How I Fired My 9 to 5 (Huddle Talks)

Huddle Talks with Tammy Capri 🎙️✨

I’m breaking down How I Fired My 9 to 5 and what it really took to step into my purpose. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

This is just gonna be me, real talk, no scripts, no guests, no interviews, but just me sharing real life experiences and the things that I've learned throughout my entrepreneurship journeys. I want to talk about how I fired my nine to five. I'm working at this job and living a life, like good hours, Monday through Friday, nine to five. I was I remember my mother going through her series of colon cancer. I was the one taking her to like every appointment. I was her support system basically. By the time her surgery came, I had no more time left, right? There was no way in shape or form that I would be able to even perform at my highest level on a job knowing my mother is in surgery at some hospital. Back then, I was like, wow. Like I just felt like for one, there was no sympathy. I'm going through the situation. I showed up for this job, committed myself for this job, gave myself to this job, performed for this job, made sure this job passed inspections with the state, got promotions. And I was a young black girl in a predominantly white industry, right? And I still went above and beyond, and they tell me I can't get the time off that I need. Welcome to Huddle Talks with your girl Tammy Capri. Now, this is a new segment, y'all. So I hope y'all like it. I hope y'all like the whole concept of this. This is just gonna be me, real talk, no scripts, no guests, no interviews, but just me sharing real life experiences and the things that I've learned throughout my preneurship journey. So I hope you are along for the ride. Um, click that subscribe button if you haven't done so already. Um, and yeah, let's get to it. So before I get into today's topic, I want to I want to share with y'all something real quick. This is how quickly, this is how quickly I take action on my ideas, right? So I had this idea of like a red table talk type of segment. Um, you know how Jada Pinkin used to have, and I know a few other people have like the red table talks. But I had this idea of huddle talks with me. I didn't want a red table. I didn't want to bring a guest on. Um, I already have other sections, like I have the mastery monpreneur section where I'm teaching business and coaching. Then I have um a diary of a monpreneur where that's a little bit more impersonal with me and my home. Um, and then I have um, of course, the the Mon Peneur huddle, the actual show, but I wanted something more. I wanted something to where I can just freely talk almost like um not a vlog, but like a solo, a solo huddle talk, right? And I thought of this idea literally yesterday. Literally yesterday. And today I am executing this idea. If I if I must say I'm proud of myself of the steps that I've taken, because at one point in time I was not the person that would immediately move on the idea, right? I was a perfectionist. I had to have plan A, B, and C down pat before I even jump into it. And by the time I got to planning part D or part E, like I talked myself out of doing it. So um, yeah, we ain't doing that no more. Any idea that I come up with, any idea that I have, it is my intention to move on it quickly. Whether I mess up, whether I do it correctly, whether anyone likes it, whether no matter the outcome, I'm moving on it quickly. So that is how quickly I took action. So that should be a point that um you need to take if you're listening to this, if you're not one to move on your ideas quickly. Um, but let's get into it. So I want to talk about um, I want to talk about a topic that um you'll hear a lot in entrepreneurship, um, leaving your nine to five, when is it time to leave your nine to five, getting fired from your job? But I want to talk about how I fired my nine to five. How I fired my nine to five. And I was um I was living in Philly at this time. I was working for a job as a QMRP, right? A QMRP is a qualified mental retardation professional, also known as case manager. I don't know why they had that professional name on it, but I thought I was doing something because I had been with that company in Pennsylvania for quite some time and had got promotion at the promotion. Um now, mind you, I've always been in a position of leadership. Like right out, right out of college, I went into like a supervisor role. Then from there, I went to like a unit director role, and then I went to the QMRP position. So I'm working, making money. It was about 20 between 2011 and 2012, 2013, around I can never remember the exact year. But I'm working at this job and living a life, like good hours, Monday through Friday, nine to five. I wasn't quite the entrepreneur that I am now, but I did have a book out. I did my first book, my first book did well, but I was working and I was writing books, right? So um I remember my mother going through her series of colon cancer. And prior to then, I was the one taking her to every appointment. Shout out to you, Ma. I was the one taking her to like every appointment. I was her support system basically. And it came time to have her surgery. It came time to start making a decision on that, scheduling that, and then we got it scheduled, and we had the date. I had taken so much time off at my job that by the time her surgery came, I had no more time left, right? I was like, okay, what am I gonna do? I went to my um my boss at the time, and she told me about different options, FMLA, um, all of the leave options that I could try to apply for, right? But if you've ever worked in corporate America, you know there's rules around taking these different leaves. There's rules around um qualifications um for taking um an FMLA. And long story short, my mama did not, well, her case did not qualify me to take the leave that I needed to take to be there to support her. Now, this was going to be a series of of um surgeries. And for one, there was no way in shape or form that I would be able to even perform at my highest level on a job knowing my mother is in surgery at some hospital. For two, even if I would have gone to work and then went to the hospital, it would have been so strenuous to do the back and forth and then had to be to work the next day, then go back to the hospital and then talking to the doctors in the midst of it, and then it was just too much. So I needed that time off. Um, and it was probably going to be about a good week. We're talking about a week span of just hospital time, recovery time, all of those things, right? And later I found out that it was a little bit longer than the uh than a week than that she was in the hospital. So um, but at the time we were thinking the time frame, if everything went well, um, she would only be in the hospital for about a week before she would have to come stay with me in my home. So um I laid everything out on the table for that job. And guess what they told me? Guess what they told me? They could not approve my time off that moment, and I was young, and I wasn't, I was, I was nowhere near the Tammy I am now, because you know the Tammy, the Tammy right now, I'm gonna give you the deuces real quick. Um, but then back then I was like, wow, like I just felt like for one, there was no sympathy, right? I'm going through the situation. I showed up for this job, committed myself for this job, gave myself to this job, performed for this job, made sure this job, passed inspections with the state, got promotions. Now, this is how much of, and I was a young black girl in a predominantly white industry, right? And I still went above and beyond, and they tell me I can't get the time off that I need. I cannot get the time off that I need. I felt so crazy in that moment. I'm like, how could you not even try to accommodate? And knowing what I know now, knowing what I know now, it was up to her discretion, right? She could have accommodated, like she could have accommodated if she wanted to, and I know that now. But of course, they blame it on the higher-ups, they blame it on company policy, they blame it on whatever. But she had the option to say yes or no, and she decided to say no. It was at that moment, that moment, I knew I never wanted to be in a position where anybody else had my time or my fate in their hands. Now, I'm gonna paint the picture. Paint the picture. I was married, right? Um, my husband was at the time, he was not um, he was not in the his industry anymore. Um, but I sold books and we started getting into real estate. So it wasn't like we were broke. So I went home that night and I told my husband what happened, and I cried to him, y'all, like it was just like, what am I gonna do? I've always had a job. Like ever since I graduated college, I've always worked, I've always like since I was 14, really, I've always had a job. But this was the first time I was faced with like, my mom is in this hospital, I need to be there, but they're not allowing me to do that. What am I gonna do? So um he told me, he said, well, quit your job. Now those words, those words at the time was like, what? Quit my job. Like, how am I supposed to make money? Like, what am I gonna do for money? I'm not gonna just rely on you, depend on you. But he was like, no, quit your job. He's like, if you need to be there, quit your job and write your books, sell your books, push your books. He was good with me quitting my job. Now, I do understand that that is not the typical typical situation for most people to be in. But I was fortunate enough to have a husband at the time that was supporting my decision to be with my mom and allowed me to, well, carried us to quit, um, for me to quit my job. So I did. Um, I fired my nine to five, y'all. I fired my nine to five, um, my nine to five. Um and when I did that, it was like it was extremely scary. Like, even though I had someone to lean on, even though like the house was good, the bills were good, and um, you know, it was still scary. It was still scary. So um, but fortunately, because of that, I was able to focus on my writing. I was able to focus on my books, I was able to focus on the publishing company. And aside from the the luxury, or not, I'm not even gonna say luxury, but um, I was I was grateful to even have someone take the position of providing. But aside from that, right, I'm gonna get to that because I understand everyone don't have that one person that they they can really truly lean on when they're stuck in those predicaments. But the point I'm trying to make is when I was able to leave that job, and I still felt like my back was against the wall. I still felt like, okay, Tam, what are you gonna do? What are you really gonna do? Because in the back of my mind, it always played in the back of my mind that my mama always told me, it doesn't matter if you're married, it doesn't matter if you're in a relationship, always be able to take care of yourself. This man can always walk away, this man can always do whatever, right? So I always had to be in the mode to take care of myself, and I was left vulnerable at the hands of someone else again, right? But this time, because I had the freedom to not focus on my nine to five, I went so hard in my publishing company, y'all. I built that publishing company. My first book did 20,000 units. I had done a book tour, shout out to the Deltas. I did a book tour at the different universities. Um, and then I just started learning the industry, right? I started learning the business. Like as I'm writing, I'm learning the business. So, me, I'm like, okay, if I can make this money off of my books, what I gotta do to make money off of other people's books, like other people that want to publish books that don't know how to publish books. So I put my publisher's hat on because publishing became so easy. So then I signed my first artist. I signed my first um author. And then from there, it led to the second and the third, and then we pushing books and we pumping books all the way until we grossed $30,000 in one month, over $30,000 in one month. That right there was all the proof that I needed that there is there is no cap when you're working for yourself. There's no cap on how much you can make. And I'm not telling, I'm not saying that was easy. I'm not saying that was easy by far. And I'm not saying that all of that money was ours to keep, y'all, because we had 27 authors. So of course we had to pay people. We had to pay editors, we had to pay, like, we had to pay people, but overall, like we started grossing that much money. And I'm just like not knowing what to do with it because I'm still like young in the game, not wanting to listen to somebody, and I'm still doing what I want to do and hustling basically. Um, but that just showed me that there's no cap in entrepreneurship. I can make as much as I want, I can really make my schedule, like just to have that little bit of that that taste of freedom, just that taste of freedom made me never ever, ever want to go back to a nine to five. But unfortunately, I had to go back and I'll tell you about that story another time. But um, yeah, just that part of it made me so determined on truly finding out what I wanted to do. How can I add on to this business? Like literally, y'all, it took off. So from writing, writing books, signing other authors, getting the publishing company going, I eventually learned how to do graphics, right? So I took a few months to I went to YouTube university and I learned Adobe. I learned Photoshop, started doing my own covers, eventually started doing my author's covers, eventually started doing some bigger author's covers. Shout out to um, shout out to Quine, um, shout out to Thomas Long, shout out to um Raquel, shout out to um the Urban Books, some of the people in the Urban Books team. I started doing covers for some heavy hitters in the game, y'all. Not only that, I took it a step further and I started teaching a graphic design class where I had authors paying me to teach them, paying me to teach them how to do it. Like I really built new class publications out to this mini empire to if we would have kept going today. I man, we probably would, we we would have had the next Tyler Perry Studios. We we would have been booming, we would have been booming. Um, but y'all know, unfortunately, with the divorce, the divorce came and all the trauma and drama came with that. Um, but yeah, I say that to say that that was my first time really realizing that there was no cap in entrepreneurship, and I knew from that day on Tammy Capri ain't meant to work in nobody's cubicle or office. Tammy Capri was not meant to be confined to clocking in and clocking out. Now, I do not knock a nine-to-five, I do not knock a job, I do not knock anybody working hard. You get it how you get it. This is solely speaking for me. I was the one sitting at a job not knowing what I love what I did at the time. Don't get me wrong, I love what I did, but I always felt like there was something more to me, right? I always felt like, yo, like what am I supposed to be doing? Like I wasn't into, I wasn't into my faith back then as much as I am now. So no, I wasn't praying to God back then as to lead me in the right direction. No, I wasn't doing any of that. I just knew I was good at something. I did it, but I always wanted to do more, right? And even before that, I knew in high school, in elementary school, and as a little kid, like I've always done something to bring people together, right? Starting a dance team. Um, when I was younger, I started a drill team with the girls in the neighborhood, like getting them um performances, paid performances at block parties. Y'all remember block parties back in the day? Block parties used to be the ish. I don't know if they have those here in Georgia, but maybe that was a Philly thing, up north thing. But I got them paid gigs at block parties. We had videos of them where I was selling videos of them doing fundraising. And even um in my adult, in my adult age, when I started the Kirby Girl Dow House and I was bringing plus size women together to learn burlesque dance. Like I was always doing something, bringing together a community. So now that I look back on it in hindsight, God had already put my calling and my purpose in me. I just didn't know how to mold that, right? I didn't know how to, I didn't know which direction to go in it. So, like naturally, my urges was just telling me to do whatever I would come up with, right? But on hindsight, I knew I know now I was meant to bring the masses together, right? And now that I'm bringing the masses together, what is going to be that message? My message, what is going to be my service to help moms? How is that? How was how am I going to convey that? Through my own testimony and my experience. And it's just so freeing to really feel like I understand my purpose and my place in this life. It is, it's like a weight that's lifted off. Like, okay, God, now that I know what you put me here for, show me the way to execute it. Show me the way to help that mom that is sitting in her cubicle, sitting at her nine to five, feeling like there's no way out, feeling like she don't have the capacity or the time or even the knowledge or even the belief that she was created more. She was created for more than just what she's doing now. Be a vessel, be a messenger. So, but yes, y'all let me know if there was ever a time you felt like that, if there was ever a time you felt stuck in a job, or just a time when you felt at a at a crossroad like you don't know which way to go as far as your life or your career. I know I know a lot of women, especially I was one of these women too. A lot of women, when we're stuck in a um, when we're at a crossroad and we don't know what to do, and we feel like, um, okay, we had enough with this one job, but what do I do next? We always opt to go back to school. Y'all, I went back to school three times after I graduated college. Three times. I went back to school for psychology, thinking I wanted to be a psychologist, I'm gonna be a therapist, I'm gonna be this, wasting my time and my money, and I never finished those programs because it wasn't fulfilling to me. It wasn't fulfilling to me. But there is an out. There's always other options. We just have to first find out what our purpose is. What do we like to do naturally? What can we do if we weren't making money? Right? Like this. This right here talking, I could talk all day. Y'all know I'm a jabber mouth. But this right here, I can talk all day and I don't have to get paid for it. I can really share my story. I can really pour it into someone else because I genuinely want to see other people win. I genuinely want to see other people make it. I genuinely want to see other people taking a chance on themselves, strengthening their beliefs. I genuinely want to see people do that because there's no reason why we all should still be struggling. There's no reason why, if we have the community, if your neighbor to the right of you, if your neighbor to the right of you have a million dollars, the neighbor to the left of you have a million dollars, and you don't have a million dollars, there's something wrong with that. No, you don't ask them to give you money, but you lean on them as a resource, you lean on them as uh for educational-wise, you pick their brain. How do I get there? How do I do this? And it should be no problem for them to show you the steps. But the problem is with our community, is that there's so much gatekeeping. Nobody wants to help, nobody wants to talk. We were not created to be alone, we were not meant to do everything by ourselves. It even says that in the Bible, like God created Eve because he didn't want Adam to be alone. Like, we're not meant to be by ourselves, we're supposed to help, we're supposed to give, we're supposed to serve, but we're missing the whole dynamic around that, and this is why a lot of people are struggling. So I, for one, am going to play my part and do what I gotta do and bring as much information to this platform as possible. So, but yeah, y'all let me know um if there was ever a time you felt that way. Um, let me know if you want to connect with me, if you want to chop it up, leave a comment. Tell me about a time that you felt that way. I do want to know, I do want to hear it. Um, but my time is up for right now. I will catch you at the next Huddle Talk. Remember to like, share, and subscribe to this network, um, the Huddle Podcast Network. And this is Huddle Talks with your girl, Tammy Capri. I will see y'all next time. Thank you for tuning in.