To quit or not to quit?
For someone who’s unemployed, entrepreneurship can oftentimes feel like a no-brainer. I mean, what do they have to lose?!
But when you’re enjoying a salary, benefits and support from colleagues, the dream of entrepreneurship feels tricky.
In our first Exchange Podcast, Kendra Alcala graciously shared her personal experience of straddling that line between gainful employment and pursuing her passion on the side.
Kendra is an Oklahoma State University alum who has been working in higher education for the past 10 years. With a master’s degree in ag leadership and a decade of experience in student affairs, she felt a pull to put all her knowledge to use consulting and coaching groups on things like team conflict, group dynamics, emotional intelligence and positive communication.
But being the reasonable person she is, leaving a job she loved was out of the question. Like most people, Kendra used the slowdown of the pandemic to consider how she could pursue her passion for leadership consulting.
Kendra’s Pro Tip: Referral requests are built into her contracts to specify that if people like what she offers, they’ll spread the word.
Ultimately she settled with having the best of both worlds: She remained in her position at OSU part-time and started her company, Lead Through, on the side.
Having the freedom to build her business without the financial pressure has been an ideal compromise, she said, and she’s enjoyed the luxury of only saying “yes” to opportunities she’s excited about.
But the road to starting Lead Through was riddled with imposter syndrome. She struggled with the feeling that she was just a regular, privileged white girl from middle America without a big story to tell.
“Finally I just thought to myself, ‘I won’t know until I try. What’s the worst that could happen? I could fail. Okay! I would rather live with a failure than live with never doing it,’” she said.
Thanks to 10 years of building relationships in higher education, she has referral potential all over the country and doesn’t have to rely on cold calls for business. That relationship network plus the commitment to building the business slowly while phasing out her day job has Kendra on a solid foundation.
“I need to find people I want to work with,” she said. “It’s not just people who want to work with me.”