Jeff Steinmann – Entrepreneur, Consultant and Author

Jeff Steinmann started off like most young adults. He was supposed to go to college and figure out what you are going to do for the rest of your life. Jeff went down this road and spent 13 years getting his bachelors degree. He knew this wasn’t a sustainable trajectory and in the late 90’s he sort of fell into a career in technology. He started doing some programming and project management.

He started to figure out how corporate life worked, but he was never fully sold on corporate life. One day, he thought he was ready to quit his job. He began a little business on the side and he got so far that he even scheduled an appointment with his boss to resign from his job. He remember’s this point in his life like it was yesterday. He came into work early and went down to the conference room where the meeting was going to take place. With his resignation letter in hand, Jeff was waiting to meet with his boss. His boss walked in, and Jeff could tell he was in a big hurry. His boss asked him point blank, “Okay Jeff, what do you want?”

Instead of going through with his initial goal of leaving the corporate world and launching his entrepreneurial career, Jeff chickened out. He quickly made up another reason for having the meeting and he went back to his desk. He remembers sitting down and saying to himself that everything was ok and that he wasn’t going to do this. He remembers trying to comfort himself by thinking that he still had a job and that he was going to retire in about 45 years. He decided to make the best of it and charge forward.

Jeff realized a lot of success in the corporate world. He received several promotions and raises. Even though he was doing well, he couldn’t help but realize that with every promotion, raise or new responsibility, he felt almost as if he was a hamster on a wheel. He would do good, celebrate by going out for some wine and a steak dinner, and then he would go back to work the next day and do the same thing the very next day. This didn’t make any sense to him. He wasn’t growing inside. He wanted so much more out of life.

He remembers one moment for him, which Jeff says was a defining moment in his life. He had a meeting with a member of upper management who was about two weeks away from retirement. Now, Jeff was 36 or 37 during this meaning and so he has been in corporate america for 13 years now. During their meeting, his colleague received a phone call and it apparantely it wasn’t good news as he let out a string of profanities and looked frustrated with what was happening.

Don’t let fear stop you. – Jeff Steinmann

Jeff remembers thinking, “this is what I am aspiring to”? This is what it looks like when you climb the corporate ladder. He realized this is where he needed to finally make the jump.

How to Quit Working

Before Jeff could actually quit his job, he had to start working on his marketing and consulting firm to build up some clientele. When Jeff went into the same meeting in 2012 that he experienced 13 years earlier, albeit with a different manager, he successfully quit his job.

There are two things initially that you have to understand about this transition. Time and credibility.

How do you find the time to begin the entrepreneurial journey? The fact of the matter is that this sucks. There really is no secret to finding the time. You have to stay focused on why you are working as hard as you are and why you aren’t doing things like going to the ball game or watching television.