In March 2020, I was faced with an unfair dismissal with my employer which was disguised as a redundancy. I thought about fighting to keep my role but I was unhappy with where I was and I felt like I wasn’t wanted anymore. So instead of staying and fighting what seemed a losing battle, I decided to leave that environment. At the time we were going into lockdown, I found myself without a job and many companies had pressed pause on their recruitment processes, so it was a really challenging time. Being unemployed in a pandemic was a situation I never expected to be in.
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I had started looking for a new role in my previous line of work to secure a regular income. However, when recruitment processes were paused, I had an opportunity to really connect with myself and what I wanted to be doing with my life. I realised that if I continued down my current path, after 6 months I would likely be unhappy again and that maybe this was a sign to follow my passion. So I decided to take the leap and go all-in with my existing side business, using this opportunity to follow my passion in health and wellness.
I took a lot of programs to reskill myself, on top of learning all the ins and outs of running a business. It’s certainly different when it’s your full-time gig. I thought everyone in my life would support me but I soon realised that this is not always the case. I found it challenging to figure out how to find customers and promote myself, and especially how to clearly communicate what I offer. There are aspects I am still figuring out and I am constantly making tweaks and changes to improve my business and what I offer my customers.
One of the big things that I never focussed on in my corporate career is networking. It has been an amazing opportunity for me to meet like-minded people and realise that what I am experiencing is completely normal. I didn’t see the value in networking when I was working for someone else but now it is such an important part of my business.
I invested heavily into my business to get it up and running. Sometimes I have questioned whether I should go and find a job in addition to my business to stop eating into my savings but, the truth is, I don’t want to go back to working for someone else. I love being able to choose my work schedule, the people who I work with and the difference I get to make in the world doing something I love. We never know what will happen in the future and I might have to do this at some stage, however, for now, I am going to continue focusing 100% on my business.
