I Did A Thing

2019 was quite the year! It was a year of growth and with that came major life changes. We finally finalized our adoption and above everything that 2019 brought us, making our family official was by far the best one of all!

Another thing that happened this year is that I quit my full time corporate job. Quite a few of you have direct messaged me on Instagram asking if I left because I was no longer sharing any stories about work or from my office. The answer is yes. I left at the end of August and honestly it was an extremely hard decision. I loved the company I worked for and I adored my team oh so much! And believe it or not, the individuals that I reported to were amazing as well. I mean how many people can truly say that they loved their boss? I can think of many times in my work history that I did not LOL.

So here I am, almost 4 months later finally telling you all I quit my corporate job because honestly it took me about 3 months to be “okay” with it. Let’s start from the beginning…

Let’s Start From The Beginning….

If you have been following along for some time now, you know that my degree and most of my working life has been in Fashion Merchandising. I worked many jobs for retail, BTS at fashion shows, event planning, trend forecasting, buying, etc. I remember my first assistant buying job in West Hollywood right out of college, I was getting to go to market, working closely with our publicist and getting to meet all the hot celebs to invite them into the boutique to shop. At that time, it was Jessica Simpson, Britney Spears, Eva Longoria, etc. It was exactly what I wanted to be doing and got crazy lucky that a job like that was offered to me at 23. See Mom, I told you “Rachel from the show Friends had a real job and I could it it too” LOL. If you are Filipino, you prob already know my Mom wanted me to be a Doctor or Nurse, haha!

Anywho, I worked crazy long hours but that was totally fine since I was a single gal and didn’t have a significant other or kids to worry about. From there, I went on to work as a Merchandising Manager than followed a “love” to Houston. Read more of that story here. That blog post is called, Thank you, Next if that tells you anything LOL. I decided to stay in Houston after that chapter in my life because I had made such good friends here, job market wasn’t great in California at the time and there was potential for me to grow at my company.

The Middle…

From that job I worked 2 other retail buying jobs. The more I got promoted, the more hours I would work. Again, that was totally fine when I didn’t have a husband or family to worry about but by this point Brandon and I were married, wanting to travel more and wanted to start a family. I should also mentioned that Brandon worked so many hours too. Also during this time I ended up getting promoted to Associate Buyer and really disliked the 2 people I reported to. I mean, I really hate to say that but when you are working your tail off and the people you report to make your life miserable you start to think “why am I working so hard again?”. I truly began to dislike going to work everyday.

Fast forward….I ended up getting a phone call from a recruitment agency about a job in Supply Chain Management. My resume had been floating around on LinkedIn from years prior and this recruiter just happened to run across it and asked me to come in to speak with them and then interview with the company. I never thought about moving from retail buying to Supply Chain Management but honestly thought this moment was totally a God thing. I hadn’t been looking but I had been praying.

The End..

In 2014, I got hired on as a Buyer for said company. It was for a category that I wasn’t super familiar with but since I did have an extensive history of buying, supplier management and negotiations they took a chance on me. And with the help of an amazing team and vendors, I was up to speed in no time. I have never loved a company or coworkers so much. That’s when I knew that call from the recruitment agency was totally a God thing.

During my first few months at my company the blog was born. Although, I loved my position, my management, my colleagues and my vendors I still really craved taking about fashion and trends on the daily so that is when I decided to create the blog. Not a clue how to create one and no intentions on making money from it but just wanted to write and create.

In less than a year, I was interviewing for a Management position. Ummm, way sooner than I even anticipated but circumstances happened and it seemed like everything that happened lead me to that moment. Honestly, I wasn’t even thinking about moving to management at that point but after thinking about it and talking to colleagues about it I decided to apply and interview.

I got the job. I had to hire to fill my position and with the existing team members and my direct manager, I felt like I was working with this dream team. I loved going to work, I adored every single person that I worked with. I loved developing my team, I wanted everyone to succeed and when they did I felt like a proud Mom and that was the best feeling of all.

Fast forward to 2018 – the blog was thriving which meant more late nights and early mornings to work before and after my 8-5 corporate job. Also, by January 2018 I was a mama for a whole 3 months 🙂

I will skip all of the conversations Brandon and I have had to have a few times but the gist of it is that I was doing too much. My husband has and always will be my biggest supporter but when we became parents he knew some things had to change a bit. Brandon had to finally sit me down and say “are you planning on cutting back on either of these jobs?” which had me stop and think “no, no I hadn’t thought about stopping anything.” I wanted to be best the Manager, best wife, and best Mom all while building my own business. Trust me, I’ve listened to many podcasts trying to motivate me that “I could do it all” but in reality something’s always gotta give and I wasn’t willing to make that my family life.

So I started a list of pros and cons for both jobs. Believe it or not my lists were neck and neck. I cannot stress enough of how much I loved the company I worked for. But in the end flexibility of running the blog and being able to be home more with Landon won.

March 2018 I finally told Brandon I had made my decision. He was happy with it. A few months later one of my team members shared that she was retiring so I had to make sure that position was filled before she left. That actually took a little longer as I ended up hiring someone and having to let them go and then searched for another person.

I then started building another long list of all the things I wanted to do before I left like: get the entire team in a good place in case they didn’t find my replacement for a few months, finish all program implementations we had in progress, renewing supplier contracts, securing new supplier contracts, ensure that my team was going to complete their 2018 goals, etc. My list went on and on! Oh and on top of that I had a personal goal that I wanted to match my annual salary with my blog income before I left.

Ya’ll December 2018 came and I still had a long list of things I wanted to do. In hindsight I know it was because I kinda, really didn’t want to leave my company LOL.

Here we were March 2019, Brandon being the patient and amazing husband he is hadn’t really pushed the issue between Jan 2018 and now because he knew all the things I wanted to accomplish before I put in my notice. But 14 months was the limit ya’ll LOL. He had so much going on at work and to be completely transparent we didn’t need my income to survive. Let alone, my 2 incomes. I say that because you can understand his “WTF babe?” conversation at this point. I was actually working harder and more since we had the initial conversation in 2018.

We decided the very last “thing to do” was finalize our adoption with Landon and once we found out our final court date I would put in my notice at work. This way, everything would be final, we could travel any time and anywhere with Landon without having to get permission from a family court judge. At that time, I could be at home more with Landon and really just have one other job of running the blog. We received the final court date at the end of July and a week later I had put in my 30 day notice. So, so hard ya’ll.

I tell you all this long a** life story because it’s all part of why it was so hard for me to leave this last job. Throughout my career I have been blessed with great experiences, learned so much even between all of the evil colleagues LOL. I was finally at a place I loved so much and getting paid for it! It was the best team I had worked with, the best company I had worked for and I had to make one of the hardest decisions of my life and walk away from it. And trust me, they didn’t make it easy!

Why Did It Take Me Several Months To Share That I Quit My Corporate Job?

I have drafted this post so many times. I have titled this post so many things.

1- Will This Be “Enough”? I didn’t know if I would feel completely fulfilled not working at a corporate office. Not getting up everyday with the routine I had known for years and years. Not being able to develop my team any longer, not getting to celebrate wins with the department. For months, 3 months you guys, I didn’t know if this is what I truly wanted.

2- I Didn’t Want Anyone To Feel Bad– I belong to a lot of small business and blogging groups where many individuals are yearning to get out of their 8-5 and run their blog full time. I didn’t want anyone to be mad that I was going on and on about how I had an amazing 8-5 and had a hard time leaving.

Ya’ll it took me 3 whole months to finally feel like I made the right decision. I talked to my best girlfriends that are also in the business many a times and they gave me the best pep talks. The best advice? “You worked your a** off to get here, you should be shouting that from the roof tops”.

So here I am, end of 2019 and finally sharing this huge news with you all. Sorry not sorry for the novel but I needed you all to know it wasn’t a “I’m out!” moment for me. I’m still trying to figure out what the “work from home” schedule is for me. The previous normal for me was 9pm-4am working hours before heading into the office LOL. But above all, I am able to be present and home more with Landon.

I could make this post about 25,000 words longer but I’ll give you back some time 🙂 Feel free to ask any questions below.

Oh one last thing – one of the questions that I got on DM’s when some of you asked about me leaving my job is if I’ll be sharing work stuff still. I will most definitely still be sharing work wear and all the work related things still. It’s really one of my most favorite things to share and this will give me more time to share more intentional work posts.