How my 9-5 Corporate Job Helped Me Become a 6 Figure Entrepreneur (in LESS than 1 Year!?)

Key Takeaways

what is up everyone welcome back to my channel in today's video i want to share with you guys something that's a little bit more unconventional specifically i want to share with you guys the skills or things that i picked up from my old corporate 905 job that has contributed to my success as an entrepreneur today now i want to start by saying that last year i posted this video right here about why i quit my corporate job and a whole year later today i am a six-figure online entrepreneur which is insane to even say out loud that's why i really wanted to create this video because there were some things in my 905 that i picked up that contributed to my fast growth and my success which has really given me an edge in the entrepreneurial space so if you really want to learn some key skills or things that you might be sleeping on in your 905 that's going to help you as an entrepreneur in the future or even now then keep on watching okay so before we dive right in let me provide you a little bit more context about my background in my nine-to-five so my old 905 was at a big fortune 500 company that's internationally known and i was doing marketing and brand management so a lot of the skills that i'm going to be presenting you guys are very corporate oriented however even if you don't have corporate experience a lot of these skills are very much so applicable to entrepreneurship so definitely stay until the end because you're going to pick up a lot of things along the way that will help you on your journey that being said the very first thing that is fundamental that i learned in my corporate job is market research so the one thing that you really need to know when you're working in a corporate job is that everything is mostly based on facts you're not allowed to make decisions just out of thin air it has to be backed up by data and especially when you are presenting a lot of things to upper management upper management needs to know that you've actually made a calculated decision based on previous research or based on previous numbers that actually prove your point a mistake that i see a lot of entrepreneurs and even content creators make is we do things without really thinking it through without really actually having something else to support our decision that's why for me i am a huge market research nerd meaning that i'm always hopping on instagram stories asking people for feedback asking my audience what they want doing market research surveys to understand the pain points the desires of the people who watch my videos or of the people who are in my community and what you'll notice is that even for something as simple as content and i have a video right here where i talk about how i find content ideas in that video i'm showing you guys the research tools that i use to make sure that i'm creating videos based on what people are actually typing in the search bar based on keywords because i want to make sure that i'm maximizing my success that i know that this is validated in the market before i even create it and that is all thanks to my experience working my corporate job understanding the importance of market research and another big reason why market research is so important is because it's going to save you time and money as an entrepreneur your time and your money are incredibly valuable and you want to make sure that you're maximizing it by ensuring that you're testing things learning from them and then creating and then spending that time and money and effort to actually produce on a mass level so let me give you an example before i even consider creating a product that i'm selling i'm actually testing the waters on youtube or on instagram first for example i have a program called the bossgram academy which teaches people how to leverage instagram in order to generate leads into their business well before i even created this program i was testing the concept by creating videos on youtube all about instagram to at least gauge the demand do people actually want a course about instagram and through developing that content i realized yes the market has validated this idea and then i built the course now imagine if i didn't do market research i would have spent all that time creating a course that i don't even know will sell and then selling it and then hearing crickets i would have wasted a lot of time and money in developing that course and i could have spent it elsewhere that's why market research is one of the most important things that i feel not enough people are truly taking seriously in their business now the second thing that i picked up from working in my corporate nine-to-five job is working with third parties and outsourcing when i was working in corporate i was managing multiple projects at the same time and therefore i had to outsource a lot of the different tasks for example graphic design this skill has really helped me communicate effectively when i'm working with others for example many of you have watched my video right here where i talk all about how i actually create a lot of content in one month just for instagram and in that video i show you guys a very specific brief that i mock up for my photographer in order for her to understand exactly what i want and truth be told i learned this skill from working in corporate because i worked with so many different people i understand that every mistake that we make is going to cost me time and it's going to cost me money and therefore it's going to delay my projects that's why i am a briefing queen even for my video editor every time i do a video i'm briefing her on exactly what goes in which clip what text that i want what's the copy what's the animation so on and so forth because i understand that if she doesn't understand what i want it's going to delay my videos being posted this is the exact same thing that i encourage you to implement when you're working with other people within your business it's truly going to save you a lot of headache if you are very clear with your expectations right from the get-go the third thing that i picked up while working at my corporate 905 is brand management specifically within brand management i understood the importance of protecting my brand first what this means is you could have a product that maybe costs you ten dollars but because you have a strong brand you're able to charge 100 500 a thousand dollars for that product for example tiffany they're charging thousands for a paper clip and why can they do that it's because they have a very strong brand backing them that's why you need to understand as an entrepreneur your brand is one of the most important things that you need to protect within your business and because i understand that brand equity is super important this is why i'm very picky with my collaborations i'm very picky about sponsorships i'm very picky about the things that i recommend to my audience because at the end of the day i value myself more than i value anything else so my advice to you especially as a new entrepreneur or as a new content creator really think throughly about who you're letting into your space who you're recommending who you're working with because at the end of the day you don't want to lose that trust that you have with your audience it's very important that you protect this now the fourth thing that i learned from working in corporate is understanding the opportunity cost of money something that i did very often when i was working in corporate was doing budget cuts you actually had to evaluate how much money you're planning to spend and put it against how the business is actually doing if business isn't doing well you're going to need to make necessary cuts or allocate your dollars elsewhere in order to protect your business by doing this i really understood the opportunity cost of money if i don't spend money here where else can i put it if i spend money on this what am i missing out on and this is really important to learn as an entrepreneur because i feel a lot of us when we see our first dollar we assume that we can just spend it without really thinking about the future of our business that's why from doing those constant budget cuts i now understand the value of a dollar and really allocating those dollars to things that will truly move the needle in my business versus spending on frivolous things that really don't matter for example logo design i don't need a good logo what i need is good software or spending money on a purse i don't need a new purse i need to spend money on my va there's so many different things that you can spend on in your business but you as the entrepreneur you need to decide on what truly matters because business is not always going to be like this it's like this when you are in entrepreneurship you never know how much money you're going to make month to month so you need to make sure that you have financial due diligence within your business and you're not being reckless with your money the fifth thing that i picked up when working in corporate is understanding optimization what this means is that within my corporate job every time i did a campaign every time i had a product launch i would always have to draft up a post-mortem meaning that i'd actually have to reevaluate how the campaign went what could i have done better what worked what didn't work and by doing this in corporate i now apply it in my own business i'm always looking at my analytics i'm always looking at how things performed what i could have done better and i actually create a document that will remind me of the things that i need to improve for the future i'm constantly optimizing in my business and that's all thanks to my experience working in corporate and learning this as a best practice because what you need to realize as an entrepreneur you need to take a step back and constantly re-evaluate the landscape of your business at least on a quarterly basis you also want to track everything that's happening for example tracking how you're doing on youtube tracking how you're doing on instagram tracking how your campaign went even tracking how your va or how the people on your team are performing so that you can constantly put tabs in order to optimize in the future always strengthen the things that are working and developing those but also be quick to ditch the things that aren't and unless you're taking a step back and doing it you're always going to plateau like this so i highly recommend that you learn to make it a habit to truly optimize your business every so often so that you can have accelerated growth like this the sixth thing that i learned in working corporate is being resourceful now this really depends on the type of company you work for some companies will baby you and will put you in a box and therefore you're not gonna have the opportunity to think on your own feet whereas other companies they just throw you into the water and expect you to swim even though you have no idea how to swim so my company was the latter and i really had to learn to become super resourceful in business in my situation i was like a 22 23 year old on a very small team managing the marketing for national products national campaigns and it was insane there were so many times where i was like crying my eyes out because i had no idea what the heck i was doing and therefore i had to put it on myself to become super resourceful and prove myself in the company what this means is that if i didn't know how to do something i would have to put the ownership on myself to hunt down whoever was the expert in that company even if i didn't know them and go up to them and ask for help what this also meant was when i was in a meeting with people that were clearly smarter than me it meant raising my hand and asking the question because i was lost another thing is making sure that i was asking for feedback constantly from my manager to make sure that i was truly on the right track and that i was checking off the right boxes before that performance review making sure that i'm doing my due diligence everything that i can to secure my success because what i realize when working in corporate you are the one that's going to be successful if you choose to be and you need to be able to take that ownership on yourself to become successful no one is going to do it for you and that's what separates the losers from the winners and that's the thing that i learned from my corporate job that has helped me become the entrepreneur that i am today and another thing that i realized that i really took from my corporate experience is when you work in corporate it's generally a pretty cutthroat environment only very few people are going to get the promotions very few people are going to make it to the top of the ladder and it's kind of similar with entrepreneurship even though i'm not someone who's super competitive what i do realize and recognize is that very few people are actually going to make it to the top meaning very few people are actually gonna make up that one percent of that one percent of entrepreneurs who are truly successful and putting out a lot of value in the world and in order to actually make up that one percent of entrepreneurs you need to make sure that you are truly successful and taking 100 responsibility and ownership on your ability to be successful in the first place so what this means as an entrepreneur like yourself is you need to learn to be humble actually understand that you might not know everything right now and that's why it's important that you surround yourself with people who do seek mentorship seek guidance buy courses read books really take 100 ownership of your success as an entrepreneur and not just rely on people to feed you a golden spoon you need to actually work you need to actually learn things for yourself that's how you're going to maximize your success on this journey not only this understand that there will be roadblocks on this journey and that there are going to be hard times but it's how you react to these times that truly make a difference are you going to hit a roadblock and then give up no you're going to hit a roadblock and then you're going to figure out how to solve that problem at the end of the day what you need to become is a problem solver a solution hunter okay so those are the things that i've learned in my corporate job that have truly helped me become a six figure entrepreneur in less than a year now if you enjoyed today's video and you want me to talk more about topics like this make sure you leave a comment below and tell me what you want me to talk about in my next upcoming videos i would really appreciate it that being said if you want to learn more about business social media or just life in general also check out these two videos that i have right here as always guys i appreciate you i hope you guys have a great day a great week and a great life and i'll see you in the next one bye guys