Episode 14

Leaving Corporate America: From a Marketing Job to Selling Marshmallows and Matching Her Corporate Salary in Year One with Alexx Shuman

Is your next promotion one you’d be excited to take?

In this episode, I’m joined by Alexandra Shuman, a former corporate marketer who built Vermont Marshmallow Company without ever planning to. Her non linear career path used to feel like a string of detours, until it gave her everything she needed to figure out how to start a food business at home.

For you, it might start with feeling flat about a promotion you worked hard for, turn into asking yourself “Should I quit my job?” and end with wondering whether to start a business of your own. If any of that fits, this episode is for you.

Here’s what you’ll learn:

• How to start a small business when your first-year goal is your old salary plus $1
• Why Alexx ignored the advice every mentor gave her for a product based business
• Why selling at farmers markets came before any wholesale account
• How to start a food business with pans stacked to the ceiling and labels written by hand
• How to delegate whole areas of the business, and what that freed up for Alexx
• What a former CEO taught her about how to stop micromanaging
• What Alexx wants women entrepreneurs to know about how stress changes when the company is yours
• What made leaving corporate America an easier call for Alexx than taking the director job
• What she’d tell anyone thinking “I want to quit my job, but I’m scared to get it wrong”

Alexx says she could have taken the director job and had a fine life. Hearing what fine would have kept from her is the reason to press play.

Here’s to wanting more than fine.

ABOUT ALEXX SHUMAN

Alexx Shuman turned down a director of marketing role to build Vermont Marshmallow Company instead, after a non linear career path that didn’t look like entrepreneurship until it became one. She sold at farmers markets before she ever had a wholesale account, and matched her corporate salary within her first year in business. Find her at vermontmarshmallow.com and on Instagram @vermontmarshmallow.

RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

• Vermont Marshmallow Company: vermontmarshmallow.com
• Alexx on Instagram: @vermontmarshmallow
• Watch the full conversation on YouTube

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So glad you’re here. I’m Sarah Janzen.

Corporate ladder-climber turned 7-figure entrepreneur. Inspiring and helping other women make their own successful leap. Taking my Fortune 500 sales. & marketing experience + Master Coach credentials to help other women with the clarity, confidence, and strategy to build a business they love.