Podcast Episode Title: Cosmos and Commerce - Sip, Savor, Succeed with Sarah Kahn
Hosts:
Guest:
Podcast Sections:
Sarah Kahn's Top 3 Takeaways
https://cosmosandcommerce.com
https://www.facebook.com/cosmosandcommercepodcast
Podcast Episode Title: Cosmos and Commerce - Sip, Savor, Succeed with Sarah Kahn
Hosts:
Guest:
Podcast Sections:
Sarah Kahn's Top 3 Takeaways
https://cosmosandcommerce.com
https://www.facebook.com/cosmosandcommercepodcast
Sarah Kahn
[00:00:00]
Michele Cook: Welcome back to another episode of Cosmos and Commerce Podcast Sip Saver Succeed. I'm your host, Michelle Cook.
Janis Francis: And I'm Janice Francis, Michelle, speaking of Cosmos. Have you tried that new cranberry twist on the classic Cosmo?
Michele Cook: Oh, I have. It is delightful. But do you know what's even more delightful? Our guest for today.
Janis Francis: Absolutely. Today, we're mixing up our usual format with a splash of entrepreneurial spirit with a twist of corporate wisdom.
Michele Cook: right. We have the incredible Sarah Khan with us. She's not just the owner of Corporate Rehab, but also the voice behind Business Blasphemy Podcast. She's on a mission. To liberate bad ass women from the confines of the boardroom, guiding them into launching their own ventures together. They strategize to craft a growth blueprint, ensuring these fierce females earn what they truly deserve.
Sarah, welcome to the show.
Sarah Kahn: Thank you. I'm very excited to be here. I've been looking forward to this.
Janis Francis: We're so excited to have you. Sarah tell us about corporate rehab and how did you create the name for your company?
Sarah Kahn: To be fair, I actually started out, my company was originally called Linchpin Virtual. If I go way back, it's had two iterations before that, but it was linchpin virtual and the idea was, being that sort of bridge, that linchpin between where a client wants to be and where they currently are.
And that's always been my MO is really helping people get to where they want to go in as simple a way as possible. And I think a lot of stuff online is really convoluted and complicated. I had started working with online entrepreneurs
and a mentor of mine. She was, we were talking one day and she was like, you have a lot of experience in the corporate space.
And she had me on her podcast and we were talking about things. And I said, yeah, one of the things I really noticed about women who've been in, in traditional workspaces and they come into entrepreneurship. They have all [00:02:00] these hangups and they have all these like roadblocks and limiting beliefs that are directly related to being in the traditional workplace.
And it shows up in their entrepreneurship and in their business. And I just coined this phrase. I don't know if I coined it, but I came up with this phrase, corporate detox. Like we all need a corporate detox. And she goes, your brand. I'm like, what? She goes, you need to rebrand. And that was the catalyst for it.
So I ended up actually rebranding as Corporate Rehab. Because the more women I worked with, the more I saw that it's not just women who were in corporate environments. Traditional workplaces. And then I started to see the patterns with women in general and just how they're showing up. I mean, it's a longer story, but that's it in a nutshell.
Janis Francis: Yeah,
Michele Cook: Tell us what inspired you to ditch the corporate world and start your own business.
Sarah Kahn: Oh gosh. I mean, I loved my job. I really did. Until I didn't, that's what I tell people. It was, I think. There was no singular incident that led to me leaving corporate. It was just a lot of little things over a lot of years. thE most recent, I would say like the last kind of things were a, I was laid off again during my second pregnancy.
I'd been laid off once during my first pregnancy. This time I was laid off on mat leave. They didn't even wait for me to come back. They did end up hiring me back after I went to the union and we, created a lot of noise. They hired me back in a different capacity. On a different contract and so 9 years of my experience had been wiped out.
I completely lost all of my seniority, everything. So started from scratch in a new department. And in that department, I was there for about 2 months before COVID hit and so we were working from home and there was just a lot
of really negative. Rhetoric around having the kids in the room, if I was on meetings or calls you're not really working.
If your children are in the room with you, I'm like, where do you want me to put them? We're on lockdown. No one's going anywhere. They were online learning. I was trying to work. And then I had an incident where I got injured. And the doctor [00:04:00] had said, you need to take a week. I had, I injured my eye and the doctor's can you take a week off?
And my boss was like, absolutely not. So just like lots of little things. And then it just culminated in, I guess what can only be termed as a breakdown. Like I just, I really was not doing well mental health wise. And my husband was like you can't go back, like you can't keep doing this.
And so he was the one who pushed me to do it. What I'm doing now full time, I had been doing it sporadically consulting and helping people with people in the workplace. I've been helping them, but I was doing it sporadically because the 2nd layoff said to me, you really need to have a 2nd income stream just to be safe.
And he was going to push me to. To do it full time. And that's the story.
Michele Cook: That's awesome to have someone supportive that has your
Sarah Kahn: Oh yeah. It makes a huge difference.
Janis Francis: Absolutely. I've thought
Michele Cook: how has your perception of entrepreneurship changed? Since you first started corporate rehab.
Sarah Kahn: Oh gosh. I never wanted to be an entrepreneur. Like I never wanted to, my brother's an entrepreneur and I would watch him work like 20 hours a day, and I just was like, no, I love going to my job and collecting my paycheck and not worrying about it, being able to leave it there when I come home.
So when I finally became an entrepreneur, it was reluctantly. And now that I'm in it up to my eyeballs, I really enjoy it. And I can see the appeal of it. And I can see why, I mean, a lot of people are like, I would never go back to working for
someone else. But at the same time, the shine that's on it when you first start that has really, gone away, I've started to see the darker side of it.
I'm aware of that. I'm aware of like the duality of entrepreneurship. It's not all. Mimosas by the pool and, Louis Vuitton bags. And it's not that there's a lot of work that goes into it. And so I'm stuck in that intersection of it's really wonderful and it takes a lot of work. So I think I look at entrepreneurship now with a much more pragmatic lens than I [00:06:00] did even five years ago.
Michele Cook: That's interesting. Yeah. My husband he, I'll complain to him, about all the things of entrepreneurship and he will say I could get you a job on the base really easily. And I'm like, there is no way I could have a regular job. I am unhireable.
Janis Francis: about that too, because I've been self employed now for 26 years. And there's no way I could go back to working for somebody,
Michele Cook: Sarah? Do you think you could ever go back?
Sarah Kahn: Do you know what? I have had moments, especially over the last two years, of like screw this, I'm looking for a job and I go through a spate of sending out resumes and things like that, but then I sit back and I think to myself this morning, the little one didn't want to get out of bed, so she needed a couple of extra minutes, I, last week, one of them was sick and I could pick her up.
Do you know what I mean? There's a trade off for sure. That I never had when I was working in a traditional workplace. And as much as like to think sometimes it would just, I could just pack it all in and just get a job. It'd be so much easier. There's so much that I've already missed out on that I now have the opportunity to be present for that.
I don't think it's, it would be worth it to me personally to go back right now.
Michele Cook: Yeah.
Sarah Kahn: never say never, but right now, probably not.
Janis Francis: Yeah.
Michele Cook: Can you share a particularly challenging moments in your entrepreneurial journey and how you overcame it?
Sarah Kahn: Oh gosh. I mean, there have been so many, but I think. I think the biggest one is a lesson that I continue to learn. aNd it's really trusting my gut, particularly when it comes to working with clients. As somebody who's a recovering people pleaser, I think most of us are it's never been easy for me to say no to people.
I want to make everybody happy. I don't want to let people down. And that has caused me to take on clients sometimes that maybe weren't the [00:08:00] right fit. But because I could do the job, it'll be fine. Like I can do the work and it'll be fine, but then you get into it. And when you don't have a match with the personality, when you don't have a match with that person's ethics or the values that they hold, or even how they run their business, it doesn't matter if you can do the job.
So a big sort of, thing for me to constantly remind myself of is just because you can do the job doesn't mean you should. And so having to tap into, that self trust that I really truly believe is one of the keys to really being successful as an entrepreneur and as a woman entrepreneur.
But also it's something that is drilled out of us over so many years of being told that our intuition Isn't accurate. We're too emotional. Don't lean into your emotions. Think with your head, but 99 percent of the bad mistakes or well, the mistakes period, but the bad mistakes I've made have been ones that where I didn't listen to my gut, where I didn't listen to my intuition, telling me there's something not quite right here.
Janis Francis: I think we've talked about that before where you have to have the guts to also like fire a client
Sarah Kahn: Oh yeah.
Janis Francis: let someone go. That's it's a difficult lesson to learn.
Sarah Kahn: Yeah. Yeah. And especially in this economy, like I'm talking to a lot of people who are very, but we need the money. And I completely understand that because again, I've taken lots of jobs where I needed the money and you're miserable. ANd how long are you going to be miserable for? We didn't
leave our jobs to be miserable, right?
We left them to have autonomy and freedom and to be able to be the architects of our own future. And when you're stuck in working for a client that just does not align. Is the money worth it?
Michele Cook: Yeah. I'm still honing in on that myself. Is there any like tips or tricks that you have found that help you develop your listening to your guts?
Sarah Kahn: I mean, [00:10:00] no, I wish I had what I can honestly say is that initial, cause I'm one of those people that will also gaslight myself sometimes. Like I'll get that initial intuitive hit and be like, you're just afraid, or that's just fear talking. Or, and again, that's so much of the rhetoric we hear in the space.
But I will tell myself that I'll have this intuitive hit. I remember it was a discovery call with a client. And I'm listening to her talk and I'm like, yeah, I can a hundred percent do the job. But as she's talking, there's just something in the back of my head going, don't do it, don't do it.
And this other part of my head is you're just afraid because it's a big learning curve, or you're afraid you're not going to be able to do this part, or I was picking things out of, the job description to go. You're just nervous about that. And three days later, we ended up parting ways. Didn't even make it the first week. And that is like my continual reminder. So when that little red flag goes up in the back of your head, or you feel butterflies in your stomach, I think that's, actually that's probably that'll be my answer for you, is if you're going into something and there's like that, that fluttery nervous excitement, Double check in with yourself because when a decision is aligned, there's actually no emotional, oh gosh, what's the word?
There's no
Michele Cook: Like a physical response.
Sarah Kahn: yeah, there's no heightened emotional state. You're not. emotional in any kind of way. Like when it's a really solid decision, you just feel really peaceful about it. You're not super excited. You're not afraid. And I know in our culture, we like to say that, you lean into the fear and all those butterflies are great things and you're going to be jumping out of bed because you're so excited.
Nah, that's not how it works. Like when it's a really solid, think about the last time you made a decision that you were fully aligned in. Odds are you felt at peace about it, right? And I think that we need to start trusting that feeling more than waiting for those butterflies and those fireworks to go off because that can [00:12:00] sometimes be really misleading.
Michele Cook: That's great advice.
Janis Francis: Yeah.
Michele Cook: Aside from leaving your corporate job, what is the best decision you've ever made for your business?
Sarah Kahn: Oh gosh, best decision I ever made for my business. Was to stop worrying about what other people would think of my branding and my brand and how I showed up. I've had a lot of people, especially in the early days, say things like you shouldn't cuss and don't wear swear word t shirts and don't, talk about this and you're, you need mindset work.
You're so negative about the industry. And it's am I really though? Or am I just telling the truth and you don't like to hear it? I think when I stopped worrying about upsetting people that I admired. And it's not that I set out to be contrary or, controversial. I absolutely do not. And I think that in my own head, in the beginning, I was conflating the two things. Like you're not being intentionally controversial. You're talking about things people don't want to talk about, but that need to be talked about. And the minute I was like, this is my brand. And I will show up how I show up.
Sweatpants, t shirt, maybe I've got makeup on, maybe I don't. I'm going to talk about what I want. Everything got so much easier. My content, the people I spoke to, the clients, the connections I'm making, like everything just fell into place. So that was the best decision I think I've ever made. It's just fully leaning into me.
Janis Francis: That's awesome. And speaking to that, I love your no nonsense business approach. Did it take you a while to get to that point or did you bite your tongue for a while and then realize that you and other business owners were dealing with a lot of the same BS?
Sarah Kahn: Yeah, I think it's the latter. I bit my tongue a lot. Cause again, like
I'm a people pleaser, right? And when you're in a space where there are so many really strong personalities, but they all have the same personality, you're like, I can't rock the boat. I can't talk about this. I [00:14:00] can't shake the status quo because what will people think?
And I won't be accepted, and I'll be thrown out of circles, and I will fully admit once I started to talk, because I did meet business owners, some of my very good friends and peers are people who feel exactly the same way I do, and They talk about it in a different way, but they're saying the same thing, right?
There are a lot of nonsense business practices. So that made it easier to step into that for myself, but I've lost mentors. I've been asked to leave spaces. Like there, there has been a very obvious, not a backlash per se, but people have not been as receptive to it. And most of the time it's people who are benefiting from the status quo. Right? And they don't want me to talk about things in their spaces, which is fine. It's your space. I will respect it. But I'm not going to stop talking about it. And so it's been nice to find other spaces where that's a little more welcome.
Janis Francis: Yeah. Yeah. So with so many business coaches out there, I think I might know the answer to this, but what sets you apart and makes your approach unique?
Sarah Kahn: gosh. I be completely honest? That's like the number one thing I struggle to articulate all the time. And I don't know if it's just because I'm I don't, I think the thing that would set me apart if I had to be Toot my own horn and be really honest is, I have 20 years of experience doing this. That's the thing. I come from a very strong corporate background, but it's not just corporate. I've worked for private entities. I've worked for higher education. I've worked for two of the big four, like international firms. I've coached executives, like I've got the receipts to prove that when I talk about business, I know what I'm talking about.
And it's hard for me to say that because we automatically think that if if she's saying that, then she must mean nobody else has business acumen. That's not true. Thank People have varying degrees of business [00:16:00] acumen, but if you want someone who's going to help you grow a business, then you need to actually ask those questions.
What experience are you coming with? hOw many businesses have you
actually grown? Have you ever, have you grown your own business? There are so many questions to ask. I think that sets me apart. It's just this ability to say I have the receipts to prove that my knowledge and experience is what I say it is.
Janis Francis: Yeah, I got the receipts.
Sarah Kahn: Exactly.
Janis Francis: So do you coach individuals or just a business owners
Sarah Kahn: Business owners, I, I used to coach I guess what you would call life coaching. Like I used to do, and what I found was particularly with entrepreneurial women, they go hand in hand. Like when you're coaching from a business perspective, you can't not help coach the personal side. So I like to say that I coach the whole human, right?
And that's the framework that I've developed looks at all of that. We look at your strategy and your operations, but we also look at your life and your capacity. And how the two things go together.
Michele Cook: Yeah. I got executive coaching a while back and It felt like some intense therapy. I was like, okay, now I know what it takes to be a leader.
Sarah Kahn: Yeah.
Michele Cook: In your most recent episode of your podcast, Business Blasphemy, you talked about the myth of passive income.
Sarah Kahn: Ooh, yes.
Michele Cook: And I appreciated your view on things. What's the closest thing you've ever seen to actual passive income in reality?
Sarah Kahn: You're asking all the hard questions today. I think, I think you have to I have to preface this by saying that I don't actually believe in passive income, period. I believe in secondary income streams. So I think that's that was the point that I was trying to make in the episode. That when you say passive income, the vast majority of people look at that and say, Oh, I can create a thing, stick it out there, and it's going to make me money in my sleep.
Michele Cook: [00:18:00] Yeah,
Sarah Kahn: that's not true, right? What we traditionally call passive income requires a lot of work. And so for me, it's can we just re rename it? As secondary income, and then it all works because you have an understanding of how much work goes into it. I mean, memberships are great. It, but it depends again, how much you're putting into the membership to sell it and have it out there on a regular basis.
I think courses are a wonderful way to, to bring in secondary income. But again, a course requires consistently generation and bringing people in. Because when you buy a course, you're not going to buy it again. So there's a need to constantly have a, have that course in front of a new audience. So any kind of secondary income works so long as you're putting the work into it.
Michele Cook: I agree. I'm in real estate. My husband and I own some rental properties. And even though people say that's passive income, it is not passive when you have to answer phone calls about toilets overflowing and things like that.
Janis Francis: midnight at 2 a. m.
Michele Cook: Okay. So I loved how you talked about how entrepreneurs tell themselves a bunch of stories. What are some other detrimental stories that you've seen entrepreneurs tell themselves?
Sarah Kahn: Oh, that time equals money.
Michele Cook: Yes,
Sarah Kahn: I mean, at the very foundational level, yes. Time equals money. We understand the concept of that, but when you start to equate that with your worth or the value of the work that you do, that's when things get a little bit confusing. But again, we come from a culture and an environment, a capitalistic environment where the amount of time you.
Put into something should equal a certain dollar amount and I think that we come into the entrepreneurial space thinking that if I'm going to charge X, then I need to put in X number of hours and that can get a little bit confusing. And that can cause the stories in your head to really cause a problem, particularly if
you are working on an hourly, [00:20:00] like an hourly basis, or you have a retainer.
Type of rate another 1 is that you work with work for your clients versus with them. That's another throwback from the, and the workspace, when you were working, when you, a client hires you to work with them, or you go into contract with a client, you work with them, but it's really hard.
And this goes back to what we were talking about earlier to say no, or to assert your boundaries because we are told they hired you, they own your time, they own your, their, your effort. And it can be really hard if you've never been given that type of autonomy. To know how to say, no, this is, you know what to do.
Like the amount of scope creep that I see. In a lot of my peers, when they work with a client, you're hired for a particular thing. And you check in with them three months later and they're doing all of this other stuff. And you're like, what happened? You're like, I don't know. They just asked me to do it.
I can do it. So I did it. And it just turns into this whole thing, despite having really clear contracts and scopes of work and all of that kind of thing. And I think the other big story that we continue to tell ourselves is that we don't have what it takes. We see somebody being successful in their field.
And we somehow, because we're not at the point they are in their journey, we immediately think we don't have what it takes, but there's that comparison itis that happens a lot, and so it's really reminding yourself that, their chapter 20 is not your chapter 2. Yeah. And that's a big source of stories that I think could be done away with.
Janis Francis: yeah. Can you share a recent success story that when your clients of 1 of your clients that particularly inspired you?
Sarah Kahn: Oh, gosh. Yes, I have I worked with an incredible client. She was, I don't want to give too many details because I haven't asked for permission, but she was able to basically take her entire [00:22:00] business and streamline. I mean, I say she was, she had a team to help her. I was on the team. We streamlined the entire business and.
Made it so that she was able to take 10 days off, like completely from the business. And it was, the team took 10 days off, the business shut down for 10
days. The clients were made aware of that and it was really helping her. See that her time in the business was not necessarily being used as effectively as it could have been like, you don't need to touch all the things.
That's why you have a team. Here's how we break things down. But then when what really inspired me about that was that she was so willing to change the way she saw how her business ran. Cause she'd been a solopreneur for so long. And so when she was able to make that shift in her mindset and really allow her team to do what they were hired to do, we were able to create this this reality where, yeah, I can shut my business down for 10 days, go overseas, have a great time and the business does not suffer and.
I really want to bring that into more businesses because I think a lot of us say we're going to take time off and we still work on stuff. I'm already looking over to Christmas holidays going. It's going to be great to have 2 weeks off. And I'm like, so what projects can I finish during Christmas break?
It's no, take the time completely off, and things are not going to fall apart. So that was really. Like it reminded me too that it's possible to do that and I'm really happy for her.
Janis Francis: They've always say I sell real estate, right? They always say, if you want to get busy, if you're not that busy, plan a vacation. Cause that's when you get busy. So is there a common stuck point that you have found that your clients have?
Sarah Kahn: It's generally around, again, self trust it's around this idea of, let me backtrack a little bit. One of the things that I find to be really common is that when we, when women come into the online business space, particularly, There are just [00:24:00] like three or four boxes that you can fit in. You can be an agency owner, a VA, an OBM, a DOO.
There's not a lot of variation. Or you can be a coach. And what I find is a lot of the clients that work with me, they see these labels and they jump into one of these boxes, whichever one they think they fit into. And then it's really hard for them to see themselves as anything other than that. And so the stuck point becomes where, when I work with someone and they say, this is the kind of lifestyle I desire.
This is the kind of business that I want to have. And yet I'm doing all of these
things. And it's trying to bridge where they are and how they see themselves with how they want to see themselves and where they want to be. And that's really the biggest stuck point, I think, for anybody is this idea of being something more than you've always told yourself you are right, and allowing your brain to open up enough to the possibility that you can be more, or you can just be different, and it's entirely possible because this is going to sound a little woo, but I truly believe that if you have a dream on your heart if there is something that has been tugging at you that, I really, I've always wanted to do this thing.
It's there for a reason. It doesn't just pop up. It's there because you have what it takes to get there. Otherwise it would not be there. And so my job is to help you figure out how to make that happen.
Michele Cook: Ooh.
Janis Francis: I love that. So you're located in Canada. We're in the United States. Do you see any differing issues from clients from one region to another?
Sarah Kahn: Not really. I think we all have the same challenges. We just, in Canada we have, I think a smaller on, it feels like a smaller entrepreneurial community. The majority of Canadian entrepreneurs that I have had the pleasure of meeting have more service based businesses, but they're brick and mortar type of businesses are not as online.
They have the option of being in person as well. A lot of therapists [00:26:00] or real estate agents, that kind of thing. Whereas in the U. S. there does seem to be a little bit of More of a a larger online, like online only focus. But other than that, the problems and stuff we all face very similar.
Janis Francis: Oh, good. So speaking of some differences, what is a major issue small business owners face? And how does that differ from some of the larger, more established businesses?
Sarah Kahn: Oh gosh. I think visibility is the big one. We forget that as smaller business owners, you do have to work doubly hard to be visible and to be seen. And when you're trying to compare yourself to a larger, more established business, who maybe have the. The revenue and the resources to, be in all the places, it's very different.
So I will sometimes see a. Solopreneur, someone who's in, first two or three years of their business, and they want to be on LinkedIn and on Instagram and on Facebook. And they want to show up on TikToks. They want to do YouTube videos and they want to run ads and blah. And I'm like, why?
Oh so and so is doing it. Yeah. But so and so is 10 years in, they have a team of eight people they have, and it's really helping them see past all of the, it's so easy to do, right? A lot of the, it's so easy to do. You don't see what's going on behind the scenes and 99. 9 percent of the time, it's not even that person.
It's a massive team. There's a lot of ad spend. There's so much more going on. And so I think as a small business owner, you have to remember that you can get there. It's just going to take time. And right now you need to focus on one or two things that's going to move you forward, not all of the things, because I see people try to do all of the things and they get burnt out and that doesn't serve anybody.
Janis Francis: Yeah.
Michele Cook: Yeah. I heard you mention on another podcast that you do most of your networking virtually. Do you think that is easier or harder than in person? [00:28:00] And which is more effective for you? Do you think
Sarah Kahn: Oh, that's such a great question. I, for me personally, online is easier because I am, believe it or not, incredibly introverted. I am. Very shy in person. I have a lunch with someone today that I met at a networking event that I did I MC'd at a a breakfast a couple of weeks ago and I'm meeting one of the ladies that I met for lunch today.
I'm petrified. I'm absolutely petrified because, you can't log off. You can't, there's no sort of easy out. And I just keep thinking to myself, if the conversation is. Sale. What am I going to do? I have to finish my lunch before I can leave, right? Not that ever happens, but that's always a big fear in the back of my head.
I like online because it also allows me to connect with people all over the world. Like the vast majority of the clients I work with are American and I love it. And I would never have had that opportunity if I had focused solely on networking locally within my city. And to be fair, I don't think my business would have grown the way it did. Because there just isn't the market here
locally for what I do.
Janis Francis: Yeah. That's where we met.
Michele Cook: Yeah. That's, that is so interesting to me that you say that the Canadian entrepreneurship pool is smaller. I wonder if it's more attractive to work somewhere else.
Sarah Kahn: I think it also has to do with where I live, though. I live in a really weird, a weird sort of black hole in Canada where it's, I... We joke that it's it's, we're called the hub. Technically everything is supposed to flow through here to go other places. But we are notoriously hard to get to and get out of.
And yeah it's 2 flights to go anywhere, guaranteed. So I think it's just me being here is what makes it feel very much like I'm in a small pool. But if you go out to the bigger cities on the West Coast and the East Coast, like Toronto, Vancouver. There are so many entrepreneurs and I hear sometimes they have these wonderful get togethers and things like [00:30:00] that, but I'm like a 24 hour drive away.
So it's never going to happen.
Janis Francis: Yeah.
Michele Cook: that would be difficult. Between posting on social, doing your podcast, and taking paying clients, how do you manage your time? Do you have a team or tools that
Sarah Kahn: I don't know. I don't have a team. One of the things that I've gotten really good at is figuring out exactly what I need to be doing on a daily basis. And this was not the case five years ago when I was at my desk from eight to four and I was trying to do all the things. I've really figured out if I'm working on client stuff that's one thing I have allocated time that I work on my client work, but for my own business, I know specifically what I need to do on a daily basis. And I focus on that. And that's not, I'm not sitting here saying, I do a four hour work week and that's it.
That's not it at all. I do pull in, put in good hours, but I'm very focused on what I do. And so I'm able to do a lot of things because I'm very particular about what needs to happen. Those things need to happen every week. Everything else is a
bonus if it happens. Does that mean everything gets done?
No. But that's okay, right? Because I know where I'm going and I'm also really realistic about how long it's going to take me to get where I need to go. I'm not in a rush. So
Janis Francis: Yeah. So for someone feeling hesitant about leaving their corporate job, what advice would you give to them?
Sarah Kahn: have at least three months of savings before you leave. People don't like to hear that, take a chance on yourself, believe in yourself, go all in. No, don't, please don't. Please don't. Three months minimum. If you're really a good planner, six months. And I know how hard that sounds in this economy.
I get it. But if you are really thinking about leaving your corporate job and starting a business, have an exit strategy. Don't just throw your papers up in the air one day and say, I quit. Like I know how that feels. Cause I've wanted to, I want to do that for years. But have the exit strategy know how much [00:32:00] money you need to survive for three to six months and make sure you have that somewhere.
And then when you do start your business, start lean. Don't feel like you have to invest in all of the things you really don't. yoU need to find somebody to work with who aligns with your values and who can help you set up your business foundation, and then you can go from there. So don't get sucked into all of the really big marketing hype of I can help you replace your corporate income in six months and blah, don't, have a plan.
Michele Cook: Yeah.
Janis Francis: Yeah. So what motivates you? How do you stay inspired during the challenging times in your entrepreneurship?
Sarah Kahn: Oh gosh. I think just loving what I do, like being really clear on why I'm doing it. Cause there have there been days I wanted to burn it all down? Absolutely. And. That's why I have my why, my vision, my mission posted right here. I look at it on a daily basis. I don't know how many entrepreneurs do that.
I think we, some of us do the exercise of what's my vision? What's my goal? And then we tuck it away somewhere in a Google folder. I've got mine printed
out on my wall. Because I have to remind myself this is why you're here. If you don't have that clear reason for being here, it's easy to constantly pivot.
It's easy to leave when it gets tough. It's easy to feel deflated when things don't go the way you planned. But if you truly believe that the reason I'm here is to do this thing, then... I wouldn't say it makes it easier, but it makes it easier to get back up when things are hard.
Janis Francis: That's, that's great.
Michele Cook: Yeah.
Janis Francis: That's
Michele Cook: Sarah, after hearing about your amazing story and getting your advice, let's do a quick round of fast questions.
We'll ask and you answer the first thing that comes to mind.
Sarah Kahn: Oh gosh, okay. I'm going to out myself here now. Let's do it.
Janis Francis: Okay. [00:34:00] What is the book you've most given as a gift or the book that has made the biggest impact on you?
Sarah Kahn: Oh gosh, the Brene Brown book, the first one, Dare to Lead. There we go.
Michele Cook: Oh yeah, she's great. Yes. What purchase of 100 or less has most positively impacted your life?
Sarah Kahn: Starbucks gift card.
My dad gifted me a 500 Starbucks gift card last year for my birthday. And I was like, it
Michele Cook: How long did that last you?
Sarah Kahn: three months.
Michele Cook: Three months.
Sarah Kahn: Three months.
Michele Cook: tHat's her mission is to make enough money for Starbucks.
Janis Francis: Oh my gosh.
Sarah Kahn: I'm gonna own one one day. Yeah.
Janis Francis: Oh, there you go. So what is an unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love?
Sarah Kahn: Like to flick my little girl's ears. She's got these cute little sticky oaty ears and I just like to flick them.
Janis Francis: Okay.
Michele Cook: What is your proudest accomplishment?
Sarah Kahn: Oh, 100 percent my two girls. And it's weird to call them an accomplishment because it's not I set out to be like, oh, I'm going to, that's not what it means, but I think I'm most proud of just how, I mean, the little one's still little, but she's a frigging powerhouse. The older one is just every day, she shocks me at just how empathetic and worldly and smart she is.
And I'm just. So proud. And if I do nothing else good in the world, knowing that I've unleashed those two into the world is more than enough,
Janis Francis: They've got a good role model there.
Sarah Kahn: I'll thank you.
Janis Francis: You're welcome. So what is your current passion project?
Sarah Kahn: Passion project. I'm working on putting together a course that is basically designed for women who want to come into online entrepreneurship.
And it's going to, it's going to be like, everything's going to be a little mini MBA and it's going to be very excessively priced because I think that when I started in the online space.
There was so [00:36:00] much I didn't know. And as a result, I got, I mean, I'll admit it. Honestly, I got taken advantage of and I was sold things that I did not need at that level that I had no business having at that level. And so to create a really comprehensive course that covers. Everything, all of the different pillars of business.
Here's what you actually need right now. Here's when to invest in something else so that when women come into the workplace or into the entrepreneurship, they actually have a guide that is not going to cost them thousands of dollars. Because when you're starting out, it's scary to have to invest, thousands of dollars with a coach or, long term containers.
And if they can have something that they can work on at their own pace and is not going to break the bank and they can start to build that business. Cause for me, I want women to build businesses to actually be able to create financial independence. And that does not mean having to invest every penny they have in smoke and mirrors.
Janis Francis: Yeah. I love them.
Sarah Kahn: yeah, that's something that I'm itching to do and it's underway.
Janis Francis: Yeah. That's wonderful.
Michele Cook: What is one skill you would like to master? I
Sarah Kahn: Cursive handwriting. Calligraphy and cursive handwriting. I ha I should have been a doctor, let's just say that. My handwriting is atrocious, and I keep buying all of these pens, these like fancy pens, like fountain pens, thinking the pen is gonna fix my handwriting, and it just will not do it. So I wish, cause I see some of these people with their gorgeous handwriting.
Michele Cook: know.
Sarah Kahn: Makes me so mad.
Michele Cook: I know. There, there's this girl in our town who's going to have a hands lettering class. Maybe you should take a trip here just for that class.
Sarah Kahn: I should, I tried all of the online ones, where they're like, follow these templates. It never works.
Janis Francis: No. Calligraphy is hard to learn.
It is. When I was in 5th grade, a fountain pen was on our school list of [00:38:00] things to buy, and that's when we learned cursive, when I was in 5th grade.
Sarah Kahn: I mean, I'm pretty sure we learned cursive when I was in like grade school, but at some point printing became cool. And that's just, that's stuck. And now I have this weird mishmash of, I don't even know what it's called anymore, but. It's horrible.
Janis Francis: My grandkids, they don't even know cursive.
Sarah Kahn: Oh, I know it's like a secret language now.
Janis Francis: Yes. Exactly. Exactly. It's going to be like hieroglyphics.
Sarah Kahn: Yeah.
Janis Francis: Yeah. Sarah, do you believe in the power of manifestation?
Sarah Kahn: Ooh. Oh, we're opening a can of worms, Janice. Yes and no. Yes, I do. I do believe that you can manifest, but I do believe that it takes an equal amount of work, like actual practical action. I think that from my perspective, manifestation is all about having a singular focus and believing that you have the capability of attaining it.
And then also putting the work in to actually get it.
Janis Francis: Makes sense.
Michele Cook: Yes. What was your very first job?
Sarah Kahn: Oh, I swept up hair in my mom's friend's hair salon.
Janis Francis: Oh,
Sarah Kahn: Yeah.
Janis Francis: okay.
Sarah Kahn: first roach I saw, I left
Janis Francis: was
Sarah Kahn: I think that lasted about a week. And I was like, no, I'm good.
Janis Francis: of my first jobs, when we were going these questions ourself, I worked at a laundromat for a little bit and it was maybe half a day, just a few hours and I was just like, I was out of there. I
Sarah Kahn: Oh, that was me at the body shop. One of my first one of my first jobs when I was in university was at the body shop. I got fired the same day because I wouldn't harass the customers to buy stuff. She's you're not being aggressive enough. I'm like, I don't know how to be aggressive. And so I was fired
Janis Francis: Where do you see yourself in five years?
Sarah Kahn: still doing this. I love [00:40:00] it. Maybe with actually in five years, I am a renowned speaker. Who is doing the speaking circuit, giving keynotes at women's conventions and high schools and inspiring women to really believe in themselves and ditch all of the imposter syndrome nonsense and create change in their community because they believed in themselves enough to do that.
Janis Francis: I love that.
Michele Cook: Awesome. I think you're going to do it. Manifest
Sarah Kahn: Thank you.
Janis Francis: Yeah.
Michele Cook: What is your pump up song?
Sarah Kahn: Oh gosh. You know what? Don't ask me about songs right now because I have not listened to a Sarah song for so long because all I'm allowed to listen to in the car is Taylor Swift. So if I have to be honest, like right now, my pump up song would be anything from her reputation era, because I think that's a bad ass album.
Janis Francis: Okay.
Sarah Kahn: Yeah. But don't ask me to name a specific song. I just like the vibe of the whole album.
Janis Francis: Got it. Got it. sInce we're called Cosmos and Commerce, what is your favorite drink of choice?
Sarah Kahn: Oh, gosh does coffee count?
Michele Cook: Yes,
Sarah Kahn: Okay, awesome. Coffee. My drink of choice is the caramel macchiato from Starbucks. Delicious. Delicious. Although lately we have we saw this viral drink on TikTok and it is, I mean, I can't even tell you, it tastes like a gingerbread cookie.
Janis Francis: Hmm.
Sarah Kahn: And it's can I give you the recipe?
Michele Cook: Yeah.
Janis Francis: Yeah.
Sarah Kahn: So it's a venti chai tea, like a chai latte. And it's got pumpkin cream cold foam, two pumps of brown sugar and one pump of vanilla. And I don't know what it is. They drizzle, they sprinkle a little cinnamon on there and it's just the best thing I've ever had in my life. And I know they're not going to keep
it going for long because once the pumpkin's gone, it's gone.
[00:42:00] So me and my daughter have one like every day and I'm just, it's delightful. So that's my drink right now.
Michele Cook: Nice.
Janis Francis: Sounds great.
Michele Cook: Sarah, where can our listeners find you?
Sarah Kahn: I am on the socials. I'm on Facebook. That's where I do all of my long form ranty posts. I'm on Instagram at Corporate Rehab and on the podcast, Business Blasphemy Podcast.
Michele Cook: Awesome. That wraps up another enlightening episode of the Cosmos and Commerce podcast. Sarah, thank you so much for sharing your journey and insights with us today.
Sarah Kahn: That was my pleasure. Thank you for having me.
Michele Cook: Yes.
Janis Francis: So absolutely. We're so glad to have you. And I must say, every time we chat with someone as inspiring as you, it feels like sipping on a refreshing Cosmo after a long day.
Michele Cook: Oh, Janice, always with the cocktail references, but you're right, it's been a treat.
Janis Francis: So to our dear listeners, if you enjoyed this episode as much as we did, please hit that subscribe button. And don't forget to check out our website at cosmosandcommerce. com for more episodes and exclusive content.
Michele Cook: Yes. And while you're there, drop us a comment or suggestion. We'd love to hear from you until next time. Keep mixing business with a dash of fun.
Janis Francis: Cheers to that.