On of the wonderful perks of my job as a Career Coach, is that I get to meet, and coach, talented professionals who are at a crossroads in their careers.
Many have experienced a redundancy or simply want a change and are reassessing what direction to take next. Some want a similar job in a similar industry, some want to change industries or job functions and others, like Eliza Ludwig, feel the pull towards entrepreneurship.
Eliza Ludwig is a young mum who decided that, after a successful career at PepsiCo in finance, marketing, planning and analysis, the corporate life is no longer for her and has bravely thrown herself into setting up her own business.
I was privileged to be Eliza’s career coach several months ago and, leveraging her existing financial skills and passion, she has launched Bread Budgeting Services. Why Bread? Because we can’t live without it and money is sometimes referred to as ‘bread’ or ‘dough’. She cleverly works baking terms into her budgeting services and now that she’s launched her offerings she has decided to share her story and blog about her entrepreneurial journey.
Here is one of her early blog posts about how she got started and you’ll find more of Eliza’s posts at www.breadbudgetingservices.com/blog You’ll find her story inspiring and especially if you are thinking about plunging into entrepreneurship too. Enjoy!
My adventures in starting a business… Letting the dough prove
So, I’d mixed the yeast, water, salt, flour and oil. Or family, work, community and home. Very simple ingredients and I like simple. My mother made all our bread growing up, so I knew it would not be hard to transform it into something amazing.
I wasn’t sure exactly how it was all going to pan out, but confident I was moving in the right direction, I completed my Diploma, held my children close, returned to Pepsi. And thought. And searched. And researched. To give myself a bit more space I took a year’s leave without pay. In that time, I was made redundant and assigned to a wonderful career and life coach, Jane Jackson, author of Navigating Career Crossroads. She suggested I read “Flee 9 – 5, Get 6-7 Figures and Do What you Love” by Ben Angel. He had some great ideas for finding products I could make into a business.
So here I am, four years after deciding to change, waiting for the dough to prove.
Proving can’t be rushed, but it is hard not to watch it too closely and to want to just shove it in the oven and get the process moving.
First step was to register my business name. As I worked in a bakery in my teens and early twenties, I loved bread. It’s also slang for money. I love making bread – the slow considered process – and its parallels to building a business. Calling my business Bread was a no brainer I guess.
Then came thinking about what products I could offer. This started with Ben Angel leading me to realise what goals I could help people achieve. I was so motivated that at this point, I wrote all the material for the products, created spreadsheets and was ready to push go.
Well, no. Not so simple. I had to tell people about me, and why I was the person for their job. I did not find this easy. Then I had to set up a website. I did not find this easy. Then I had to get insurance, legal documents, price lists, a marketing strategy, set a budget, write a business plan. Some of this I had done in my jobs, some of it I hadn’t even thought of. Wanna learn what I learnt along the way? Let’s do it.
To be continued….
To read more about Eliza’s journey visit her website, follow her on Facebook and on Twitter
