Billy Keels  0:00  

How to best leverage your corporate experience before you leave. Today's conversation is sponsored by the Billy Keels advisory program. If you want to learn more about how to make your nine to five optional, just go to Billy keels.com. Forward slash advising. Once again, that's Billy keels.com. Forward slash advising, how to best leverage your corporate experience before you leave. Is an episode that is, well, it's going to help you to understand how you can actually be the best corporate employee you can possibly be, over perform and at the same time be able to make the most of your experience before you leave, whenever you decide that is because that's the whole point of having a a an optionality based corporate career, because you're doing it because you want to, and you decide. And even if it's decided for you, guess what? It won't really matter because you've already done the work. But here's the thing, there is a way to best leverage your corporate experience even before you leave. And the reason that I know this is because I lived it, believe it or not, yep, I lived it. And so the whole thing is like I was enjoying my corporate role, and I had a very, very happy, fulfilling 26 year corporate career. And I even got to the point, and I've talked about it before, right from the beginning, I'm going to hit you with a different episode 466, I talked about how my like, own personal, powerful addiction to the benefits made me settle for many, many years. And the thing is, it's okay when you have great benefits. The benefits is fantastic and are fantastic. Not is fantastic, are fantastic. And at the same time, you can do more. It's it's allowed, but there's some caveats, and I'm going to talk to you about some of those caveats as we go here, right? So number one, I was already enjoying the benefits of corporate, and I mentioned in other episodes before, like I was not even thinking about other options outside of corporate, because corporate because corporate was giving me everything that I felt that I didn't have when I was growing up, in terms of financial security, nice, nice cars, extra, you know, expense accounts and all this other kind of cool stuff. But the thing is, is I had a colossal conversation that changed my life forever. Check out episode 49 it'll be in the show notes. You don't have to go do it now. It'll be in the show notes. But when I had that conversation, it made me realize, like I would, because I wasn't thinking of other options. This opened my eyes to something else. I started now having a POC, a proof of concept, and at 40 years old, at this point in time, I started realizing that my What started as an alternative investments journey. It started then, but it it actually, while over performing in my corporate role, not performing over performing in my corporate role, I was still able to build something else on the side, right, this side business, because the thing is, in more than anything else. And like, really, really understand me, especially if you've been listening for a while. Like, I really, really wanted to protect the security that I had for my corporate role, because it gave me so much in like forefront of my mind. Protect this role. Don't do anything to put this role at risk. Working for an awesome company, major, major player, market leading company, and making more money than I should have. And so I didn't really ever want to put that at risk. But the thing is, I also had this burning desire inside, because it was like, when you want to be a leader, and you are a leader, and you're used to, like, kind of depending on somebody else, there's a point you're like, like, when you're a kid at home, like, you want to live at home with mom and dad forever, right? Yeah, I didn't, I didn't. I love my mom and dad. Love them, but I didn't want to live under them every single day, all day, like who wants to do that? So the thing is, is I wanted to be able to base the security of my future is to be able to move to make the move to increase the security, but based on me, not on mom or dad, not on the company, it was just a driver that was inside of me. And I thought to myself, Okay, well, let's get to this point where the be able to utilize the skill set that I have, that I built in corporate, but be able to use that outside of corporate, right? Be able to use that beyond, use those transferable skills that I was building, because there was a point in time when I realized, like, I've got these, like, there's these signs that are happening every single day inside of me. I had five of them, five sure fire signs that I needed to create a profitable side hustle. Check out episode 437, I'm dropping all kinds of episodes today. I know that, and don't worry, we'll leave them in the in the show notes. But the thing is, is, once I realized that I had that going on, I couldn't deny it anymore. I could not deny it anymore. But I realized like, Okay, well, it doesn't matter that I've been leading teams of people across Europe, Middle East and Africa and and having a responsibility at the time of over $100 million or. Having led numerous teams of people, led the teams, manage the businesses, and being able to do that in a way that made sense now. But here's the thing, because, like, you're here, you're listening. You want to understand how to best leverage your corporate experience before you leave. So let me leave you with these dimes. First of all, the most important thing is continue, just like I did, to continue to perform or over perform in your current role, whatever the skill set that you're using, master that skill set. I was really fortunate. I was in sales and sales leadership, so it allowed me the opportunity to do a number of things. One, learn how to identify and solve problems. These were on an enterprise, wide scale. At the same time, it's no different than when I was leading people, because it was identifying blockers, identifying problems, and helping to create solutions for those for those problems, and then also being able to manage projects, right having an end game in mind, and being able to manage it from the end game back to where where we were today. So these transferable skills, just giving you those ideas, I was then able to leverage those, perfecting those, mastering those while I was in corporate. And then I started seeing right away, because those unique opportunities that I was creating, my unique concept that I was focused on, I can use those same skills, literally the same skills, that I had mastered during corporate, to help to accelerate getting to crafting the unique concept that started to then generate the revenue necessary to create and make my nine to nine optional. If you need help with that, go check out the previous episode for 90 it'll help you understand how you can create and attract future opportunities. But the whole point is, when you start to create time for your passion project, and it takes a life of its own. You're using the same transferable skills that you are mastering and using in your day, today, today, right? And then I got to a point, and this is really important, because when you put systems in place, you begin to master the role that you have. So I start to set, got to a point where I was able to even set my role, my corporate role, on cruise control. What do I mean by that? It doesn't mean I abandoned it, but just like when it's cruise control, you're there, but you're not doing a lot of the hard lifting and the heavy lifting. You're in the car, you're making sure that it's not going off course. But guess what? The cruise control pedal is already down. You've already figured that out. It's another skill set. You get the maximum amount of output for the correct amount of input in your corporate role, right? Because that's part of the experience. And what that means is you're always going to be in this in this constant state of conflict, just like I was. I only knew 200% to do 200% to get to be able to get 225% output, 260% output, pay for one heck of a paycheck, until the tax person put there and in my pocket, that's a whole different story. We won't go there, not gonna go there, not gonna go there. But the thing is, is, when you start realizing it doesn't have to be 200% you're an overachiever. If you weren't, you wouldn't be here. You wouldn't be listening. But the thing is, instead of 200% why not do 125% or why not even do 100% still to get 160% output, against the metric that the role that you are currently in is measured. Do 100% to get 160% output. Do 140% or 130% to get 190 or 200% do you really need to go to 200% of your time, energy and effort to move the needle that much? I don't know. I just leave it with you there. That's a constant conflict that's going to happen. It happened to me for a really, really long time. It happened for a really long time. Like I said, it took me 10 years. Six of them was like, building, building, building. The last four my role was optional, and I really liked it. I still went to Hawaii. I still was in the top talent program, and I was a really, really, really valuable individual contributor. I didn't have to lead any people anymore. I didn't manage any more businesses. I was just responsible for me. But guess what? Those same transferable skills that I learned in leadership, that I learned in project management, that I learned in solving problems, they all stayed with me, and I used them every single day that I was in corporate and guess what? They were accelerators for me to build a business outside of that, and that's why I'm sharing this with you, because I want the same thing for you.

Now, I did this really, really effectively, as I mentioned, was still going to Hawaii, was still in the top talent program, and still doing all those things. But the most important thing is that as an. Contributor in my corporate role, I was leveraging these experiences and still recognize as someone who was contributing or contributing above what the role was required of me or what the business expected. And you can do the same thing too. That's why I'm sharing it with you. And when you start to realize that you can you leverage these exact same skills in your corporate experience. You can leverage them while you're there, leverage them in your business on the side, as you're attracting new opportunities, and do that before you leave, if and when you want to leave. That's the whole point of optionality. You're in charge whether you decide or the company decides, it doesn't matter, because you are, are in charge. That's what I want for you. Anyway, I know I'm all, yeah, this is, this is one that's this close to my heart, because you can, there's so many com There's so many calls that I have in in strategy calls, and you're not recognizing maybe that you already have an opportunity. It's massive experience that you have in your company. Use it, Master it today, and it's going to be an accelerator for you tomorrow. It's going to help you get to that optionality faster. You're going to be much more confident, and you're going to get to a point where you're doing your role because you want to. And when it's time you make the decision, and if it's made for you, it doesn't matter, because you're in control anyway. And if it's not you, it's someone that you know, share today's episode. Share it with them. They're going to appreciate it. And guess what, I'm going to appreciate it. I'm going to say thank you so much to you for for for investing the time to share with somebody else, for caring enough for somebody else to share today's episode. So while you're doing that, guess what? I got some more work to do. I'm gonna go ahead and continue to prepare for the next episode. And so until then, I want to say thank you very much and make it a great day. Today's conversation was sponsored by the Billy Keels advisory program. If you're looking to make your nine to five optional and need some help, just go to Billy keels.com. Forward slash advising, once again, that's Billy keels.com. Forward slash advising you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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