Entrepreneur to Employee - “Failure”, Reframed.
If you’ve ever found yourself desiring a return to corporate life, you’re not alone. Especially those just beginning their journey to small business. According to the Academy of Management, a study of 5,000 entrepreneurs spanning decades found that those who kept a day job reduced their odds of failure by 33%. In the circles where I spent my time over the past decade, it’s been framed as a failure to return to a corporate job. I want to reframe that for anyone who’s considering such a move.
As for me, the first company I built was called 500 Miles Booking Agency. I was an agent for public speakers who traveled across the world to speak for corporate audiences, public schools, and even churches. It’s where I was first introduced to the field of marketing. Thankfully, I had bosses who believed in me and invested in my education, which caused my creative marketing brain to flourish.
During late 2004, early 2005, my marriage and life began to crumble, and with that, so did my business.
Image of a pink paper heart on a black background that is torn nearly completely in two.
I blindly fumbled through job descriptions, applying for “normal” jobs without having any idea whether I was qualified or not. In 2007, my mom was diagnosed with stage IV pancreatic cancer. I took a job at Whole Foods, where I was at the behest of corporate America’s schedule. Cancer or not, they had a business to run, and my family’s crisis didn’t concern them. Having to work your life around a corporate schedule during a time of crisis feels cruel. Inhumane, even. I felt entrepreneurship luring me back in. I started taking on smaller part-time marketing clients until I had a client roster large enough to sustain my income, and by 2014, I was able to leave the corporate arena and focus on building my own business.
The lure at the time was time freedom. Financial freedom, the typical dangling carrot for new entrepreneurs, was a distant second, to be honest. At first, the time freedom and the money were good. I was an incredible marketer because I was holistic in my approach. I did things ethically. My clients had a marketer with a firm grasp on not just social media marketing, but also PR, traditional marketing, podcasting, copywriting, storytelling, and ethical influencing. But I was doing all of this solo, without a plan, without a support staff.
Over the course of 10 years, clients came and went. My experience was such that they either all came at the same time or they all went at the same time. Ah, the age-old tale of feast or famine. Famine struck in 2022, and my energy was completely zapped. I had precisely zero interest in or drive to find additional clients, and I certainly didn’t have systems set up to generate leads consistently. I had reached the place I’d heard about in my circle of business owners - burnout. According to Score, one of the most common issues among small business owners is the uncertainty that comes from owning your own business. I knew it was time to step back into the corporate world. The space that I once fled actually felt like paradise. Thankfully, I had a consistent mindset practice at this time in my life, and although things looked bleak financially, my husband and I began to focus very clearly on what we wanted to create.
It would be a remote opportunity. The company would be a healthy place to work, one that values the humans who work there. We feverishly applied for every remote job that harnessed our current skillset. He would apply for a few and share the one he was most interested in, and I would do the same. It was a Wednesday when he found an opportunity that piqued my interest. “Extra Space Storage has a job opening for remote sales agents.” I asked him to send me the link to apply, and I remember saying to him, “I feel like this is our opportunity. It seems to me that storage would be a recession-resistant industry.”
By Friday, we both were scheduled for interviews, and we were told right there, informally, that we would be receiving job offers.
While my husband found work elsewhere since that time, my time at that company has been invaluable. The first thing I noticed when accepting a corporate job was that my energy returned. Even with all the mindset work I’d been doing, I wasn’t at a point to ward off the negative thought spirals that kept me misaligned with my highest self as an entrepreneur. I needed a do-over, a reset button. I’ve always been good at sales, and it provided me stability, still with a spirit of entrepreneurship. My mind literally flipped a switch overnight. Creativity came flowing back in.
I was no longer having to use all of my faculties to find a path to financial stability. I showed gratitude every day for my role. For a job that I could step away from at 4:30 every day, and not have to check my phone every 15 minutes to see if a client needed me. I began to see the inner workings of a business that has grown and continues to grow. I began seeking growth opportunities to mentor struggling agents. And before I knew it, I was offered a job in the department where I’ve wanted to work since I worked for RCI in the early 2000s - Learning and Development.
I don’t pretend to know what’s next, but for now, I’m absolutely loving the life I live. My new role challenges me, and it keeps me immersed in my passion for teaching others. Helping them earn the most income for their families as possible. Challenging them to be the best versions of themselves. And in the meantime, they are developing me to be a more well-rounded business person and a better human.
In my free time, I do take on select clients. While I no longer do solely marketing work, I do help women who understand the power of thought and intention to reach for and actively achieve their own version of success. Pursuing my passion at my corporate job and my small business as it turns out, isn’t so bad. Finding financial stability and work-life balance, I’ll be taking my first vacation with absolutely zero work very soon… something I haven’t done in over a decade. I challenge this concept of perceived “failure” and reframe it as finding the best option that serves me in this exact moment. If it’s not where you want to be permanently, here’s the great thing: This is only a moment, and you get to choose what you do with your next one. Go live your life the way you want to.