MEET YOUR COACH

Sarah Janzen

I grew up in a very traditional family where my dad worked as a small town doctor and my mom, who had trained as a nurse, stayed home for most of my childhood, and then later went back to work…for my dad.

The prevailing message from my parents was: be independent. Get good grades. Go to university. Get a good job. work hard.

I did just that. I excelled in school. Got a bachelors (with honors!) in Biochemistry. Not because I loved it, but because I thought it would lead me to get a good job. I landed that great job within a few months of graduating – as a sales rep in pharmaceuticals.

My dad was thrilled: “You’ve got company car!” “A pension”

I hated the job. But I loved the paycheck.

I figured I had two options: quit… or work harder to get promoted into a role I thought I’d enjoy more. So, I did what any good girl does with marching orders since childhood to do well: I worked twice as hard, doubling down on climbing the corporate ladder to ‘success’.

After two years and a sales award under my belt, I was promoted. I would be promoted 4 more times and rack up a few more national sales awards and a global marketing award before the age of 30. I was on the fast track.

By my early thirties I was stressed out and burnt out.

I started to look above me on the corporate ladder and didn’t like what I saw; I didn’t want to be those people.

My relationships sucked because I put everything into my work and there was nothing left in the tank at the end of the day for anyone else…or me.

My skin was breaking out from the high-flying lifestyle. I had to start seeing a chiropractor monthly because my back was seizing up regularly from the stress.

I was becoming disillusioned with corporate life and the politics and disillusioned with the industry I was working in – it left me feeling inauthentic and unfulfilled.

I was still working hard but I started dreaming of an exit. One year after I was named ‘Marketer of the Year’ at the Fortune 500 company I was at, I got my wish…

I was ousted.

I remember walking out of the building, through the parking lot feeling relieved and jubilant.

Sarah Janzen at Her Big Leap, providing expert business coaching for female entrepreneurs.

The next couple of months I spent time with friends I had neglected, traveled to a yoga retreat in Costa Rica, took a trip to Machhu Pichu in Peru and did a lot of napping.

I knew I would never go back to corporate, but without the corporate playbook, I didn’t know my next move. I’d never owned a business. My parents weren’t entrepreneurial. They didn’t teach entrepreneurship in school. But I was determined to figure it out.

I recognized an opportunity in the market and started a cold pressed juice company that would be packaged and sold nationally to start, with plans to go global within a few years.

I allocated hours each day to work on the pre-launch of the business, writing and re-writing my business plan, meeting with vendors, branding teams and manufacturing. I was driven by the dream of making millions – my ego in the driver’s seat.

I spent countless hours at my laptop working, but not making nearly as much headway as I should have been. I had a ‘good on paper’ business plan, but no clarity on how to make it actually successful in real life.

I spent tens of thousands of dollars of my savings on branding, marketing materials and pre-launch activities.

And then, one month before it was supposed to launch….the manufacturing fell through at the final hour. I spent a month looking at other manufacturing options (it was very niche at the time) and nothing was viable. I even put in a bid to buy a manufacturing plant – one that would have required my own home as collateral. It didn’t work (thank God!).

My dreams of entrepreneurial success, the better part of a year, most of my savings and my ego….came crashing down. My first business failed before launch.

I felt lost. I was the ‘good girl’ who had excelled on the path that I’d been given. But now there was no path. I was swimming in self-doubt, uncertainty, without a plan and without a sense of forward movement.

“Time to get a real job, eh, Sarah?” was my Dad’s theme song every time I went home for a visit. But I was determined to make this entrepreneur thing work. I was determined to stay away from the soul sucking and health-destroying corporate life.

In hindsight, I realize now I was trying to capitalize on an ‘opportunity’ instead of doing work that I really love. I was trying to put what I had learned in corporate, the corporate playbook into entrepreneurship.

What I now know for sure:

WHAT GOT YOU HERE WON’T GET YOU THERE.

In other words, I needed a new playbook.

I got resourceful. I hired coaches and trainers with different experiences and expertise.

I began piecing together my own playbook
for leaving corporate and starting my own business.

I also recognized that I needed to change and up level my mindset. I did the work: I became a Master Coach and quickly put these new skills to life. Now, with my decade plus experience in strategy, sales and marketing, coupled with the ability to help women shift their psychology from employee to self-employed, I am able to help other women make the leap to freedom through entrepreneurship with the playbook I wish I had when I walked away from my career.

Fast forward a few years, my company is making multiple six figures each year…profit. I rarely work before 9am. I have an incredible relationship with my husband. I pick my kids up at school before 5pm every day and I don’t work weekends. I’ve cracked the code.

More importantly, I’ve been able to help other women crack the code to their business success post-corporate, too.

Sarah Janzen at Her Big Leap offers an online entrepreneurship program for women starting their own businesses.

I am passionate about entrepreneurship and see it as the best vehicle for empowerment and ultimate freedom available to women today. But it only works if you have a clear vision you can translate from paper to real life, the right strategies in place, and the right mindset to get you past your own fears, insecurities and doubts.

Coaching other women to accelerate their path from corporate to successfully working for themselves also highlights the things I did wrong in my own first failed business, that you can learn from, too:

📍Market opportunities don’t make great business ventures if they aren’t aligned to your true passion and purpose. If it feels like a slog and nothing is falling into place before you even launch – ask yourself if this is your dream.

📍Marketing and selling yourself is WAY different than marketing or selling someone else’s product. The foundational principles are the same, but the execution and mindset are worlds apart.

📍The old way of starting a business is obsolete. Full stop. On the other hand, a shotgun strategy to social media, posting everywhere every day, is exhausting, will lead to burnout and little to show for it. There is a better way that lets you take the leap with a clear vision, proven strategies and the confidence and excitement to make it happen.

📍Doubters are going to create more doubt. Your colleagues won’t understand you and think that you’ve gone crazy. And your new ‘entrepreneur’ friends who are barely putting food on the table are going to infect you with their scarcity mind thinking. A recipe for failure.You absolutely need to surround yourself with other people who are doing what you want to do successfully and have a roadmap for success for you to follow.

My mission is to compress all that time it took me so you don’t have to struggle and burn through your savings like I did.

I’ve been where you are. I’ve figured it out.
And I know exactly how to help you figure it out too….quickly.