A few months ago, I left an amazing job with a phenomenal company for our own business. I have been wanting to journal and capture the experience before I forget but I thought why not share it publicly as well. I am not a professional writer but I do want to capture the journey.
The decision itself was definitely a tough one. A year before, my husband had left the corporate world to kick start the business. He had been working crazy hours in corporate, traveling 2-3 weeks out of the month and barely getting any sleep. This was very hard since we had a then 3 year old and not having much family close by, we had no help. Most importantly he was starting to miss all the amazing new things our little one was doing.
We had previously always wanted to start something of our own but were scared, the timing always never seemed right and we heard stories of how much more you had to work when you had your own business. Weighing this out logically - we both have never been afraid of hard work and have in our careers worked crazy hours and weekends for other companies. So we took a leap and I am so proud of my husband for making that jump so he could spend more time with us. We also have lived and breathed controls and automation for about 13 years, we have a good knowledge of the industry and have been fortunate to meet and work with so many amazing people.
We both loathe the "Engineer" or "Technical" preconceived perceptions where if you are technically competent you get put in a box of being "technical" and non-commercial, with no ability for public speaking or working with people. We have both had very technical beginnings starting out as service engineers attacking all sorts of technical challenges, projects, designs and problem solving in various industries. Our work had taken us to different countries and interesting plants, facilities, mines etc. We still loved working with people and in previous business roles learned that we love public speaking, sales, business planning and strategy. In addition we have members on our team that equally excel in both areas. So creating a business in this field was something we really wanted to do and felt passionate about.
Our corporate careers allowed us to grow in both areas and I have had very supportive managers who allowed me to be as creative as desired. You can see my challenge of working for an awesome company, with awesome support, good career growth options, good benefits and a solid secure income and trying to decide whether to leave. In addition living in the San Francisco Bay Area has an insanely high cost of living. Throw in pre-school fees, which are basically more than a lot of university fees out there, and it is a nerve wrecking decision. On a side note I always thought before having kids that saving for University will be crazy but then we had a child and I quickly realized that even putting your child through pre-school is a milestone. Haha. Those in the Bay Area will know...
Still, being creative in a corporate company has boundaries and moving to our own business removed those. I feel the freedom to explore in any direction we want - of course we have a business plan and strategy but there is less red tape. I love that we can create our own work culture and we are so blessed to have such an awesome team at the start. Most important to me is work-life balance which I have lived through and I truly believe that supporting a healthy work-life balance is efficient, good business practice and just the right thing to do.
Immediately after leaving my job, I took some time off to decompress, reset and let the creative juices start flowing. I wanted to forget the boundaries of working for a specific vendor and cleanse myself of any stress from the previous job. By "time off" I mean still working on the business but lightly since you can't actually get away. It was still a period where I could spend time with my son doing summer activities and do a few projects I had been putting off forever.
The past few months have been a ton of research and paper work on the setup and transformation of the business from a one man show to a full company offering benefits to employees. This was a huge learning experience for us as we shopped around, weighed different offerings, had a thousand agent meetings and embarked on executing the set up piece. At the same time, we have been managing general operations, recruiting, sales and networking. I have had people ask me "What are you going to be doing for the business?" and I seemed to struggle to answer at first since both my husband and I have many different hats we wear. Technically we also have different strengths so we lean to our strengths where needed.
There is still a ton of fine tuning of processes and procedures we need to optimize but much of the foundation has been laid out. We have created some awesome partnerships and we have the best team - yes I am biased but our customers see the evidence in their work as well. If you have ever watched the movie "Now You See Me", they say "Always be the smartest person in the room" but I disagree - surrounding ourselves with a team we are constantly learning from is helping us to push ourselves and grow. Each person has their strengths and I have to say that has given me the most confidence, whenever I get nervous about the huge risk we are taking.
Our goal is not only to be the experts in the industry, constantly learning new skills and platforms but also to share our knowledge, uplifting others in the industry as well. We have some exciting ideas we are working on that will be launched in the near future.
I can humbly say this has been a scary step to take such a huge risk. We are still in the building phase but we are beyond excited. I also feel more alive than ever and we are all in! Thank you so much to everyone who is sending positive vibes and supporting us through this journey.
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