Episode 061: True Story of a Corporate Dropout

Jereshia Hawk was a born entrepreneur, but at first she chose the corporate path and rose quickly. Until one day she realized that she wouldn’t be able to make the income or the impact she desired by climbing the ladder. So she started a business, and the rest is history.   Jereshia always had a hustler mentality with selling lemonade and then knock off jeans.   The real businesses started out of true need.  In college she ran out of financial aid and needed about $13k quickly to get her engineering degree. She started an online boutique to quickly fill this need.  Other thoughts had come in about selling drugs, striping, day trading…  Instead she started a business. Within 7 days she had an LLC and wholesalers out of California.  She was up and running! She kept the business for 14 months, and the company made $50k.  She just shut down shop one day and started working in her engineer career.   She planned on staying in corporate until her late 40’s until she could retire to an entrepreneurial business. As a female, African American engineer, she was in the 1% in her career.  This became very frustrating the higher up in business she went. Her goal was to be a VP and chart this path for other women of color to get there too. Business, finance, and strategy acumen was the key to getting to the top.   She wanted to help branch this gap for other women of color. Empower You Daily was the original business that Jereshia created.  The plan was to be a hybrid non-profit. Her mentor quickly told her this was a bad idea. She started by filling out a Daily Action Plan and offering to share it with people. Eventually she started small group coaching about how to plan out your goals.  She ran this class for 2 sessions and then things started to go downhill when she raised the price for the second time. “By Regina” was a blog she tried to compare herself to and decided she was better at online videos.       She loved her job and had the freedom to do both.  Being a full time entrepreneur was never a real thought.    God gave her the words of encouragement from a former client and she knew she would push through. She decided to get her Master’s and get a business coach.  She wanted a business model with passive income so she started small sales funnels.  It was making money, but she was burnt out. Passive income does still require a lot of work! Jereshia changed to selling one on one support and small group programs.  She changed mentors to one focused on the foundation, changed her process, and started focusing on the things that she was good at.  The money started to sky rocket at this point. There is a shift in business culture currently with passive sales funnels going back to direct service.   There needs to be a healthy transition to grow but still keep the integrity.   She had her first 5 figure month.  She realized the business was making more money than her corporate job was paying her. She talked to God about going full time if that continued. He showed up to tell her that it was time and that was why she jumped from the full time job to Empower You Daily.   She has moved from Empower You Daily to JereshiaHawk.com to teach the fundamentals of business.   Step One: How do you connect with an audience and see if the idea you have can actually work?  If it does, then how do I make it make a profit? Step Two: How do you develop the confidence and build a community?  Honing in on what is unique about what you do. Testing and tweaking. Step Three:  How do you gain consistency with your income? How do you start doing more high ticket sales?   Jereshia had no idea that making money so quickly was not normal for startup businesses.  Once she started attending conferences and things she realized how right she was doing things.  Her accountant had to explain all the things she needed to start doing now that she had grown so much. She thought that you had to work your way up the chain for 15 years and get to VP before you started making 6 figures.  She had no idea it was possible to create a business that makes 6 figures after 6 months.