10 Things You Need to Know Before You Leave Your Job - Part 1 (#96)

Thinking about leaving your six-figure corporate job to start a business, become a speaker, or launch a consulting practice? Before you hand in that resignation, there are a few things I really wish someone had told me.

In Part 1 of this two-part series, I’m sharing the first 5 of 10 lessons I learned when I made my own bold leap out of corporate. These truths will save you time, mental energy, and heartache — and help you feel more prepared and empowered in your career transition.

Whether you're in corporate leadership, burned out in your role, or simply craving more purpose, this episode is packed with honest insights from my personal experience and work with clients just like you.

Here’s what you’ll learn:

✨ Why YOU are the secret sauce (and always have been)

✨ How to confidently handle the “health insurance” question

✨ What really happens to your corporate relationships

✨ Why money is the trap keeping you stuck

✨ And the truth about replacing your corporate income

You don’t need all the answers to take the next step — but you do need the truth about what to expect so you can build your exit strategy with clarity and confidence.

🎧 Listen now and stay tuned for Part 2 next week!

If you're looking for additional support through coaching, visit my website to learn more about working together and my signature program EDIT Your Life™: www.karinfreeland.com/life-coaching

Then book a call here!

Not ready for coaching? Get a copy of my self-help book: Grab Life by the Dreams!

Transcript

Karin Freeland: 0:00

Welcome to Rock Your Reinvention, where I help high-achieving career women like you get unstuck, make your corporate exit strategy, and successfully transition to your next chapter. Hi, I'm your host, Karin Freeland, a certified life coach and corporate exit strategist. Whether you want to start a business, become a speaker, or something else, I'm here to give you the tools and strategies to shift your mindset, build your confidence, and take bold actions so you can rock your reinvention. Ready? Let's go. Welcome back to Rock Your Reinvention. There's no denying that deciding to leave your job is one of the biggest and potentially hardest decisions you'll make. And as you saw, if you listened to episode 94, where I shared some never before heard journal excerpts from my own personal journal, I agonized over leaving for years. And I don't want you to get stuck in the spiral of, should I leave? Shouldn't I leave? When should I leave? Why shouldn't I leave for too long? Yes, it's important to plan and think this decision through, of course, but we don't need this to take months or years either. There's a balance that we need to strike. So I thought it would be fun to do a two-part series where I will share the top 10 things I wish I knew before leaving my six-figure corporate job. in hopes that this will help you make the pivot faster and with more confidence. Today, I'm gonna start by sharing the first five things, and then in next week episode, I will share the other five things to help get us to the 10 things you need to know before you make your exit. Let's dive in. The first thing I wish I knew before I left corporate was this is, and this is probably the most important thing that you need to know is you are capable of achieving your goals. Whatever it is that you wanna do, start a business, write a book, create a podcast, speak on stages, it doesn't matter. You have everything you need inside of you to be successful. You're resourceful, you can figure out hard things, you can overcome big challenges, really. I had one client who had made the company that employed her millions of dollars. Yes, millions. And yet she was second guessing herself. I don't know if I can do this. Remember, you have been successful in your job. You've made shareholders rich. Others have bet on you and believed in you. That's why they kept promoting you. Why wouldn't you be able to do this for yourself too? There's absolutely no reason. You will be successful. You are the magic sauce. You are the secret weapon. You need to know that and remember that when you leave. Don't believe me? Start making a list of all your skills. And if you get stuck, you can ask some friends or trusted peers to help you out. This will be important to come back to time and time again when you need a confidence boost. So write down all your talents, your skills, the things that make you you and make you capable. You want to have this list somewhere convenient. The second thing I wish I knew was you will figure out insurance. This is one of the biggest reasons women stay in an unfulfilling corporate gig, right? They feel they need the company to pay for their benefits and their insurance. Now, Barring you don't have some crazy debilitating disease, which I've personally never had a client in this situation, you can absolutely figure out and pay for health insurance for you and your family members. We are personally a family of four, and we were able to find an affordable plan on the open market, okay? Healthcare.gov, baby. We got dental... And we've got regular healthcare, okay? I pay for vision out of pocket because it costs almost nothing when you go to those rural vision and those kinds of places, right? LensCrafters, whatever. You're one click away from finding a plan online. Now, some states have insurance brokers who can help you find a health insurance. You know, they'll shop around, they'll find the plans, especially if you have a little bit more of a complicated situation or maybe specific medicine, someone has diabetes or something. So if that's something that you can use in your state, that might be an option worth looking into. Now, if you're an international listener, you might even get free healthcare and you don't even have to worry about this. But just know, for those of you in the states, There are about 31 million entrepreneurs in the US alone, and they've obviously all figured out health insurance. I am more than confident that you can too. So what can you do? Start shopping around. Get those estimates now so you know how much you need to have saved up when you exit your job. And if you're like me, you're going to be shocked at how little you'll actually end up paying because a lot of times there's big tax credits that are available for entrepreneurs. So it's all based on your income. So you might be surprised you end up actually paying less than what you even estimated. Okay, the third thing that you need to know that I wish someone had told me before I left corporate is that little to no one from your corporate career is going to stay in touch with you. Now, I know this might sting a little bit, so let's just get this one out of the way. And this is definitely a wake-up call for me and an unpleasant one at that. You know, I can count on one hand, the number of people that I talked to from the organization that laid me off in 2021. And I can count on the other hand, the number of people who stayed in touch with me from a company that I gave nine years of my life to before that. And I'm not talking about the occasional like on LinkedIn, which I don't get a lot of those either, but I'm talking about people who have my cell phone number and we text, right? We are in communication semi-regularly. That is practically non-existent. So stop letting these ding-dongs hold you back from making a pivot. I know that wasn't very nice, but they're not coming along for the journey. And I wasted so much time being heartbroken about that in the beginning of my entrepreneurial journey, which is why I want to let you know about it now. I'm like, why is no one liking my Facebook stuff? Why won't they share my posts? Damn it. I really need their help. Why is no one buying my book? Out of sight, out of mind, right? And it sounds a little bit harsh at first, but this actually becomes really, really freeing for you because now you can take off that mask, you know, the one your ego created for you, and you can finally be you, the real you. No more trying to be who you think you're supposed to be, who you think your company and your peers and everybody wants you to be. No, right? You don't have to be that person anymore. Hopefully you listened to episode 93, how to ditch the ego and reinvent your life, right? If you didn't listen yet, I definitely recommend heading over there next. But when you set your ego aside, you get to stop making decisions based on what you think those you work with will think. Oh, if I leave, they're gonna think I'm crazy. They're gonna be like, why are you giving up this gravy train? But what they don't realize is you're not walking away from corporate, You're walking towards your dreams. You're walking towards something so much bigger and better for you. So you don't have to worry about your team or your peers. They're going to be okay. They're going to survive. They're big boys and girls because they're not going to be worrying about you. And I think that's because partly we're all a little self-centered, right? Hear me out. Once you don't work with them anymore, they don't have any use for you. You can't sponsor them. You can't give them a raise. You can't pick up the slack. You can't help them get things done faster, right? So like I said, before long, you're out of sight, you're out of mind. So you might as well make the leap now before you give these people any more of the best years of your life. But the other piece of this is your newfound freedom and courage in their mind shines a light on what they've always wanted to do. and never had the guts to follow through on. You're leaving and they're stuck. That has nothing to do with you. You're not unlovable. People didn't secretly hate you. They hate themselves. They hate their own situation. They hate that they built a lifestyle that has now trapped them, that they cannot walk away from. They hate that you got to leave and they still have to come to the soul sucking job every day. And so when I think about it that way, like I can't even blame them. I just feel bad for them. And then I pray that they will start listening to my show so they can get the courage they need to leave. So here's your action step. If you're thinking about leaving, you need to start building up a new network, a network of people who are doing similar things that you want to be doing, who are going to be your new set of champions. When I was leaving, I surrounded myself with other entrepreneurs, female speakers, podcast hosts, authors, et cetera. Anyone who was doing something I was remotely interested in exploring, I wanted them in my circle. This is a very worthwhile activity and will become your lifeblood when you exit. So do not skip this step if you are thinking about leaving. You don't want to start building your network after you make the leap, okay? You want to do this beforehand. All right, now the fourth thing you need to know. And this is going to come across kind of crazy. You might not believe me at first. You don't need as much money as you think you do. What a relief. Like just take a deep breath. Let that weight fall off your shoulders. Doesn't feel so good. Now, if I'm honest with you, I don't know if I would have actually believed anyone had I not experienced this for myself. Like if someone told me when I was in my job, Karin, you don't need this much money anyway. It's going to be okay. You can just leave now. I would have definitely had an argument back. I would have been like, oh, no, no, I need this amount of money. You don't understand. My kids play hockey and I have a mortgage and I need this and I need that. No, no, I need all this money. And if you're like me, you have a certain lifestyle that you've become accustomed to. But see, something happened for me at the same time. The money is a trap. It's what keeps you in the soul sucking job in the first place. So when you release yourself from that trap and believing that you need all this money, you see that you don't really need all the things you were using your money for. And I'm hesitant here to give specific examples because I can already hear you countering each one of my points. If I said, well, I took my kids out of hockey. You'll go, I can't take my kids out of sports. I'm like, wait, wait, I didn't say that. I took them out of hockey, but they played travel lacrosse instead. Just as much fun to watch and play, but 50% of what hockey costs me. Everybody still wins. But I also want to give you some tangible examples so that you can seek to apply this in your own situation. So at the risk of giving you some more ammo for why you can't leave, I am gonna share some tangible examples. I didn't need such a fancy wardrobe. I mean, I coach people via Zoom. I do podcasts. All I need is to look good from the waist up. Just a few cute tops and a necklace. I'm good to go. I only lived in New Jersey because that's where my company was that I worked for. So what I do, I moved to a lower cost state where it doesn't cost me as much to live. When my Benz dies, I'm going to get a Honda or a regular car. I do not need to flash about in a luxury vehicle. See for me, that lifestyle was kind of getting old anyway. It was draining me. I barely enjoyed going out to eat anymore. The food just always made me feel like garbage. I'd rather cook a really nice meal at home. And I don't want to get too spiritual here, but God was tugging at my heart and he was showing me my vanity. I now get to live a much simpler and humbler life. And that's in alignment with my values. So all this to say, whatever you think you need, I bet if you took a really close look, you could cut back a third and be fine. Yeah, a third. So how do you really get that number, the brass tacks of all of that? Start going through your monthly expenses, seeing what you can do without or which expenditures you could find a lower cost option for. Here's another one. So my lawn guys used to treat the whole yard, but I don't really want the chemicals in the back anyway with the dogs and the fruit trees. And I only care about what the neighbors see. So that's the front yard that isn't fenced in. So I was like, you know what? We don't need that expense. I have other things that I would rather do with that money. So that cut my yard expenses in half. Now they only do the front yard, right? That's just one example, just a tangible example. And I guarantee you can find loads of these in your world as well. The fifth thing I want to share with you today is you can replace your corporate income if you want to. Now, that might sound contradictory to what I just said, because I was like, hey, you don't need all that money. But the caveat is you can replace it if you want to. Now, the other thing I want to share is it may not look exactly how you thought it would look. You may need to consider multiple revenue streams. Now, I know plenty of entrepreneurs who left their corporate job and replaced their income in just a few months. They had the network, they had the sales skills, they signed the contracts, and voila, they're on their way. But you may need to let go of some of your expectations as well. Because I've worked with other entrepreneurs who decided, you know what? I'm not making as much as I want to make. I'm going to consult part-time in order to supplement that income. Or I have clients who have taken on a corporate client and it's not really what the kind of work that they want to be doing, but the money is so good that it allows them to fund the rest of their business so they can serve their dream clients, right? That maybe they don't earn as much money from. So just know that even if you don't replace your corporate income with one source, you're still a successful entrepreneur. I have several streams myself, my book sales, my speaking, my coaching clients. I have a rental property. And with all that, I still haven't replaced my corporate income. But I don't need to. Having time for my family and not having to hustle 24-7 is worth the pay cut to me. And when they go to college in four years, I'll have all the time in the world to work and therefore earn more if I want to. Okay, so if you are set and you are hell-bent on replacing that corporate income, let me tell you what, you can do it. I believe in you. I know you can do it. We already told you the first thing was you have everything you need to be successful. So there's no reason you can't do it, but don't feel like you have to because I know you don't really need as much money as you think you need. All right, so let's do a quick recap. The five things, the first five things of the 10 that I'm going to share with you that you need to know before leaving your job. Number one, you have everything you need to be successful. You, you're it. You're the magic sauce. Number two, you will figure out insurance. It's not that scary. It's just an unknown and everybody else has figured it out. You will too. Number three, your colleagues probably won't keep in touch. So, Lucky you, you can stop letting them hold you back and start making decisions from a place of empowerment. Number four, you don't need as much money as you think you do. Congratulations, you can leave now. And number five, but you could replace your corporate income if you wanted, okay? That's it. I can't wait to see you next week where I'm going to share the other five things to get you to the top 10 things I wish I knew before I left corporate and that you need to know before you make the pivot too.