[00:00:00] Hello, my badass. So this question I have been getting a lot lately, which is when is my time? When's my moment? When is it time for me to quit my job and go all in? On my business, how will I know, how can I be sure what's that going to look like?
[00:00:22] And obviously without being your accountant and being able to look at your values and your lifestyle and how much you need and what you're charging and having all of these factors in order to do some revenue projections with you, it's going to be difficult for me to give you an exact precise answer.
[00:00:45] And you know what? Even if I had all of that information, it's still always going to come with that element of holy shit, I'm doing the thing. Every big decision, whether it's getting married to that person, moving country, [00:01:00] changing jobs, every big decision comes with an element of risk. However, what I thought could be really useful is walking you through my story.
[00:01:10] And what I did, in what order, so that I can extract some lessons from it, you can react to it. That's always going to be interesting in terms of understanding your own values. Does it feel aligned, the decisions, the moves that I made, or does it feel like something you would not be caught dead doing? So let me walk you through my journey and how I knew when to go all in my risk calculations, my risk management.
[00:01:43] And what I would recommend off the back of that experience, because in a lot of ways, I did quit my corporate job without a solid backup plan. And it's not necessarily something I would recommend.
My Corporate Journey: From Paris to New Zealand
[00:01:58] So let's go [00:02:00] back to 2019. I'm in Paris working for L'Oreal, the world's number one beauty group. I had been building up my international career in France.
[00:02:10] I had worked for the Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy group, which is the number one luxury group in the world. I had worked for a cool tech startups, music streaming platforms, consulting. I had done really cool things. I was enjoying my career and overall, honestly, really happy. In my corporate career, I had my blinders on.
[00:02:32] I was like, you know what, I'm going to become the human resources director of this company. You just watch me shine. Like I was very much a corporate disciple.
The Turning Point: Considering Entrepreneurship
[00:02:43] A little bit of a turning point for me was actually probably about six months prior, actually at the end of 2018, where. I got married to the Frenchy and I started feeling a little bit claustrophobic around the idea of not being able to go home to New [00:03:00] Zealand.
[00:03:00] Obviously, I didn't realize that we would be moving here at that point, but that idea of having to ask for annual leave to go home and see my family and I was starting to feel really homesick. And I knew that I wanted to be with the Frenchy, but I was unsure about actually living in France. And All the time and only coming home three, four weeks a year.
[00:03:21] And I started to feel really panicky around that. And I had been investigating what it looked like to make money online. I had my YouTube channel. I was side hustling. I had started to wake up to the idea that, Hey, maybe one day I could work for myself, but I assumed that would be via my YouTube channel, not even French, which was doing really well.
[00:03:45] Or, question mark insert, grand plan here, but I had actually started tinkering with the idea of career coaching already, or YouTube coaching. That was another thing that I was thinking through. So I'm not going to say that I [00:04:00] had no idea that I was going to become an entrepreneur. It was definitely playing on my mind, but I hadn't really built out anything super concrete.
[00:04:11] In 2019, however, I did start really thinking about what would these options look like? What would it look like to become a YouTube coach? What would it look like to become a career coach? And toying with the idea to the point where I was actually having conversations at L'Oreal. Offering to start creating some kind of internal careers platform or podcast with the communications team to help people within L'Oreal with their career purpose and their career decisions.
[00:04:44] And I was really pitching it already as a volunteer effort. But now I had some interest, but didn't have the time to evolve and go anywhere because boom, pal, what happened is that.
The Big Move: Transitioning to New Zealand
[00:04:57] Frenchy got offered a job in New Zealand. [00:05:00] And so this was a little bit of a plot twist. He had obviously been interviewing for a role, but it was something that came up randomly.
[00:05:12] He'd applied for this one role because it was perfect for him. What he works in is really rare. It's pretty rare in New Zealand. Jobs don't often come up. And so we were Oh, it's good networking. Why don't you go for it? And so he applies for the role. Long story short, ends up getting the job and we make the decision that in three months time, in 90 days, we are going to pack up our life in France that we had built over the past six years and move to New Zealand.
[00:05:41] So ironically, I followed him home. And in France, you have a three month notice period. And in those three months, while we were packing up, preparing our apartment, that lease to end and finding new people to take over the lease for us and [00:06:00] doing goodbye dinners and parties and saying Au revoir to friends, to family temporarily.
[00:06:07] So we thought then COVID hit anyway, we're like, we'll be back in just a few Okay. Anyways, COVID. The rest is history, but we were packing up our lives really actively and on the side, I really started to get serious about this concept.
Building Badass Careers: The Early Days
[00:06:22] So I started to flesh out in detail the business plan for badass careers.
[00:06:27] And I remember saying to myself. My ideal situation is that when we get to New Zealand, I have enough savings, enough money that I'm going to be able to not have to look for a corporate job. That was my ideal. I knew that, but I didn't really know. Or think, or probably believe to be honest, that I could pull it off.
[00:06:55] So quite a big identity shift when I was a [00:07:00] hundred percent on track for my ultimate career goal of becoming the HR director by 40, like going hard to suddenly have this realization that this was a life plot twist. I have three months to pull together a concept. And then I was doing the math and I was thinking to myself, okay, I've got enough money.
[00:07:21] That I'll be able to survive for a few months, not many months, but a few months working on my YouTube channel and with my personal savings and give this a go. So those three months I was very heavily developing everything. My niche, or as best I could at the time, I was running blind, but my niche, my office.
[00:07:46] What that would look like what my, business would be called. I was doing all of that groundwork, getting ready for the move to New Zealand. And the big goal was instead of looking [00:08:00] for my next dream job, I'm going to create my own dream job, my ideal career move. This is my business. I get to design it.
[00:08:07] I get to decide what that looks like. And if I can pull it off, I'll be so happy because I'll be able to work from anywhere and work in alignment with my purpose. So I had a lot of those core ingredients in place, let's say. I had no idea what I was doing. I had no real game plan, but I had made that decision.
[00:08:29] So in some ways, my hand was forced and it's probably a good thing because I could have stayed in procrastination mode and planning mode and daydream mode. For many more months than that.
Financial Struggles and Early Wins
[00:08:42] Now, when we moved to New Zealand, we saw very quickly that renting at the time and probably still today, to be honest, was more expensive than owning your own home in Wellington, supply and demand issues, the quality of housing that you get when you're [00:09:00] renting.
[00:09:00] We have very cold, wet drafty houses in New Zealand as the colonizers came, they put up these. Boxy houses made of wood and no insulation and it's just terrible. So there are a lot of old homes in Wellington that are very cold. And so the price, the quality was just really shocking. And I wasn't employed.
[00:09:21] I didn't have an income stream, but of course the Frenchie had a good job. And. We took this major risk like in hindsight, I went, what are you doing? But it does pay off. He was still on his trial period, his 90 day trial period. And we decided that rent was literally more expensive than a mortgage. So we might as well buy a house.
[00:09:41] Just to add a little bit of pressure on me to make it work, so we're back in New Zealand. This is July 2019. We had purchased a home in August 2019. All the while I had spent July, August, aside from house hunting, of course, Building out my business concept [00:10:00] even further, beta coaching with beta clients, so coaching people for free, letting people know, I actually let them know on Not Even French, hey, does anyone want to try YouTube coaching with me, and, I was making videos A little bit of money off that, but it was very minimal.
[00:10:16] So I was baby coaching for cheap in terms of YouTube coaching and then for free in terms of career coaching. So I was getting some practice in and just making sure I definitely wanted to go into the careers direction, just trying both of them out. And then from a very practical perspective on top of that, I had two revenue streams.
[00:10:33] So firstly was my Not Even French YouTube channel. So I had a very generous sponsor at the time that was paying me pretty good money each month for a shout out. So I knew that a couple of thousand dollars would be coming in from them at least. However, Not Even French felt like a ticking time bomb because I had moved away from France.
[00:10:54] And so I knew it was only a matter of time before the content became irrelevant, before my sponsors dropped me, and [00:11:00] so on and so forth. Of course you don't have to be in France to create content about France, but even for me, I knew that it would feel really inauthentic doing it. So I knew that was coming to an end.
[00:11:10] Then, I had also hooked up a really great deal with L'Oreal. Which was to do consulting for them one or two days per week and help them to transition and hand over the projects that I had been running and upskilling, the people replacing me and that kind of thing as well. So I had that as well as a revenue stream in the background.
[00:11:33] Now, neither of these revenue streams could fully pay my bills, especially because we had just purchased a very expensive home. Like I needed to put 4, 000 per month into the joint account just to pay for a mortgage, bills, living expenses, that kind of thing. So there was that pressure there. However, I also had a couple of months worth of personal savings.
[00:11:56] So between those lighter touch revenue [00:12:00] streams. Plus the savings I had, I did know that I was going to be fine for four months, okay? This is July, August, September, October, I knew that I was going to be okay.
Launching Badass Careers: The First Clients
[00:12:12] I launched Badass Careers in September 2019. Yes, a few months before COVID and my goal was to make 50, 000 New Zealand dollars that year to cover my costs, be able to put money into the joint account.
[00:12:26] And honestly, just, I was prepared to live bare minimum living expenses, like just have enough money to go out to the movies or meet a friend for brunch, but nothing nice, nothing like fancy clothes, nothing extra, nothing expensive, nothing in the hundreds of dollars, it's just a simple. Where all of my needs were catered for.
[00:12:47] But, of course, for me, I was getting paid in freedom. And that's that freedom to live between New Zealand and France. So I launched Badass Careers end of September. In October, I ended up making a few thousand [00:13:00] dollars from Badass Careers. Which were my very first clients buying very cheap packages on my website, because I didn't know anything about pricing or designing offers or anything like that.
[00:13:11] But hey, it was fine. I was doing my best. So they found me via Instagram and all was well. It was a few thousand dollars. But between that and then, my sponsors hadn't dropped me at this time and I got a few extra days at L'Oreal, the consulting gig, et cetera, et cetera. I started to realize, Hey, I'm actually going to be good until the end of the year.
[00:13:32] Like I'm good now until December, I can just make it work. Like it, it felt like I was essentially doing my business as a side hustle. And my main hustle was not even French and the L'Oreal consulting patchworking that together. And then. Badass careers was really building up on the side in my first four months of badass careers.
[00:13:55] I bought in about 12, 000 again, not necessarily enough to live [00:14:00] on, but it allowed me to keep buying a little bit more time, a little bit more time, a little bit more time. I'm going to be honest, throughout this time, I was incredibly stressed. It felt like the opportunities I did have, like my Not Even French sponsorships, my L'Oreal contract, were ticking time bombs.
[00:14:20] They were about to get taken away from me at any given moment. But they really did help and they really did carry me. I really liken it to as if I were working part time and that really saved me, honestly, in those first few months, because I couldn't have stretched out my savings without it. And because we were only able to use the Frenchie celery to get that credit and purchase our home, He was stretched to the max in terms of his lending ability.
[00:14:53] Like it was like, okay, we can just make this work, but it's going to take a massive chunk of your salary. So it's [00:15:00] not like he had enough leftover to float me. Not at all.
Financial Independence Journey
[00:15:03] And I never had to ask him for money, which was really great. And I don't really have anyone else in my life that I could have asked for money.
[00:15:11] It was really on me and there was a lot of pressure. There was a lot of stress. There was a lot of scarcity mindset. There was a lot of, I hope this works. Oh my god, it's working. Oh my gosh, this better work. Oh my gosh, it's not gonna work. Oh my gosh, I'm gonna be so screwed. Oh my gosh. So it, it didn't feel easy, but I was patchworking it together, right?
The Turning Point: Career Glow Up Launch
[00:15:30] Long story short, Badass Careers did start clicking into place, and it wasn't able to fully cover my expenses, but between Not Even French, L'Oreal, any savings I had, and the money I was earning with Badass Careers, I was able to make it until May 2020. Where I launched the career glow up for the very first time and I had my big 28, 000 launch.[00:16:00]
[00:16:00] That was by far the biggest cash injection I had. Before that, I was averaging like 2, 000 to 4, 000 per month. And that's when I knew, okay, we're good. We're away. And it was perfect timing as well because L'Oreal naturally wrapped up and because I started to feel very unmotivated when it came to not even French creating that content.
[00:16:19] I wasn't in France anymore. I hadn't been for a while and I was spinning the same things around French culture shocks, but it wasn't anything new. It wasn't anything fresh. Like I was naturally withdrawing creatively from that channel. And then. At the same time, my sponsors were starting to, have renewal conversations and we're talking about, shall we mutually part ways, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:16:42] So that happened. I'm so glad it did.
Achieving Financial Security
[00:16:45] And from that point, I was financially secure, right? Like from that point, badass careers. Started doing minimum kind of 10 to 20 K months from there on out essentially. And I ended up clocking a hundred K in my first [00:17:00] 12 months of business. But most of that was made in those final four months as things really started clicking into place.
[00:17:08] So 12 months from the day I posted my first ever thing on Instagram. I could say I made a hundred K in the first 12 months of business in that first calendar year, actually January to December, 2020. It was 150 K year, so things felt very comfy from that point. Concretely, what this meant is that my first year in business, I matched my corporate salary, but it wasn't.
[00:17:35] Into the end and this is the thing with this business models that you have to put so much work in up front posting content conversations. Really refining your brand your message like doing all of these things to build that no and trust and it can take a while for things to click into place but once it does.
[00:17:56] It can really snowball, which is what happened for me. So my [00:18:00] first year in business, I matched my corporate salary. Yeah. Two doubled it. Yeah. Three. I was out earning the typical salary for the HR director kind of level, which was my goal for age 40, 45. And I was only 33 years old. So that was what.
[00:18:16] What was wild to me is how quickly it all went from that point once what was working kept working and going from there. And I did it. I achieved the dream of living between New Zealand and France, of being able to create my own dream job, of working in a way that suits me, of being able to spend 90 percent of my time working in my zone of genius and doing things I absolutely love.
[00:18:42] Now I have a very talented Lean team. Supporting me on the rest just two other people and it's perfect and I get to work from home flexibly with my beautiful baby and our family can afford for things like my husband to take an entire year off work to care for her like [00:19:00] that is wealth for me and really I have achieved a level of wealth that I would have never dreamed possible.
[00:19:08] But in saying that it's easy to sit here on the other side and say, Oh my gosh, it was so worth it. Of course. What a no brainer. Of course, you're going to take that risk and sacrifice upfront because it will all pay off in the longterm. Look in hindsight.
Lessons Learned and Advice
[00:19:23] Let's talk about what I would have done, or would I change a thing?
[00:19:28] Firstly, I have a whole podcast episode on how you can achieve my revenue goals that I achieved faster than I did because I wasted a lot of time and I made a lot of mistakes along the way because I was an absolute beginner. So firstly, if you want to check that out in terms of how I would Increase my revenue faster go and check out my episode around making 10k months after eight months in business, but how you can do that faster.
[00:19:54] But in terms of would I go again with the same level of financial [00:20:00] risk and uncertainty? Look, I think there are a few lessons to be drawn from my story. I think what I did well is I was prepared to live cheap and basic, short term, for the long term gain. I knew that this business model came with that short term pain, long term gain.
[00:20:16] You have to be able to push through and keep going even when you don't see the results and you almost have to act as if, and be showing up as if, it was bringing an end. Everything that you had hoped for and desired and keep that faith until the tipping point happened. So I think I did well in terms of realistic expectations live cheap.
[00:20:35] This is going to take months to kick into place. Like I think that was quite good. But what I would say is if you were starting at zero. Because you've got to remember I had not even French. I put out a video where I was saying, Hey, I'm doing some YouTube coaching. Is anyone interested? I only had I don't know, seven people reach out, but I think I, I charged about 150 euros per client.
[00:20:58] It was, it's good to have a bit of [00:21:00] money coming in here and there. If you were starting from absolute zero, no presence, network, Entrepreneurial skills like starting from zero. I think I would have a minimum of four to six months of the sort of I can pay the bills savings plan in place, especially if you're going to do it yourself and not work with a coach and follow a guided program and get the results soon as possible.
[00:21:28] I would say four to six months and in that four to six months you will start earning money But maybe not enough to cover your monthly expenses But by the time you get to that four or five months, maybe you've made enough that you can buy yourself another few months Etc. And it will feel a little bit like okay for a while and then it will click into place if you do everything the right way right order, One offer, one message, one focus, one social media [00:22:00] platform.
[00:22:00] Like I really believe if you do it the baddest way, absolutely. You'll be able to pull it off starting from absolute zero. If you have done a quality business coaching program like empire era, sorry, just saying it's my thing. I know I'm biased, but it works. And you have validated your business concept.
[00:22:19] You know that there's demand, this is a profitable market. You've got your business ready to roll and kick off with a bang. Then three months of savings is probably enough, right? You'll have awesome security knowing that for three whole months, you don't have to earn a single thing. Again, same story, you'll launch, you'll send some clients, you'll have that cash influx, but it may not be consistent from the get go, and it may not be covering your living expenses straight off the bat.
[00:22:52] And having that three months, again, by the time you earn some money, You might build out a six month runway [00:23:00] as such until things are feeling really predictable and really stable. And then if you've been coaching private clients and been able to close, one to 3, 000 coaching packages previously, you have some amazing testimonials.
[00:23:15] If you have. A little bit of that experience as a side hustler, then honestly, it's just imagine what you could do working on this full time. You've managed to achieve the clients, the money, the messaging and the testimonials doing this on the side. Imagine if you could work on this 40 hours a week, right?
[00:23:31] So you could probably get away with just one to two months of savings and be willing to go hard on scaling what you're already doing well and do your personal branding and content and do the bad ass way. And. You'll probably be sweet, right? So again, it will completely depend on your risk profile. It will completely depend on your living costs.
[00:23:53] It will completely depend on your pricing. If you live somewhere where your monthly [00:24:00] living costs are 3, 000, and your coaching program is 1, 500, and you only need to sign two clients per month, To make that work. It's maybe a different conversation than if you tell me, Hey, I'm in the middle of New York city and I need 10 grand a month to live.
[00:24:19] Like it's a potentially different risk profile. These are some vague indicators of I think what I would feel comfortable with in hindsight with my situation.
Risk Management and Planning
[00:24:30] Now remember, there's always the in betweens, right? It's not black and white. It's not working full time in corporate or going all in on my business.
[00:24:38] Thanks. You can take a sabbatical and negotiate to have your job held for you for six months. You could go part time. You could use your corporate skills to keep consulting and freelance. You could probably make money, even if it's not your business needs and your purpose, but doing what you do right now at work and doing that on the side [00:25:00] to pay some bills.
[00:25:01] You can also put backup plans in place. So I'm going to give myself my four months. And if I haven't seen X result by X date, I will get a part time job. There are a lot of risk management plans that you can put into place to manage the in between as well. But once that business clicks into place, it can be predictable.
[00:25:25] It can be sustainable. I've never had so much financial security, obviously. And I can sit here again, worn and experienced and, got my battle scars on the other side and say, do it. It's so worth it. But of course, it's going to be a really personal decision based on what's going to work best for you.
[00:25:46] Just remember though, that corporate isn't going anywhere. And running a business will never look like shit on your resume. The skills involved, it's always going to look amazing. And you can always spin that story. [00:26:00] You can always say, I took a career sabbatical to do the grunt work and the upfront work.
[00:26:08] Of an entrepreneurial project that was on my mind. It was really purposeful and important to me. And I'm so glad that I did that work. And now it's taken the place in my life that I always intended it to, which is a side hustle. Something that I'm doing on the side of my corporate career. I just wanted to take that breathing space to get everything set up.
[00:26:28] And it's a really purposeful outlet for me. You can spin that story anyway. It will never look bad on your resume. It could only look incredible. So don't worry about that. Corporate's not going anywhere. You'll never be unemployable after this and going for it. I think it's just one of those things that you'll never feel ready, be smart, have things in place, have a plan, have some buffer. But you can and will make this happen for yourself.
Final Thoughts and Encouragement
[00:26:56] As always, Badass, if you have any questions, feel free [00:27:00] to come over and send me a DM over on Instagram at BadassEmpires underscore and I'm happy to answer any questions you have about this episode and have a chat about your specifics, where you're at.
[00:27:12] And where your decision making is at when it comes to your empire. And please let me know if you find this useful, me sharing my personal stories and revealing what I did behind the scenes in order to help you to draw out some lessons and think about it from your perspective. Otherwise, until the next episode, as always, bye.
