#113: Life After Corporate with Debra Boulanger, CEO & Founder of The Great Do-Over
I have had so many guests on this podcast who have left their high-paying corporate jobs to pursue their dreams of being their own boss.
It’s not easy.
You have to figure out how to manage your new schedule while also replacing your paycheck.
My guest today, Debra Boulanger, CEO & Founder of The Great Do-Over, helps women start over after life in corporate.
Debra and I spoke about:
The challenges women face when making the leap from corporate to entrepreneurship
Using your strengths from your old job to build your new company
2 things that she sees women experience when they finally leave corporate
If you have been thinking about leaving your corporate job to be our own boss, be sure to tune into this episode!
Learn more about Debra here: https://thegreatdoover.com/debra-boulanger or on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheGreatDoOver.
Listen to the Show:
Laura 00:02
Welcome to Next Level Leap, a podcast where we dive into the mindset and strategies of scaling your company and creating a legacy brand. As a top growth strategist, multi passionate entrepreneur, membership site owner, trainer, speaker, author and mom to three, I love exploring the journey of how we as founders can multiply our income, impact and influence by landing on the other side of our next big leap. Let's get started!
Laura 00:34
Hey, everybody, welcome back to the Next Level Leap podcast, I am here with Debra Boulanger. And she is in our advanced women's expert network community. She and I connected have lots in common. And you Deb are an expert on helping people particularly women have what you call life after corporate, which is what your podcast is called. And it's a really timely topic right now, a lot of people are thinking about what life could be after their corporate role.
Debra 01:06
Absolutely, thank you, Laura, it's a pleasure to be here, as so many successful women leaders and executives either are getting to a point in their career where they're thinking about, well, is this all there is, you know, here I am, I'm a Senior Vice President, or I'm in the C suite. I've I've already had my career, but I'm passionate about doing something else of of helping companies get more diversity, equity and inclusion in their senior level ranks or helping women lawyers succeed, there's so many huge opportunities out there, to give back and help others. And I see a lot of women leaders at that level, deciding to make the leap. And then of course, with the whole pandemic, and the shifting change of the face of work, those women who also got a taste of having a bit more balanced, or maybe not balanced is the right word, but integration in their lives, with being with their families, being able to have more flexibility with their time, or not wanting to go back to the strict structures of the corporate world. So they're taking their expertise, they're packaging it as service offerings. And in the most, when they first get started, they have an idea for a business, but they don't yet have the business model to go out there and succeed and start getting clients.
Laura 02:38
It's so fascinating, because I've watched many of my own clients who are multimillion dollar business owners and have opportunities for women who are leaving corporate, whether it's in real estate investment, or they're leaving traditional, the traditional workforce to get into being a private practitioner, as a service provider. So they're starting to really explore what does this mean to package up my expertise, and sell it in a very different way. And so millions of women left the workforce last year, millions, millions, right? You probably know this statistic more than I do. But and then I read last night, just last night, I was reading the news where one in five women are thinking of leaving their positions in the next year. So it's like above and beyond the
millions who are like, I'm out. Right? We've already made that decision. And there's still millions of women who are thinking about it. And I a lot of my personal friends, my mom friends would be in that category. Why do you think it's so hard for people to make that shift no matter how badly they want it?
Debra 03:42
You know, it's, it's because, and I'll use me and this is an example because I was an executive in the corporate world, I had done product development in the services space. So it was literally my job to uncover new market opportunities to create new solutions by packaging our service offerings and selling them to new buyers. And so you would think that I had launch skills, it was literally my job product marketing was part of my job sales was part of my career in when I first got started. But when you're applying it to yourself, and not every executive who leaves corporate has those product development, those product marketing or sales skills. It's almost like a solution in search of a problem. Like I have the skills. I see. I see this problem I want to solve but they don't know how to bridge the gap. Well, how do I get clients and how do I become known and how do I use social media? How do I do marketing and all the other things like the technical infrastructure, my business financially, how do I take orders? I was just on with some clients in my launch lab, which is the very first place they get started. So really smart, accomplished women leaders, but it's like How do I take orders? Oh, I finally got my finance guy to set up QuickBooks. And now I can track my inventory and take orders. It feels so I feel official.
Laura 05:09
Yes. Yeah. And that's so funny. Why do you think it's so hard for women to apply these incredibly sophisticated skills that they've developed on themselves? What is what is the what is the mental hurdle do you think that they experience?
Debra 05:25
Well, a lot of it is, I think wherever you go, there you are, you know, so if you had impostor syndrome in the corporate world, it only gets amplified when you when you start thinking, Well, who am I to XYZ, you know, who am I to think I can solve this problem. And also, they don't have the business skills, you know, they weren't trained as CEOs of a startup. And that's what we are. And that's how we have to think about our life and our new work here. And you do that, Laura, I mean, it's part of what the advance is all about is, how do we treat it like a business, love it like a hobby, but treat it as a business and really get the business skills that we don't have so that we can be successful in making the impact that we want to make and fulfilling the mission that we see we want to fulfill?
Laura 06:21
Yeah, I love that. And how have you seen since the great recession is taking place, the great resignation, not the great recession. Hopefully, that's not kind of hopefully, that's not gonna happen. Hopefully, that was not some kind of foreshadowing slip. But the but the great resignation? How do you see that impacting business leaders, like entrepreneurs who are established? And they're thinking about, like, from a staffing standpoint, or they're thinking about what is the business opportunity here? What are some of the things that leaders should be thinking about?
Debra 06:53
Yeah, so there might be more established companies that are doing things like sales training, or CRM systems, you know, helping people understand the value of technology and managing customers managing orders, advisory services from financial professionals. So whether you're on the financial advisor side, and you want to help people plan for their retirement, there has been a big shift now in employment. So how does that impact the future financial planning, but there's also an opportunity to help people set up how to manage their p&l, how to manage their orders, how to get paid, how to set up payroll. So there are all these new opportunities for larger companies to package lower end service offerings to sell to this market. And so I see it as a huge market opportunity for people who are in the space of helping people understand marketing, sales skills, and building a financial and technical infrastructure for success. And legal, legal as well.
Laura 08:04
Yeah, legal is big. And it's even as a small business owner, as a startup, it's one of the first things that we need to be thinking about, in order to set ourselves up for success. So when we're thinking about, okay, so millions of women will leave the workforce, really smart women, brilliant women who are saying, you know, actually working 60 hours a week is not going to work for me, because my values have shifted, right? Like, I'm either caring for aging parents, or I'm caring for young children, or, like, it's just whatever this costs me, it's no longer worth it. I have a couple of friends in mind that I can really tap into when I'm thinking about who this person is. And when you experience these people who are sort of teetering on corporate, and then they finally make the decision to leave, what are some of the things that they're experiencing do you see?
Debra 08:56
Well, there's two things that they experience, you know, on the on the positive side, it's the sense of empowerment and freedom that I get to make the choices. There's this sort of like, pinch me kind of feeling like I'm so grateful that I get to wake up and create something every day. And I work with women entrepreneurs specifically. And I truly believe that entrepreneurship is the new feminist movement. It really gives you the agency and control to work as much as you want to work, to work at things that actually give you joy. And so I work
with women who are both reinventing their businesses as well as launching for the very first time. And then the other side after that feeling of empowerment passes is the realization like, oh, no, I don't really know what I'm doing. I don't know what to do first. I'm not sure that I'm using the right words. And you know, I'm marketing my services in the right way. I'm not sure anyone wants to buy what I'm selling. And so that level of insecurity and just not knowing is where I come in and say, well, we can find this out. And we can just survey the marketplace, we can have interviews and conversations with people who would be ideal clients, and will create your product. It's not something that someone else does. And I think that's the danger. So there's so many cookie cutter programs out there of like, oh, do this, do this the way I did. And you'll have the same results, which is fake progress, because it feels like, it feels like you're making progress feels like you're launching something. But you're launching something that you have no proof that people actually want to buy. So I'm a huge fan of test before you invest, make sure there's demand before you build supply. And that you are filling in a gap in the marketplace that enables you to stand out.
Laura 11:05
Yeah, a lot of things you don't have to think about when you're in corporate, you're trading a lot of the navigating, I was only in corporate for, I am in my mid 40s. So I've been working for a long time. But I only spent about two years not being an entrepreneur in corporate. And it was just the navigating of the politics and all of that you're sort of trading those dynamics that you've you probably become somewhat immune to after a while you just get used to it right? For this idea of understanding that discomfort is part of the process. Yeah, I think we've been an entrepreneur for a while you're like, oh, like, I don't like this. But that's normal. Like, exactly enjoy this. I don't like it when employees turn over like it makes you want to, you know, just check out for the day. But that's normal, this happens, right? And they're experiencing a lot of those things for the first time from a very different perspective, right?
Debra 12:00
Yeah, they're experiencing that and you no longer have the security blanket of a regular paycheck, or paid time off, the only thing I miss from corporate is paid time. I'm working on my business model. So I get paid time off every August so I can take off the entire month in revenue is still rolling in. But I think that's, that's the biggest and that goals are set for you. Because even though you're a senior executive, and you're you're passing down the goals to your team, the goals and the vision are set by the C suite. So you don't have to come up with a strategy. So I think strategic thinking, Where am I going? What's the vision? How do I put a plan in place to actually reach that, and you're not tied to KPIs that someone else has created, you're creating the success metrics yourself. And I think many women leaders, when they leave, they don't understand how they're going to measure their own success, beyond the fact that they want to replace that corporate paycheck.
Laura 13:05
Oh, my gosh, that's such a good point. And I love that you're sharing this, it's because what you do is that you help women really package up their expertise in a way that's uniquely crafted for them. But this could apply to anybody, let's say you're selling a real estate investment opportunity, and somebody comes from corporate, right, all of a sudden, they have to set that pace, they need to set their own goals, they need to decide how many deals they're going to do this year. And like you said, for a lot of them, the benchmark is just replacing my corporate salary. But that in itself typically isn't a strong enough why, right? Like, just doing the minimum to get to where I was before, isn't necessarily going to get you through the hardest parts of entrepreneurship, right?
Debra 13:50
No, and you don't get to keep 100% of the revenue that you bring in the door. So you may be making or generating $500,000 a year or more, but you're not keeping all of that. So to replace that paycheck really means that you need to think bigger, and start thinking about building a seven or eight figure business in order to take home that same corporate salary that you had. And, you know, sometimes that that's appealing, and sometimes it's not, there are some women who are in their late 50s or 60s and they want to build a lifestyle business. And so they want a very simple business model that maybe they can run with a skeleton virtual team. You know, so it, there's no one right way to reinvent your career as an entrepreneur. It's all a matter of your values. What's important to you, how you want to live your life, how you want to fund your life, and how you want to make an impact with your work, and I think many women right now, would love to give back more. I feel really say nothing bad happens when women make more money? They tend to invest it in in causes that they care about it, they they put it to good use. We need to empower more women to be more successful financially.
Laura 15:16
Yes, there's a lot of upside, women making money, they tend to contribute to their communities, they tend to care for others, right? There's a lot of benefit there, they tend to hire well make good decisions rely on their intuition. I love that you're sharing that. So as we're wrapping up this interview, is there any final words of wisdom that you want to share around the idea of people leaving corporate, whether it's somebody who might be listening or thinking of leaving, or a business leader who's trying to navigate what this wave of women leaving the corporate world means for their business? Is there anything in particular that comes to mind?
Debra 15:54
I think the most important thing is that when women leave to start something new, they're so focused on the new thing that they forget the lifetime of experience, all of the skills that they brought with them up until this point in time. And so they might chase a new credential to feel more confident going after what they're what they're going after. But you know, you are
enough, you know, enough, there is value, you can contribute to some community and people around the world. And so that's where the women themselves for the companies that serve this market, is understand that there's an educational component that needs to happen in order for you to reach this market. They need to understand at a very basic level, how to get started with your services. You know, from a legal perspective, it's you know, how to register your entity, do you need disability insurance? Do you need other types of insurance? Do you need to trademark your, your brands and your products? Same thing from the sales perspective, and from the technology perspective, and I think there's an opportunity for more companies, larger companies, who typically sell to larger businesses to tap into the revenue potential in this marketplace, by creating educational products, or maybe slimming down some of the products that you do have to make them accessible to let's call them micro business owners.
Laura 17:41
Yeah. And I love what you just shared. And I think also additionally, reminding them of what it is they're capable of reminding these women what it is that they've done, that they're capable of, because as you had mentioned, for the people leaving corporate, a lot of times they forget. And for leaders who have maybe made that leap beforehand, like maybe 10-15 years ago, or are lifelong entrepreneurs. I mean, we forget that that those women need to be encouraged and reminded of what it is that they've accomplished up until this point and how capable they are. So I love that you shared that. So if people want to get more in touch with you, and I know you have a great podcast, what's the best way for them to reach out?
Debra 18:26
Yeah, so the Life After Corporate podcast is a great place to start and reach out to me on LinkedIn. It's Deb Boulanger. I think I'm the only Deb Boulanger on on LinkedIn. So you can find me there. The company is thegreatdoover.com And there's lots of resources there as well.
Laura 18:47
Wonderful. Thank you, Deb for being here. We'll put those links in the show notes. And we really appreciate your time today.
Debra 18:53
Thank you so much, Laura, such a fun time being with you.
Laura 18:58
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The Scale with Joy podcast dives into the mindset and strategies of scaling your company to the million dollar mark and beyond. Each week, we follow the journeys of innovators, disruptors, experts and leaders - sharing behind the scenes stories of their most challenging moments and greatest lessons learned-all while building their multi-million dollar empires.