Want To Leave Corporate?

If you're thinking about leaving your corporate job to work for yourself, here's five things I've learned in the last three years since leaving my dream job at Nike to work for myself.
And below, I’ve included my favorite resources that I send to people in this scenario!

1. BUILD UP SAVINGS

The first and most important is that you need to have a savings account. You need an emergency fund, if you don’t have one already, even if you're never thinking about going to work for yourself.

This is Sage advice for any of you, please understand personal finance. Please understand savings and how investments work and how compound interest works because all of this is going to help you. I would not have been able to leave Nike if I did not have a savings and emergency fund that I could have tapped into, which would fuel my runway for that year after leaving a very healthy salary with great benefits.

2. FORCE YOUR OWN HAND

The second is you must have to figure out a way to force your own hand to actually leave that comfort and safety net. I packed up and moved my family back to Dallas, Texas from Portland, Oregon during the pandemic, while Nike was still working remote. Three years ago today, they finally officially pulled everybody back to the office, which is when I finally left.

A helpful exercise for this is to visualize you sitting on your deathbed and thinking about what you would regret. And for me, I always felt like I had an entrepreneurial spirit and I needed to prove to myself whether I could either do it or not. I would not forgive myself if I hadn't tried it. That being said, don't get yourself fired. Leave on good terms. That is very, very, very, important. I was on great terms with Nike when I left. I'm probably on less good terms with them now that I criticized them publicly, but whatever. It's all love.

3. WELCOME TO SALES (AND MARKETING)

Alright, third is that an entrepreneur, you're moving into a sales role. This only occurred to me a couple months after leaving when a friend of mine asked me, “When in the sales cycle are you talking about price with these schools?” And I swear I had an out-of-body experience like, wait, what? I'm in sales now? And I was. The fact of the matter is you're selling yourself. So I had to get better at that. Ultimately, the marketer in me had to figure it out. I just leaned into socials a lot more to try to create a pool audience where I have inbound leads, rather than me banging on people's doors and begging them to hire me. So sharpen those marketing skills.

4. BE WILLING TO PIVOT

Four, you also have to be willing to pivot- which is actually related to that third point. I started in the NIL space. I wanted to teach workshops. I really wanted to help athletes and then I thought maybe I should be a marketing agent, and realized that wasn't gonna be my path. Then I thought maybe I should lead an agency, but figured out I don't want to actually run an agency. I still don't have a master plan for what this is. I have general principles of what I want them to be, and I'm getting very close to starting a product. But ultimately, I diversified my offering. My offerings are all generally around communication, but I do keynotes, marketing, consulting, and content. I never thought the content was actually gonna be a viable business, but what do you know, it did.

5. IT IS HARDER & MORE REWARDING THAN YOU THINK

And lastly, speaking of all those things, it is harder and more rewarding than you can ever possibly imagine. At corporations, you're often working with a lot of teams. You know, there's a lot of downsides to that, bureaucracy and politics and all that. But also you have help. And when it's just you, it is really, really, really, really hard. But when you actually get something into the world and people respond to it is incredibly rewarding.

So, best of luck. I hope this helps.

Resources:

Best Principles on Wealth Building in a Simple Format:

Best Book for Managing Big Changes:

Here’s a Podcast with the Author, who is one of the best Storytellers I’ve ever heard.

Here is MY Podcast Where We Wrap Up the Best Marketing of May:

The BrandFathers new episode is out NOW: This week The Brandfathers cover the hottest marketing campaigns in May.

Or, you can always visit HowToGetAJobAtNike.com for some of my career resources & advice as well.

Lastly, here’s the Sports Marketing Framework I promised to share last week & forgot.

Blessings:

Have you ever WON at Work, but Lost at Home? Outside of Sports, where the score is simple, Winning is a subjective viewpoint. My dear friend and former Nike coworker had this realization and has helped me reframe Winning in my life for years now.
HIGHEST Recommendation for this book that releases TODAY…