girl hosting the retreat from college, but that was it! So flying across the world by myself was a little bit scary, too.

Just the fact that I was able to take this trip helped me slowly push out of the fear of leaving the corporate world. It started to make my fear of quitting my job seem a lot smaller. Throughout the trip, I felt like I conquered different fears like conquering my fear of heights by going on one of the Bali swings. And then we did a bunch of other different activities, of course, the yoga and the bike riding through the villages.

Me on the Bali swing conquering my fear of heights!

Plus, just being out of town and thinking about how my future lifestyle could be flexible as an online business owner, being able to work from wherever I wanted, got me excited to quit my job, too.

So as soon as I got back from the trip — I remember it was a Sunday night — I went ahead and emailed my resignation notice to my manager to quit. I had to go back into the office like one or two more days after that, and then I was completely done with my job and it was time to dive head first into the business!

Stage 5: Quitting Corporate America

On my very last day in the office, I came home that afternoon and literally started working on the marketing plan for my business to get back in front of the small audience I’d built. I dropped all the other services I’d sold in the past and I focused solely on brand and web design services. I was trying to be super aggressive with the marketing to make sure everybody I could think of knew what services I offered.

I desperately needed clients because I quit with zero clients booked! I just was winging it with my little six months of money saved up, after leaving the corporate world, hoping to replace my 9-5 income before I ran out of savings. I increased my rate to $1,500 for my brand and web design package to make sure it was high enough, so I could actually make full-time income. (Before that, the highest I’d charged was $500 for a website.) And after a slow start, I eventually got booked up with a couple of months of consistent online marketing.

I ended up quickly increasing my package price to $2,000. And I eventually became overbooked at that rate, so I had to do another increase so I could book fewer clients and still make enough money. So from there, I increased my package price to $5,000. So I had to increase that and I increased the $5,000. I've been able to work with so many cool clients in all different locations. I'm based in Atlanta, but I've worked with clients based in like Texas and California, New York, Chicago, Florida, and more.

Now, I'm using everything that I’ve learned through real life experience, running my own web design business for two years full time now to teach new service providers how to attract premium clients online through my 6-week program, The Successful Service Provider.

Remember, there's no right or wrong way for leaving the corporate world. It's totally up to you. Do what feels right for you and your situation in life. And never ever give up, no matter how challenging things may get. Living the lifestyle of having a “work from anywhere” business, where you get to call the shots in your life, is totally worth it in the end!