From Workaholic to Business Leader

It finally clicked.

Sitting there, another night of insomnia with a side order of anxiety and depression taking over, I sat with my tea wondering if I it was all worth it. For me, this was extremely out of character because I had been a typical ambitious corporate ladder climber throughout my 20s. It was my ultimate badge of honor to have been so responsible at such a young age. I was widely considered The Millennials’ Last Hope to my older coworkers by not only sticking with a career path, but thriving in it.

And then I realized it was all a crock of shit.

I had spend my entire early 20s working - sometimes 22 hour days (I wish I was kidding) - in order for my husband and I to afford the house with the white picket fence, the kids, the full medical benefits, and the 2 weeks of vacation a year. I almost never took a sick day, barely used vacation, and any socializing I did was with my coworkers for beers after work at one of two places. It was giving very blue collar sitcom vibes…except I’m a Black woman, so a bit more “post-modern America” representation, I guess. And while before kids it never struck me as odd or a waste of my freakin’ youth, having kids changed everything.

To put this into perspective, I had been pregnant at 19. It wasn’t a serious relationship, and at the time I didn’t want kids ever let alone in that kind of unsupportive situation. Before that, my idea of a really good day was waking up around 10 or 11, going somewhere either with my friends or just driving anywhere, going home to get ready for a night out, and then me and my best friend going on a crazy adventure of drinking (no saints here), dancing, driving, and all out debauchery. I worked enough to pay my portion of rent, food, and gas and insurance for my car. It was some of the best times of my life. It felt like freedom. But then a bad breakup, pregnancy, and subsequent miscarriage ended that because it made me feel out of control.

See, up until that point, I had strongly believed in letting life do its thing; you’re just along for the ride. But settling into the idea of being responsible for someone else and then not getting the chance to do it changed that. Suddenly, it became an existential crisis. If I can’t be perfect naturally, I can force myself to be what I want to be by taking control.

And that’s how hard working, “Model Employee Asia” was born.

Flash forward to my son being born, and suddenly I had a reason not to go to work. In fact, the argument to stay home with my growing family full time was starting to edge out returning to work ever. But like many families nowadays, financially that didn’t make sense for us. And I couldn’t deny that every time I was on maternity leave I started to get that itch to be professionally productive again. So I decided a better job would require fewer hours, or at least more remote opportunities, and would pay more, giving us the financial flexibility we needed to make me staying at home work. I even went back to school for my B.S. in Business Management in order to give me a leg up on the competition. But as I started to look into my career options, I started see that it wouldn’t be so straightforward.

But what other career options did I have? I was almost done with my business degree and I seemed to have a natural knack for it, testing out early so I could finish in about three years instead of four. Should I start my own business? What kind of business? What am I qualified for and want to do? All I knew was I didn’t want to build a business just to be stuck in something else that didn’t fulfill me, I started to ask friends and family what they thought I was good at.

The answers varied from, “Telling everyone what to do,” to “Over-planning everything.” I probably don’t have to tell you that I’m a Type A, ENTJ, 8 enneagram, Taurus…but of course I’m telling you just so we’re clear.

It was also really important to me to be able to make enough money not only for myself and my family, but for my community at large. I wanted to be able to donate to the projects I felt needed more support.

Taking that, and with social media ads being the all-knowing entities they are, I started to see more and more about “START YOUR OWN ONLINE BUSINESS!” At first I thought I would start a Mommy Blog, but I quickly realized I don’t want to be known for being a mom; and while I love my kids, I don’t want to only talk about them 24/7. But I didn’t know what else to talk about and the only other options I saw was for dropshipping and day trading. Those weren’t really my scene either. Digging deeper into this online business space, I started to realize I was coming across a lot of courses and paid resources and finally realized I could teach people to do some of the things I was good at. And when I started to wonder what exactly I could teach, people were making courses for everything.

My options were literally limitless!

I started to make ebooks, webinars, courses, and social media content all about growing in your career ranging from acing interviews, to planning your career path, to managing your projects to help you stand out, and expertly working toward your next promotion. And as fun as it was to create work that people needed and would finally allow me to have both job satisfaction and location flexibility and financial security, I quickly ran into burnout and some of the other hurdles typical to starting a business.

I was still working full-time at my day job (I will never advocate quitting your day job for your side hustle before your ready to scale, btw) and had just started my MBA. And then, of course, the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Suddenly, running my business was overwhelming and uncertain. I had been relying on organic growth methods which is hard f*@king work. I was sleeping less than 4 hours every night, getting less productive during my work hours because I was overwhelmed and was starting to mentally checkout, and starting to resent this business I had created. Laying out everything I had going on, it was like I had 4 full time jobs! Staying in corporate America, running my own business, staying at home with my kids, and finishing my degree was a lot on my plate at once. Something had to give.

Obviously I couldn’t do anything about being at home all day err’day with my kids in the middle of quarantine. I also couldn’t give up my day job because that would put my family’s financial stability in jeopardy in the middle of worldwide uncertainty and you already know that’s just not my style. My degree would be completed soon enough, so I knew if I could just stick it out another year, my workload would lighten immediately from that. So what was left? My business! I needed to put my systems creation and project management experience to work for me.

My business needed more automation. And I figured this would be necessary down the line anyway–building your own business so you can stay at home with your kids doesn’t really make sense if you can’t be present with your kids and not just here…ya know what I mean?

So 2020 may have been a shit-show on the whole, but for me, it was an opportunity to get some clarity on the kind of business I wanted run, how to make it run as smoothly as possible, and how I would go about scaling it without creating a new monster that would provide my family enough money to live, but ultimately eat up my time and energy.

I’d love to share these systems with you, so if you’re thinking about starting your own sustainable online business and want to make it more automated so you can focus on the things you love most instead of being in constant launch mode, join my email list so you can grab the latest edition of The Company magazine where you’ll learn the best tools to help you run your online business, the 5 ways leaders build community, and much more!

Cheers to you and your business journey!