Lessons from a Quitter

Latest Episodes:

Ep. 05: How Melissa Wolak made the transition from employee to business owner through baby steps Jul 31, 2018

Show notes

We had such an interesting conversation with Melissa Wolak about how you can take all of the skills from your career and turn it into a business that you love. What is even more helpful is that Melissa shows us how to take baby steps from an employee to a side hustle to a full solopreneur business. For a lot of us, this journey is a lot more palatable than storming the island and burning the ships.

Melissa Wolak has a Master's degree in Communication Disorders and spent 20 years working as a speech-language cognitive therapist in hospital settings. Throughout that time, Melissa became disillusioned with the lack of a holistic approach to treating patients, especially those with traumatic brain injuries. She began training in mindfulness techniques but was not allowed to use her new skills on existing patients. That restriction prompted her to begin seeing clients outside of her regular job. Slowly, her consulting career moved from just patients to helping action-oriented people achieve their goals. In 2016, she quit her job to pursue her private practice as a transformational and mindset coach and speaker full-time.

Here is what we chat about in this episode:

Why Melissa wanted to become a Speech and Language Cognitive Therapist
How having her daughter changed her perspective
How she started learning more about mindfulness and how that changed the way she approached her work
How she started her side hustle while still working at her job
What happened since she moved on to her own business
How she manages doing work as a Cognitive Therapist and a Mindfulness and Transformational Coach.
How she grew her business to replace her old salary

Resources mentioned in the episode:

Gay Hendricks, The Big Leap
Jen Sincero, You Are A Badass
Simon Sinek, Start with Why
Brene Brown

Where to find Melissa:

https://melissawolak.com/

Ep. 04: How Sarah Williams went from climbing the corporate ladder to climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro Jul 24, 2018

Show notes

We got the chance to talk to the inspiring Sarah Williams about her incredible journey and all the exciting things she is doing.

After working in finance for 8 years, Sarah quit her city job and spent 18 months travelling the world, climbing Kilimanjaro, backpacking around South America and doing a ski season. When she returned, she started Tough Girl Challenges- a blog, podcast and tribe dedicated to motivating and inspiring women and girls. Through her Tough Girl Podcast, Sarah interviews inspirational female explorers, adventurers, athletes and everyday women who have overcome great challenges. She also uses the website and community to chronicle a yearly Tough Girl Challenge of her own. In 2016, she completed the Marathon des Sables (156 mi) and, in 2017, she hiked the Appalachian Trail (2,190 miles) in 100 days! Her 2018 challenge will be to cycle the over 4,000 km of the Pacific Coast Highway from Vancouver to the Baja Divide starting this September! As if that wasn't enough, Sarah is also studying for her Masters in Women & Gender studies at Lancaster University.

What we chat about in the episode

How she got into finance and why she kept climbing the corporate ladder
How she realized that she was miserable and needed a change
How she planned for quitting
How she jumped without knowing what she wanted to do and how that affected her mindset
How she traveled for 18 months without a plan and figured it out along the way
How the idea of Tough Girl Challenges came about and how she started it
What Tough Girl Challenges is all about and what her yearly challenges include
Why she decided that she needed to have a Masters in Women & Gender Equality because of her platform
How she monetizes her work through Tough Girl Challenges

Resources Mentioned in the episode:

Patreon.com

How to reach out to Sarah:

www.toughgirlchallenges.com

Ep: 03: How being fired as a lawyer led Erin Wade to become a widely successful restauranteur Jul 17, 2018

Show notes

Erin received her law degree from UC Berkeley in 2008 and worked as a lawyer for one year before she was fired. That turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Erin decided to take a leap of faith and pour her life savings into creating a restaurant dedicated to the best food on earth: mac and cheese. Erin is the Founder and CEO of Homeroom. Homeroom has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, USA Today, Food Network, Travel Channel, Cooking Channel, and other national media outlets. Homeroom now has over 100 employees and has also received numerous awards for its people-first business practices. Erin authored the best-selling "Mac and Cheese Cookbook," and business articles for Conscious Company Magazine and the Washington Post.

Here is what we chat about in this episode:

Why Erin went to law school even though she had wanted to open a cupcake shop
What happened after Erin was fired from her firm
How she used her entire life saving to open up a restaurant with virtually no experience in this field.
How she found herself unhappy after 5 years in her dream job and what she did to fix it.
What Homeroom is doing now to create more female partners in the restaurant industry and how they're sharing their successful anti-harassment training policy.

Resources Mentioned in the Podcast

Clayton M. Christensen, "How Will You Measure Your Life"
Erin Wade, I'm a female chef. Here's how my restaurant dealt with harassment from customers. The Washington Post.

Where to find Erin

https://homeroom510.com/

Ep. 02: How Steve Trang quit engineering to create a real estate empire Jul 17, 2018

Show notes

Today, we get to talk to Steve Trang about how he made the (rather quick) jump from electrical engineer to real estate agent and how he's grown in that role ever since.

Steve started out his career earning a Masters degree in Electrical Engineering and working as an engineer for Intel for 3.5 years. In 2007, Steve quit his engineering career to become a real estate agent.

Since then, Steve has gone on to create Stunning Home Realty, a real estate brokerage in Phoenix, Arizona that he has grown to 60 licensed agents, selling over 100 houses a year and creating some of the top producing teams in the valley. He's also gone on to start his own Title company and develop a real estate app. Steve is not only committed to building his successful real estate empire but he also believes in helping others build their dreams too. He recently started a podcast called Real Estate Disruptors, where he interviews other real estate experts on how they're disrupting their markets.

Here is what we chat about in this episode:

How getting his Masters degree in Electrical Engineering is really taking the easy route because "someone else lays out the plan and you just follow it"
How he always knew that he would eventually leave his engineering job but why it happened so much faster than he expected.
How his irrational confidence allowed him to meet a real estate broker and, within 2 ½ weeks of that meeting, get his real estate license and quit his engineering job.
- "Real confidence is knowing you'll figure it out" - Brandon Burchard
How the fall of the real estate market in 2007 almost sent him back to his engineering job and how he continued to push through.
How he uses self-help to continue to grow his business.
How he went from being a real estate agent to owning his own brokerage, title company, real estate app and podcast.

Resources Mentioned in the Podcast

Tony Hsieh, Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose.
Micheal E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It.
Pat Flynn's Smart Passive Income
Darren Hardy's Darren Daily

Where to find Steve

Ep. 01: How Kaveh Mostafavi went from bankruptcy lawyer to starting a million dollar supply company Jul 17, 2018

Show notes

We got to sit down with Kaveh Mostafavi, the founder and CEO of EcoCare Supply, a wholesale distribution firm focused on sustainable products and systems. EcoCare is one of the nation's fastest growing supply companies and helps customers increase their bottom line while reducing environmental impact. However, before starting Ecocare, Kaveh started out his career as an attorney in Arizona specializing in bankruptcy law. In addition to his law practice, Kaveh opened two Pancheros restaurants in Arizona as a franchisee. His experience as a restauranteur, specifically witnessing the amount of waste in his restaurants, led him to create EcoCare. In a couple of short years, Kaveh has grown EcoCare into a 7-figure company.

Here is what we chat about in this episode:

Why Kaveh chose to become a lawyer and how he ended up working as a bankruptcy lawyer.
How he opened up his own practice as well as two Pancheros restaurants.
What his experience as a franchisee taught him.
Why he sold his law practice and his franchise restaurant to go work for a supply company
How he pushed past people thinking he was crazy for quitting law to start a company he didn't know anything about.
How he ended up working for both a murderer and a fraud and why that made him want to be his own boss.
How he got his idea for EcoCare Supply and how he started it.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey.

Where to find Kaveh:

Ecocaresupply.com
Thecompostninja.com
kaveh@ecocaresupply.com

Welcome! Get to know Goli a bit better Jul 14, 2018

Show notes

Hi there!! Welcome to the first ever episode of Lessons from a Quitter. I'm so excited (and equally terrified) to put this out there. I hope you enjoy the show and stick around for all the exciting things to come. I wanted to start the show off by giving you a little more information about me and why I wanted to start this podcast. (If you want to skip this episode, you can read more about my journey on the about page)

This episode goes more in depth about why I went to law school and, more importantly, why I chose to quit law. It also talks about that journey, the business I created, and what I hope to get out of Lessons from a Quitter.

I hope that you will find whatever you need from this show-- inspiration, resources, tools, or connections to get you started on your new path. I know it is cliche to say but life is too short. If you hate what you're doing, it's time to quit.

I realize this show isn't for everyone and that's ok. But if you think it might help you, I'd love for you to join me. I promise to work on my rambling, saying "like", and interviewing skills, if you promise to let me know what you want to hear.

If you want to follow along and support the show, here are 3 immediate things you can do:

Subscribe to the podcast where ever you listen
Follow along on instagram or facebook @lessonsfromaquitter
Join our email list

Can't wait to get started!

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