Transitioning from Corporate America to Entrepreneurship: A Strategic Plan for Leaving Corporate America

By Rhonda W. Cook

If your thinking about leaving your corporate position to start your own entrepreneurial venture, then this is a must read. This book gives you a straight forward plan with practical suggestions on how to make the shift to the entrepreneurial mode. It explores the mind sets you should take with you as well as exposes the systemic corporate thinking processes that you should leave behind. Additionally, the book gives a five step action plan for transitioning into a successful entrepreneurial warrior.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jun 21, 2010
• ISBN: 9780982764725

Book preview

Process

Part 1

Defining Corporate America

Chapter 1

The Corporation

The Big Showdown

Four thousand years ago a Philistine army challenged a tiny little nation called Israel to a dual. Here was the bet posed by the Philistines: Send your best guy over to fight our best guy and the winner takes all—ALL meaning all the people, all the land, and all the possessions of the land. Now for the rub: Goliath was the Philistines’ best guy. He was intimidating to say the least—he stood 9 feet tall, weighed 400 lbs and had some pretty awesome head and body armor just to keep things interesting—not to mention he was a well experienced soldier.

Israel on the other hand had David—scrawny little guy with a sling shot and a bag full of stones. Incidentally, David was a ruddy little sheep herder who had been sent by his father to check on the status of his brothers who were soldiers in the Israeli army. He wore no body armor, had been guarding sheep for most of his life, and had never seen the likes of a war zone. And while David was not an official Israelite soldier, he just happened to be the only guy on the battlefield with enough indignation to take a stand against the big and ugly enemy warrior they called Goliath.

I like to think of corporate America as a modern-day Goliath—the great American giant—and David as the modern day entrepreneur. While corporate America isn’t challenging the entrepreneur to a dual, corporate organizations are generally large, well-financed, well-experienced, and intimidating to the small business owner. Think of Goliath as a large company with a strong product line, a significant marketing budget and sales team and a solid infrastructure. Think of David as the modern day entrepreneur with a new product or service line with no sales team, no marketing budget and a one man show if you will. If you can relate to the Philistines, then having a Goliath (a strong product line) is a good thing. After all, a little extra security never hurt anybody and having a strong guy on whom to place your bet isn’t so bad either—especially if you’re in the middle of a war zone - which symbolizes the modern day market place.

However if you can relate more to the side of the Israelites in this story, then you could have a serious problem. Due to the unfortunate circumstances at hand and the iron grip of fear harassing the soldiers on the sidelines, you’ve elected to trust the entire victory of the team (a tiny little nation) to a skinny little guy with the faith to single-handedly take on the opposing team. Making matters worse, the little guy doesn’t even know how to fight like the other players on the team. In fact, he’s never even played on a team. He doesn’t know the rules of the game, and he can’t wear the team armor because he’s too little and it doesn’t fit. So then how does he win the fight and ultimately win the war for his team? It’s simple. He has a different belief system. In other words, his mind moves in a different way than the other team players and he processes information differently.

Operating from a position of faith and belief, also known as confidence, he uses his sling shot to land a rock dead center of the Giant’s unprotected forehead and knocks him out cold—then he cuts his head off for good measure and ultimately saves his country from capture and further humiliation and embarrassment. It’s a victory to savor and a turning point in David’s life. He eventually becomes King of Israel. Who knew?

So if corporate America is a modern day Goliath, then the entrepreneur is a type of modern day David. Here then is the stage for our discussion of transitioning from the corporate world into the entrepreneurial one. How do you move from serving the Goliaths of the world to becoming a fearless young King David?

The stage has been set and the players have all been identified. Now let’s talk shop.

The Machine

Corporate America has been considered, among many things, a well oiled machine, an efficient powerful and rich institution with extensive reach into the community, television, and politics. She has been revered and hated by many for a variety of reasons, ranging from polluting the environment to economic stimulation and wealth—all the while being considered the icon of capitalism for some and the American dream for yet others.

When discussing the corporate entity we often do so as if she is actually a person; we give her character traits befitting a real individual. That’s not so strange when we consider the formal definition of corporation:

From Latin to make into a body

Formed into an association and endowed by law with rights and liabilities of an individual

Corporation: a body formed and authorized by law to act as a single person although constituted by one or more persons and legally endowed with various rights and duties including the capacity of succession.

It’s important that you get the body part (no pun intended) right. If you will begin to see the corporation as a body, you may be more easily able to accept how it functions. You may