141 -Ditch Your 9-5 Before the End of 2025- Step 5: Execute the Exit

00:00:00] Welcome back to another episode of the MaYapinion Podcast, where I share my opinions on entrepreneurship and leadership for women. I'm your host, Maya Roffler, and right now I am doing a series called Ditch Your nine to Five. Before the end of 2025, and of course you can do this at any time, I just really wanted to close out 2025 with six actionable steps for women to ditch their corporate job, ditch their nine to five, whatever it is that they're doing, and leaving that behind and really tapping into something that feels more fulfilling for them or exciting for them.

And. Most importantly drives revenue and money for you to become your own boss, become an entrepreneur. Do something that you love while also making an income. Honestly, the [00:01:00] sky is the limit. You can make even more income when working for yourself. And I'm here to talk about that as I have for many years on the MaYapinion Podcast.

And I've come back with this series, and today we are on step five. I can't believe we're already at step five, but we're at step five and it's called Execute the Exit. What does that mean? Well, I think this can be the most challenging for a lot of women. Or anyone honestly, leaving and jumping into entrepreneurship.

But of course, here my audience is women, so that's who I talk to. So thank you for being here and going on this journey with me, and I'm not just sharing the steps with you, but I'm also sharing like how I applied them in my own journey and executing the exit. Is tough, especially if you've been in a corporate career for a very long time, and there's a bit of a safety net [00:02:00] that happens with a corporate career, or at least I would say it creates an illusion of a safety net for you.

For example, I was in the corporate world for many years. When I got promoted to a corporate office for the first time, I was very young. I was 22, I was very green. I didn't really know what I was doing, and I didn't know how to navigate kind of that cultural experience. I didn't know how to really deal with such a male dominated environment.

Even though I was working in a corporate like retail environment, it was exceptionally male dominant. But now I definitely am grateful for that experience, but I also think because of the way I was raised and also the way I started working at such a young age, I mean, I had a job at like 12 and 13, which sounds crazy, but it's true.

I thought if I'm working hard and I am doing what's right for the company and I'm [00:03:00] just working harder than everyone else, I will always be safe. As we know now, that's definitely not true, and I have such a different outlook on just kind of the cultural perspective in entrepreneurship and also just in leadership and just how big corporations and even small corporations and even small businesses operate and that.

Kind of false mindset that like we're all a family here. This is a family. It's not a family, it's a place of business. There are cultural things that can be put in place in businesses that can make you feel safe and make you feel like you're part of a family. And I think those can be beautiful, but I also think they can be.

In my opinion, I think they can be overused and I think they can cause a sense of manipulation as well into people feeling this allegiance like they wanna stay. Culturally, I just think things are much different than they were, even [00:04:00] five years ago. So prior to the pandemic, I think no one is really ever quote unquote safe in their corporate job.

And I think it's okay for both. The corporation, the company, the small business, whatever it is, to be honest about that, you can be happy and feel safe while also knowing that your job might not always be there. And I think that's why it's really important that we evolve. And whether you're some, if you're listening to this, you're probably someone that is not, it is seeking something different.

But if you are someone who's just kind of opening, you're not sure yet, I just wanna say. It's okay for you to feel happy in what you're doing right now, but I think it's also quite naive, in my opinion, to believe that your job will always be there. A lot of people are really scared about ai, which we're gonna talk more about that in 2026.

I'll have some episodes on that. [00:05:00] I don't think it's something to be scared of. I think it's something to embrace because I think it's going to really change the game for a lot of us. But I think you would be, again. In my opinion, very naive to believe that the way that certain jobs look and the way that every company looks, whether big or small, isn't going to evolve.

Technology has continued to disrupt this, and I think that's why executing the X, it can be a really difficult thing as well, because we think, oh, well, my job's a little bit different. Like I'm an attorney, so I'm always going to be needed. I think you are. Same with a doctor. I think you're always going to be needed, but I also think we're always going to need leaders and we're always going to need CEOs, and we're always going to need VPs, and we're always going to need salespeople, but it's how we do our job.

Even a surgeon, even a lawyer, even people that have to go to school for a long time, it's going to evolve. [00:06:00] What you do, there's going to be outsourcing. There's gonna be things that evolve. So the reason I kind of frontload this episode with that conversation is because I want to give you the strength and empowerment to leave.

Because if you've made it all the way to this step in what I talk about in ditching your nine to five, you want some kind of an autonomy over your career, over your life. So I don't want you to get to this step and feel like, oh my God, I can't execute the exit. I can't leave. Yes you can. Yes you can. And even if you are in one of these professions where.

There are, doctors out there, attorneys out there, CPAs out there that you're working for firms. Maybe it's time for you to go out on your own and all of these steps that I've reviewed with you so far, and we'll continue in the next episode, they're applicable to you too. Whether you are a service provider, whether you sell a product, whatever it is that you provide and what, however [00:07:00] you help people, these apply to you.

I've known countless women that have been on this podcast and in my ecosystem and have taken courses that were doctors, accountants, attorneys, and they wanted to start their own firms or start their own practice. And this applies to you too. None of us are quote unquote, safe working for a company because at the end of the day.

If you really want autonomy and you really want security, you have to build something of your own. You do. And I'm not saying you necessarily have to have something of your own to like a hundred percent. I know some women that are really happy working in a corporate environment, but then they also wanna build something on the side, and that's okay too.

I do think when you really step into your power and you really step into what you're looking to do and tapping into yourself, you're going to want to leave eventually because what you build will explode because your passion [00:08:00] will come through and it's not just about passion. It's about being really good at what you do and starting to discover, which this is what happened to me on my journey.

I was doing stuff on the side, and I finally realized, why am I doing this for anybody else? I should just be doing this for myself. Sure. I create events for clients and sure, I work with clients and sure, I work with women just like you to help you build your business, but at the end of the day, I'm my own boss.

I get to say who I work with and I get to, I have autonomy over those things, so it's something I really want you to think about. As we talk about this step, it's a very front loaded episode where I kind of am sharing a little bit about the future and this kind of misrepresentation around culture. But I say all this to say you can't be afraid of executing the exit if this is what you've built up to and this is what you, you're ready for.

So how do you know that you're ready? Well. In my opinion, you've gone [00:09:00] through the steps that I've outlined so far. You've gone through the four steps and you're feeling really confident about the Freedom Fund that you've built up. You're feeling confident about the offers that you have worked on. You're feeling confident about the brand that you're building, and the look and the feel.

People are giving you good feedback. They're giving you concrete evidence that this is something that everyone needs. You've also done a great audit and aligned yourself and made sure, hey. Okay, like I definitely understand like I'm aligned here and I wanna move forward like we talked about in the first episode.

And you've audited and really looked at different things and also made sure with your budget, it's aligning. It's aligning with where you are. This is when you know it's time to say goodbye. You're executing the exit. You financially feel strong enough where you're bringing in some kind of income. You also have set aside enough money where you feel like.

I can do this, I can take this risk. And you also feel like [00:10:00] it's not, you can't go any further in in your corporate aspect anymore. You've gotta get to this point where you're ready to kind of take that leap. It's never going to feel a hundred percent comfortable. It's not. And that's okay. That's absolutely okay.

But I want you to tap into that moment where you feel like, I think I can do this. That moment where you feel excited. A moment where you feel like you can jump that exciting moment before you like jump in Zipline, or you jump and do a bungee jump, or maybe that's not your thing. Maybe that exciting moment before you do the something that you really love doing.

Maybe you're a runner. Maybe if you feel excited about running in the morning, whatever it is. If you're feeling that at the thought of never having to go back in that office again or work at that company again, this is your moment. This is your moment, and you wouldn't have made it to this step if it wasn't.

So what are the tactical things that you need to do now after you, [00:11:00] you've tapped in and really checked in with yourself and made sure this was the right moment for you? Well, logistical kind of boring things. You have to check your contract again, right? Make sure that you are really reviewing all the intellectual property there, making sure that you're reviewing any non-competes.

When you went through the audit process in the beginning of these steps, that's, I would hope that you would start to look at that, but this is just triple checking everything because you don't wanna find yourself in a situation where potentially you get like a contract from someone who might be a competitor and you found out, oh, I can't actually work with those people because I have a non-compete.

You wanna figure that out first. I definitely did. In 2020, when I left, I was working for a small firm. That was the last time I had taken a full-time contract and definitely wanted to make sure that I didn't have non-competes, things like that. And I didn't, but had to review all of that.

And, remember you wanna use up all your benefits. That can be a tough one. We talked about that in earlier episodes. How now you're gonna have [00:12:00] to take care of your own benefits. So looking through that, these are transitional things that you wanna make sure you wanna tap back into your freedom fund, making sure you really do a check-in, a freedom fund, check-in making sure that you're really at where you need to be to be able to take this leap.

You wanna write your resignation letter too, that can be the tough one, in my opinion. That can be the tough one for people and be ready to have the conversation with your supervisor. Be ready to have your transition. So whomever you're handing off your duties to really spend the time, mapping out everything that you do, all the processes that you do, if you've really been an incredible leader, which I'm sure all of you have been, that listen to this because it's a leadership and entrepreneurship show.

You've kept track of those things, right? But anything down to small spreadsheets that you do, how do you do payroll? How do you do all these things for the company? What are the weekly things, daily things, all of that. You wanna have a smooth handoff because you want to have [00:13:00] an incredible relationship as you leave your organization.

Even if you're just like, I'm so over it. I hate what I do. It doesn't matter how you leave an organization is a reflection of you. Doesn't matter about them. It doesn't, even if they've traded you poorly, leave the right way. You will never regret this. You will never regret it. So again, making sure that you have a clear kind of process, right?

Processes, all of those things for you to hand everything off. And once you have that conversation with your supervisor, once you sit down, schedule that time, give them enough notice. The be. It's really important that you have that positive relationship with them as well, even if it wasn't so positive going through the experience.

And the reason I say that is because how you leave an organization, once again, is a reflection of you. How they treat you is a reflection of them. When I've left organizations in the past, [00:14:00] sometimes. They were not kind to me. They were very upset at me, but I know that I left the right way. I always gave notice.

I always explained to them why and what was happening and how they behaved and how they reacted is now on them. In my opinion, it's really important that you put that on the receiving party because then it's their responsibility. Don't give them a reason to be upset with you. You're leaving the right way.

We always wanna leave the right way. Take the high road. I promise you'll never ever regret it. So in my workbook that I have for you guys@mayapinion.com and in the show notes, you can download this guide and you can write out your resignation script. I like to keep it to three like solid points like I am here.

I am leaving. Here is why keep it short, concise. You know, we [00:15:00] don't have to go into no. I've had people work with me before and they say things like, okay, my why, I wanna explain all the reasons why. Nope, nope. We're not explaining all the reasons why they likely know. So you're going to write a script, letting them know that you're leaving.

It's gonna be 0.1. You can, you know, give context. I like to say something like, it's time for me in my professional career to move on. I'll be transitioning into a new role. They don't need to know that you're transitioning into the role of being your own boss and starting something on your own.

They don't. I think oversharing is one of the worst things you can do. Keep it short, keep it sweet, keep it respectful. And then also you wanna give them enough time. Minimum two weeks notice culturally is what we do. I know some countries, if you're listening in other places, which some of you guys do, thank you.

It's a month. Whatever is acceptable for your industry, [00:16:00] do that. Many businesses will not have you work out the entire time. If they do, you need to have this in your execute the exit plan. Be prepared for them to have you work out your time if they are not going to have you work out your time. Be prepared for that as well.

Both, timewise personally, professionally, and then also financially because. Different states, different countries have different rules about what they pay out and what they don't pay out. So don't expect like a six month severance just because that's traditionally what happens, or your two week payout or a month payout, whatever's based on state, country, and then maybe it doesn't happen.

So again, that's why it's really important that we are respectful and then we do this in the right, right. Timeframe. And then while you're planning all this out, I want you to be very realistic about when you're gonna give this notice. When are you gonna give this notice? When are you targeting that? And this is all in my workbook too, to write all of this down.

And then I [00:17:00] want you to stick with that date. When you give yourself a date, when you know you're gonna give notice and you're feeling comfortable. All five steps that we've gone through so far. You're feeling good about creating your plan, you're feeling good about validating your business. You're feeling good about your audit and alignment.

You're feeling good about your Freedom Fund. Commit to that date. If you told yourself December 1st and you feel confident about it, commit to it because in my opinion, it's a lot easier to check it out if we keep moving that date. And when we put that date on pen with pen to paper, we make a commitment.

There's something about writing stuff down, which is why I created this simple workbook for you guys to take and guide through these steps. And also. Write this out for yourself because you might have unique challenges that you need to focus on in these steps, so utilize that. But I want you to remember that when you make a commitment, like a date commitment, you're making a commitment to yourself.[00:18:00] 

You don't wanna break that commitment, you're the most important relationship that you will ever have in this lifetime. Keep that commitment to yourself and execute that exit. On the date that you promise to yourself in a way that's respectful to the company, but also continues to respect the relationship that you have with yourself.

Okay. Thank you guys so much for listening to this episode. We're already at step five. We've got one more step to go as we step into really owning our CEO Power and developing our own business and developing our own brand. If you would like, again, the workbook, it is linked below at. mayapinion.com. You can find more resources there as well.

Don't forget to follow me at MaYapinion podcast and at maya Roffler on all social media channels. And don't forget to like and subscribe the MaYapinion Podcast. We'll see you back here [00:19:00] next week.