No More Excuses: Why Now is the Perfect Time to Leave Your Six-Figure Job (#71)

If you’re a high-achieving professional woman dreaming of leaving corporate but keep making excuses—this episode is for you. I’m breaking down the five biggest mindset blocks I see in my coaching clients and helping you reframe them so you can step confidently into entrepreneurship (or whatever your dream career is).

The 5 Excuses Holding You Back:

1) I don’t know what I want to do – You won’t figure it out by standing still. Take action and explore your interests.
2) I don’t have the skills – No one starts as an expert. You’ve learned before, and you’ll learn again.
3) I won’t make enough money – For starters, you don’t need as much as you think. Plus, relying on a corporate paycheck is a false sense of security.
4) I’m too busy – If this is important to you, you’ll find the time. It’s all about prioritization!
5) It will be too hard – You do hard things every day. Building a business is no different.

Your excuses are keeping you stuck in a job that no longer serves you. But now that you recognize them, you can take action to move forward.

Next Steps:

- Identify which of these excuses is holding you back.
- Reframe your mindset and take ONE small step today.

You’ve got this! Now go Rock Your Reinvention!

Are you ready to make your Empowered Exit™ and break free of corporate? Learn more here: www.karinfreeland.com/life-coaching

Then book a complimentary 45-min Empowered Exit™ call!

Not ready for coaching? Get a copy of my self-help book: Grab Life by the Dreams!

Transcript

Karin Freeland: 0:00

Welcome to Rock Your Reinvention, where I help high-achieving career women like you get unstuck, make your corporate exit strategy, and successfully transition to your next chapter. Hi, I'm your host, Karin Freeland, a certified life coach and corporate exit strategist. Whether you want to start a business, become a speaker, or something else, I'm here to give you the tools and strategies to shift your mindset, build your confidence, and take bold actions so you can rock your reinvention. Ready? Let's go. Soda Popped gave Rock Your Reinvention five stars for being relatable. Here's what she said. I love how Karin is so relatable as a woman who wants to do her own thing instead of working a corporate job. She has great wisdom without sounding condescending. Great flow. I'm excited to listen to more episodes. Thank you so much for tuning in Soda Popped and leaving a review. And if you haven't left a review yet, would you take a moment to do that? I'd love to read it on a future episode. All right, we're jumping into today's episode, convenient excuses that are keeping you trapped in your corporate job. I was recently having lunch with my mentee. She's in ninth grade and we were talking about some sports that she might wanna try. She mentioned that color guard would be cool. So I asked her if she was gonna try out and you know what she said? No. I need more confidence first. And without skipping a beat, I fired right back. No, you don't. And she looked at me completely stunned. But yes, I do, she pressed. Everyone will be looking at me. What if I make a mistake? I'm like, you did cheer. Everyone was looking at you then. And I proceeded to explain that it's totally normal to be nervous and scared, but that you can't let that hold you back. The only way to get confidence in a particular area of life is to do the thing that scares you and get better with practice. That's how you grow your confidence. But how does this relate to you? I think it's one of the many excuses that keep us stuck in life. I think there are some really convenient excuses that are keeping you stuck in a job that you don't love and a life that you don't love. So today I wanna walk you through the most common excuses I see in my coaching clients so that you can avoid these mindset traps in your life. Ready? Good, here we go. So the first one is I don't know what I want to do. And if this is you, welcome to the club. I didn't know what I wanted to do either. But this short-term reality doesn't have to be your long-term excuse. Exploration is the fun part. This is your opportunity to explore some ideas. What might be interesting for you? You know, it's such an ironic excuse because how can you know what you wanna do if you don't try something out? You can't. So check this out. I thought I wanted to be a health coach. I love fitness. It seemed like it would be a good fit for me. And as I started to explore the training programs, I was introduced to life coaching. And that's how I realized this was the path I wanted to pursue. But if I hadn't at least given myself permission to investigate the interest in health coaching, I might not have stumbled on life coaching. Or it might have taken me that much longer to figure out that's what I wanted to do. So if you've been wallowing in your feelings of being stuck, you have to start taking action. It's the only way that anything will change. So make a list of all the things that you have an interest in and then choose one to just start exploring. This could be researching things online, talking to people in the field, maybe looking into college courses or training programs. I mean, who knows? but you have to start by taking that action. So that's the first excuse. I don't know what I want to do, but it doesn't have to be your excuse any longer. The second one I hear a lot is I don't have the necessary skill. Yeah, of course you don't. You've never run a business before or written a book or started a nonprofit, but that doesn't mean you can't learn. Think back to your first job. Did you know how to do it when you started? I mean, I sure didn't. I was a grocery bagger and I remember packing this little old lady's bags way too full. I had no idea that she wasn't gonna be able to carry it. It was only through that job that I got better and better and started to realize those kinds of things, right? Through trial and error. Even later in your corporate career. I mean, you probably got a job that you had never had experience in before. I remember getting my first marketing role. I'd been in sales, training, operations up to that point, but never marketing. I had taken two classes in marketing when I was in college, but I'm pretty sure I was hung over the whole semester, so I don't really remember anything from those classes. But I learned on the job, and so can you. This is also commonly where you repeat all the what ifs. What if I fail? What if I don't have enough clients? What if I don't know how to do something? Turn it around, because those are all negatives. Let's make these positives. What if I succeed? What if I have all the clients I need? What if I do figure it out? That is the much more likely thing that's going to happen and it's far more productive. So if you catch yourself saying, what if, you can now recognize it and just see it for what it is, another excuse. And you know, simple affirmations can be really helpful. I've been very successful in my corporate career and that will only continue into my own business. Stop second guessing yourself and start betting on yourself. Okay, the third excuse I hear and the biggest one is, again, money. I know it's scary to leave your big six-figure salary, but thousands of women have done it before you and thousands more will do it after you. Just because you've always earned a paycheck from a company doesn't mean that's the only way. And not for nothing, but there's like no loyalty in organizations anymore. So you're seeing the layoffs, I'm sure. I've been impacted by them. And so have countless others. It is a false security. I know there are concerns about benefits and healthcare. And you know what? You're going to figure that out too. Just like the millions of other self-employed people in the world. But here's my favorite bubble to burst. You don't actually need as much money as you think. Society would have people making $700,000 think they're poor. Why? Because it's never enough. You always need more, a bigger house, a second home, a vacation property, whatever to the country club, a membership, that's the word I'm looking for, a new car, the latest iPhone, a boat. Oh, and you should have an RV and you need a new wardrobe for every season. Oh my gosh, can we stop? You don't need any of these things. You need shelter, safety, food, the basics. And at some point, enough has to be enough. And actually, you'll be so much happier, right? You will be so much happier when you stop playing the keeping up with the Joneses game and trying to like constantly one up everybody and one up yourself. It's exhausting. I've done it. It's horrible. This is another excuse that is keeping you trapped. But of course, it doesn't have to. It's a choice. You get to decide what your enough is. You would pass out if I told you how much I pay myself each month, and I'm not going to, but it's low, like really low. But here's the thing. It's not that I can't pay myself more. I have more money in my business bank account. It's that I don't need more. I only take what I need. Because if I give myself more, what will I do with it? I'll just waste it on stupid stuff, lattes, clothes, eating out, whatever, something from Amazon that I don't really need. And I'd have nothing to show for it. So if I leave it in my business and I only give myself what I really need, then I only buy what I really need. Now, I'm not telling you that you have to do that or you have to operate this way, but I'd really encourage you to explore your relationship with money and how much you need and determine for yourself what that really looks like. And you might surprise yourself and find out that you can leave corporate much sooner. And you know what? outside of corporate, you might even be able to replace your corporate income, right? So like there's that whole thing too. So many people think, oh, I'm gonna go into entrepreneurship and I'm going to be broke. And I don't know why that memo exists. Like, I don't know who wrote that memo, but that's not the reality. There are so many people creating amazing companies and replacing their corporate income. But I also wanna let you know that you probably think you need more than you actually do. And I bet if push came to shove and you started looking at some of your expenses, some of the line items, you'd be like, well, I could get that for cheaper. I don't really need that subscription, right? And this whole money excuse suddenly becomes a vapor. Poof, gone. All right, the fourth excuse I hear, convenient excuse, is, oh, I'm just too busy right now. It's not the right time. I'll maybe think about that later. Okay, tough love alert. You make time for what's important to you. Sorry, not sorry. I hear women say all the time, oh, I don't have time to work on a side hustle. Oh, I'm just going to wait until the kids are in college. I don't have time to explore other careers. Yes, you do. If this is important to you and you really feel stuck and you want a change, you will make time for it. I was insanely busy with my role before I left corporate. Two kids working 50 plus hours a week, married, dog, sports practices. I mean, you know, things were crazy. But something really interesting started to happen when I began writing my first book. Hello and behold, I found all kinds of time. Oh, at wrestling practices, I could bang out a chapter. In the doctor's office waiting room. After the kids went to bed. Wake up early. I delegated the crap out of stuff at work. Suddenly in the middle of the day, I was editing. Right? I had to face the fact that my lack of time was an excuse that kept me safe in my comfort zone. And the same is 1,000% true for you. And this excuse is so convenient because we use it all the time and we don't really mean it. When someone asks me to help out at the PTA, I'm like, oh, I'd love to, but oh, I'm just, ooh, look at the time. I am so busy right now. Yeah, and no one asks me to pull out my calendar and prove it. So it's an easy out. The problem is we've become conditioned to use this excuse in every other situation in our life, including, Living out our God-given purpose. Yikes. The other thing to consider is that there's no such thing as the right time. Like we're never fully ready for a change. It's kind of like having kids, you know, like, well, we're not ready for kids yet. Oh, girlfriend, nobody's ever ready for kids. You're never fully ready for it because you have no idea what it actually entails until you're in it. Well, same goes for life outside of corporate, starting a business, a speaking career. It's not until you're living it and you're doing it that you realize how ready you actually are. So next time you find yourself saying I'm too busy or this just isn't the right time, I want you to take a step back, dig deep and see if that's the case. And you know what? If there is an issue with time or you've really just got too much on your plate, maybe it's time to start taking some stuff off your plate. Maybe it's time to start saying no and putting up those boundaries so that you can start to prioritize what you truly want. Wild idea, I know. Okay, the last excuse I wanna break down for you today is number five, it will be too hard. Forgive my bluntness, but how would you know? I mean, you haven't even tried it yet. Ooh, I could stop there, but I won't. Look, you do hard things every single day. You do the lion's share of the parenting. You carry the mental load for running your household. You manage your team and your work, endless responsibilities, right? You give back to your community. The list of things you have to balance and coordinate goes on and on. What makes you think running a business would be any harder? This actually goes right back to excuse number two, right? Oh, but it will be too hard because I don't know how to run a business. Well, we already busted this excuse. We know you can learn it. Or maybe you're back to excuse number three. Oh, it'll be too hard to make the kind of money I want. Not if you have a good business model. Plenty of women, like I said, who have replaced their corporate income with a business. So that's not it. Or maybe you're on excuse number four and you think, well, it's just gonna be too hard because I don't have the time. But now you know you can make the time and take some other things off your plate to fit in your very important career pivot. And you know what? I will give you this. Running a business can feel hard at times, yes. But even on my most challenging days, it's still better than slugging it out in a corporate job where I'm underappreciated and miserable. doing things that I didn't even care about. If running a business were easy, everyone would do it. But you're built for this. You just don't know it yet because you haven't tried. So boom, again, it's too hard, just a convenient excuse to keep you safe. All right, there you have it. Five convenient excuses that are holding you back from leaving your corporate job and embracing entrepreneurship. I'm gonna recap them for you real quick. Number one, I don't know what I wanna do. Number two, I don't have the skill, AKA what if I fail. Number three, money excuses. Number four, I'm just too busy, it's not the right time. Or number five, it will be too hard. And for some of you, it may be a mix of them, right? You're kind of like in all the buckets and that's okay. This is so good to know though, because now you can do something about it. Now your excuses have been busted and you can move forward with confidence and excitement. Yay. I'm here rooting for you every step of the way. Now go put in your two weeks notice and rock your reinvention. Visit karinfreeland.com to learn more and book your 45-minute session. Until next time, stay fabulous.