Why I Quit

Today, we are joined by John Brickman, who moved to New York City when he was 18. While studying political science at college, the plan was always to go to law school. At this same time, John started dabbling in entrepreneurship. He began leasing apartments throughout the city and renting them for 30 days on Airbnb. He was able to grow this business as he kept adding properties.

Around this same time, John met his business partner Steve, who had an idea about a new potential industry. He wanted to train and use k-9s to detect bed bugs inside buildings. With graduation around the corner, John had a decision to make. Should he go to law school, take on debt, and spend his career in the legal space or should he start a new business based on an idea in an unproven industry?

John and Steve took the leap and started NYC Bed Bug Inspections in 2014. Both had different skillsets to bring to the table. John focused on building the website, growing the SEO, and driving traffic to the business. They purchased two k-9s that were trained to detect bed bugs within an 8 foot radius. While there were other bed bug companies, they were the only ones that used k-9s and only offered inspection specific services. They did not have the conflict of interest of also offering the extermination services. This allowed them to give their clients peace of mind and their k-9s allowed them to be more accurate than other services out there.

They have continually improved their digital presence to increase the number of leads. They have built up a strong client base of businesses that need their services ranging from hospitals to airports to apartment buildings. They also learned the methods to train and certify their own dogs. Over the past 7 years, John and Steve scaled the business and became a leader in this industry throughout New York City.

This success has inspired John to help other entrepreneurs start their own businesses. He took this and has started a new digital marketing agency where he helps businesses grow their web presence similar to how he did with NYC Bed Bug Inspections. 

If you are interested in learning more from John, feel free to reach out to him here.

Check out the conversation as we dive into the following:

• How he came to the decision of whether to go to law school or start a new business
• How he started multiple businesses in industries he had no experience in
• How anyone can learn to build a website and grow SEO by watching Youtube
• Why you should have buffer and you should keep your 9-5 while getting started
• How the first year in business is the hardest 

Listen to John share his story and get inspired with his amazing advice to people thinking about following a similar path. 

Know someone who should be on Why I Quit? We’re looking for all types of stories and people to feature at the top of the show. To nominate yourself or someone else, email [email protected] and tell us your name, where you’re from and what you want to talk about.

Today, we are joined by Maria Traino, who has quit three different jobs in search of a career she was passionate about. She has always loved being creative and working in graphic design. This led her to securing different roles at a marketing agency, newspaper, and a non-profit.  Growing up as the daughter of third-generation Italian restaurant owners, Maria was always inspired to have side hustles even while working full-time. She spent over a decade building up freelance clients part-time and eventually started to consider leaving her full-time job to build her own business.

She put together a plan thinking through what she would need to cover her expenses to make the leap. Three months later, she officially started Inspired Studios, which is a boutique brand design, and strategic marketing agency. She thought about what she could do if she gave her full time and attention to the business and set a goal of matching her corporate salary over the course of the first year. Not only did she achieve this goal she has continually grown her business over the past nine years. She focused on building relationships, increasing value, and partnering with experts to offer more services to help their clients grow their businesses.

During COVID, Maria felt a pull towards another mission. She became inspired to help other entrepreneurs as they work to design their business and life. She offers one on one coaching and you can find more information about it here!

Check out the conversation as we dive into the following:

• How being the daughter of third-generation Italian restaurant owners helped shaped her ideas about building a services business
• How she experimented to figure out what type of work she didn’t like to do
• How important it is to embrace being uncomfortable in business
• How work life balance is about integration and accepting that work is part of your life
• How she didn’t want to have to chose between being a parent versus a business owner. So she made it her mission to be great at both

Listen to Maria share her story and get inspired with her amazing advice to people thinking about following a similar path. 

Today, we are joined by Pete Jones, who quit multiple jobs, started a blog, backpacked through Central and South America for 4 months, worked remote while driving an RV across the country, and has started 5 different businesses with his wife, Jordan. It is almost impossible to keep up with all of Pete’s ventures, but it is hard not not to get inspired following along with his journey.

After college, Pete’s main goal was getting to New York City. He started as a sales rep for Office Depot and eventually switched roles into pharmaceutical sales. While Pete had all the benefits and financial security he wanted, he felt like he wasn’t being challenged. Pete and his now wife were passionate about travel and started a blog called “Quarter For Your Crisis.” They started building a community behind people struggling to find their career path after college and looking for their purpose. They both quit their full-time jobs and ran this blog while backpacking through Central and South America. 

They were hit by culture shock when returning and were trying to figure out what to do next. Both agreed they did not want to go back to the corporate world. Pete and Jordan combined their skills to start building websites and offering digital marketing services. They went door to door to build up their initial client base. They took these experiences to figure out what services they wanted to expand into. They pivoted into new fields, such as social media marketing and digital ads. Their successes led them to specialize in the wedding industry and later creating online course offerings for other businesses. Pete and Jordan kept learning what they were passionate about and how they could help the most people.

During this time, they struck a deal to be sponsored and we’re given an RV to travel and work remote full-time across the country. While their business was thriving, their heart wasn’t in it anymore. Pete and Jordan were starting a family and thinking about their purpose moving forward. This led them to give up the successful services business and starting Kairos Journal, which helps people grow their faith while being more present in their day to day lives. If you are interested, you can find their journals or other product offerings here!

Check out the conversation as we dive into the following:

• How backpacking abroad changed his perspective 
• How he started a business to not go back to the corporate world
• How being willing to fail opens new opportunities
• How being authentic is the key to finding your purpose
• How you have 3-5 hours a productive work a day and finding that time frame helps achieve better work life balance

Listen to Pete share his story and get inspired with his amazing advice to people thinking about following a similar path. 

Today, we are joined by Jeff Chenault, who quit his job over 15 years ago. While in college, Jeff was asked by one of his professors to work with her design company full-time. With only one year to go, Jeff decided he was learning more working, didn’t want more debt, and decided to dropout of school jumpstart his career. While working for her, Jeff knew he would eventually start his own design company.

However, since he was 15 years old, Jeff had dreamed of design album covers in the music industry. A job in this industry was extremely tough to crack, so he picked jobs, such as working at Hallmark Cards, to build up his skillset and resume. Then he began going to shows and going backstage to offer musicians his design services. After 7 years of effort, Jeff broke into the music industry.

Jeff became VP as he worked his way up the ladder. However, something was missing. He was now a manager and not doing any of the creative work which he was truly passionate about. When he turned 35, Jeff decided to make the leap and start his own design agency called ELEVEN07.

Fast forward 15 years and Jeff still runs his own company. He continues his belief of not taking a job for just money. He finds work that he finds interesting and is passionate about. If you are looking for design work, check out his website here!

Check out the conversation as we dive into the following:

• How he never finished his college degree and why it never mattered
• How he worked his way into the music industry by pitching musicians backstage at shows
• Why he wasn’t fulfilled as he was rising the corporate ladder
• How he built an company to focus on the creative work that inspires him

Listen to Jeff share his story and get inspired with his amazing advice to people thinking about following a similar path. Check out the full conversation on YouTube or Spotify by clicking the links below.

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Know someone who should be on Why I Quit? We’re looking for all types of stories and people to feature at the top of the show. To nominate yourself or someone else, email [email protected] and tell us your name, where you’re from and what you want to talk about.

Today, we are joined by Alex Bullington, who has not followed a traditional career path. After passing his CPA and joining an accounting firm, Alex quickly realized that accounting was not where he was meant to be. Alex and his friend, Greg DiNardo, decided to quit their full-time jobs to start a mobile app called Arbit. This application gave users the ability to post and interact with polls before Instagram, Snapchat, or Twitter had this feature.

After self funding the initial app, Arbit was getting traction. They were able to raise funding with some of their early investors being NBA players. They kept iterating the application and experimented with marketing strategies, which led to hitting over 100k users. While the user base was growing, Alex began focusing on revenue. This led to pivoting the company as a B2B service for interactive polling in the market research space. 

While growing the company’s sales, Alex caught the attention of Ceros, which is a cloud-based interactive content creation platform for marketers and designers. Ceros acquired Arbit and hired Alex and Greg full-time to launch an internal Ceros product called Markup. They used their experience from Arbit to scale this new product to over 100k users.

With all of this success, Alex was thinking about next steps. He had spent the last 6 years in the startup world, felt burnt out, and was ready for a change. These experiences helped him to realize that he was passionate about product marketing and led him to his new role as a manager of Product Marketing at CB Insights. He started his new full-time role over 3 months ago and is so excited about his new opportunities.

Check out the conversation as we dive into the following:

• How he decided to quit his full-time job to start an app 
• Why his friends and family all thought he was crazy, but how they supported him throughout the process
• How stressful it was going through an acquisition while launching a product for his new company
• How he has scaled two different products over 100k users 
• How his entrepreneurial path led him to find what he is passionate about
• Why he is excited going back into a corporate full-time job

Listen to Alex share his story and get inspired with his amazing advice to people thinking about following a similar path. Check out the full conversation on YouTube or Spotify.

Subscribe now

Know someone who should be on Why I Quit? We’re looking for all types of stories and people to feature at the top of the show. To nominate yourself or someone else, email [email protected] and tell us your name, where you’re from and what you want to talk about.

Today, we are joined by Mike Malloy, who has followed an amazing professional journey with 13+ years of experience as a Deloitte management consultant, Waveborn sunglasses CEO, Halcyon Incubator program director, Georgetown adjunct professor, trusted advisor, mentor, sales consultant, and career coach.

Over this time, Mike has quit his job twice to follow entrepreneurial ventures. The first time Mike got inspired by a social mission sunglasses company that donated a portion of profits to fund life-changing cataract surgeries around the globe called Waveborn. While the company achieved some incredible growth and milestones over his 6 years, he dealt with shutting down the company and all of the financial implications of that decision. While Mike’s positivity is infectious, he is extremely open and vulnerable about the hardships and isolation that he went through during this period.

This led to him paying it forward with other entrepreneurs and helping them navigate the difficult waters of starting their own business. He turned this skill into a full-time job as the the Program Director of the Halcyon Incubator, which equips early-stage social entrepreneurs with the support they need to transform their ideas into scalable and sustainable ventures in order to change the world.

Over the past year, Mike quit his full-time job again to be able to continue working remote from the beach. Learning from his previous mistakes and experiences, he was much more thoughtful about the process the second time around. He founded Malloy Industries, where he focuses on helping growth-stage companies build systems and repeatable processes to scale from $500k to $5M revenue. He looks for clients with impactful work that he is passionate about, while prioritizing his own lifestyle design. If you are interested in connecting with Mike, you can check out his website here!

Check out the conversation as we dive into the following:

• How one cold email changed the trajectory of his entire life
• His rule of thumb of how much revenue to generate before quitting your job
• How entrepreneurship is a life sentence and the isolating side that does not get talked about
• How he was much more thoughtful quitting his job the second time
• How he values lifestyle design more than a reliable paycheck
• Why he believes entrepreneurship is a positive sum game and how we can all help each other

Listen to Mike share his story and get inspired with his amazing advice to people thinking about following a similar path. Check out the full conversation on YouTube or Spotify by clicking the links below. 

Subscribe now

Know someone who should be on Why I Quit? We’re looking for all types of stories and people to feature at the top of the show. To nominate yourself or someone else, email [email protected] and tell us your name, where you’re from and what you want to talk about.

Today, we are joined by Katelyn Magnuson, who is on a mission to change the work week. With an accounting background, she job hopped to continually increase her salary and skillset with the ultimate goal of starting her own business.

Katelyn was always running her business, The Freelance CFO, part-time on the side to help startups and small businesses with their accounting needs. As COVID hit, Katelyn floated the idea of being laid off at her work. Once she was officially let go, she had the time and bandwidth to go all in scaling her business.

Over the past year, she has added 4 new employees and grown sales 3x. Most importantly, she focused on building a company that she wants to work at. Her company has a 30 hour work with an extremely competitive salary and generous benefits. They focus on efficiency versus total work hours. Most recently, Katelyn went viral on TikTok with a post getting over 1.7 million views discussing her company set-up!

Check out the conversation as we dive into the following:

• How she specifically picked jobs to build complimentary skillsets to eventually run her own business
• How her company met every one of her needs but she still felt suffocated
• How she ran her business part-time of the side until she was ready to go full-time running her own businesses
• How she built a company around a 30 hour work week
• Why she went viral on TikTok and how the work week is changing

Listen to Katelyn share her story and get inspired with her amazing advice to people thinking about following a similar path. Check out the full conversation on YouTube or Spotify by clicking the links below. If you are interested in her services, check out her website here!

Subscribe now

Know someone who should be on Why I Quit? We’re looking for all types of stories and people to feature at the top of the show. To nominate yourself or someone else, email [email protected] and tell us your name, where you’re from and what you want to talk about.

Today, we are joined by Cassie Collier, who is the first ever guest on “Why I Quit.” After graduating college, she joined the Peace Corps in Nicaragua. She became inspired teaching entrepreneurship classes to high schoolers, which was the start of her entrepreneurial bug.

When returning to the states, Cassie received her masters at Harvard University and ended up on Wall Street joining Deutsche Bank full-time. While working full-time, she couldn’t shake the idea of starting her own business. One day, Cassie and her sister, Jackie, invented a board game for their family, which was based on their memories and family traditions. This brought them so close, which sparked the idea of starting a company called Bundle to build custom board games for others.

As Bundle kept growing, Cassie was planning on leaving her full-time job. However, she was able to strike an agreement with her company to adjust her schedule to part time. Fast forward 3 years, Cassie and her sister and still running Bundle. For anyone looking to learn more about her company or purchase a board game, check out the site here!

Check out the conversation as we dive into the following:

• How the resilience of entrepreneurs in Nicaragua inspired her to start her own business
• How she felt she was losing creative entrepreneurial side at Deutsche Bank
• How she was looking out for her perfect co-founder for years, which turned out to be her sister, Jackie
• How she was able to keep health insurance and some financial stability by not quitting but going part-time
• How she founded a board game company based on a game they originally invented for their family

Listen to Cassie share her story and get inspired with her amazing advice to people thinking about following a similar path. Check out the full conversation on YouTube or Spotify by clicking the links below. 

This is the first podcast we have ever recorded. Episode one and we already are making mistakes. We promise the sound quality will get better each episode. We will keep working to improve every week. If you have any feedback, please send in the good, the bad, and the ugly below!

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Know someone who should be on Why I Quit? We’re looking for all types of stories and people to feature at the top of the show. To nominate yourself or someone else, email [email protected] and tell us your name, where you’re from and what you want to talk about.