An Entrepreneur’s Journey | DFS 395

Welcome to Destin for success. I'm your

host, Jennifer Takagi, and last week we talked to Lindsay

Crowell about going from essential to optional and

building your business. And I thought it was a good time to

backtrack a little bit and talk about my entrepreneurial

journey. I had a talk title once, and it was from federal

employee to woo and somebody goes, nobody knows what that

means. I think a lot of people would know what that means. I

think a lot of people would so let's get into it. Let's talk

about this a little bit. It all started with a simple thought. I

worked for the Federal Government Department of Housing

and Urban Development, and I was asked to go to Washington, DC,

in place of my counterpart that lived in Tulsa. She had started

in this special project, and then could not go this one

particular week, which was the kickoff to Washington DC. So

they asked me if I would step in and fill in for her. And I said

yes. And I had no idea what I was getting into, but I love to

eat and drink my way through Washington, DC. So I said yes,

and I got there not knowing again, what I had gotten into,

come to find out, it was like a nine month commitment. And as

I'm there, a woman comes in after the lunch break, and she

has the microphone. She walks in the middle of the room. It's a

very large hotel ballroom. There are like 10 tables, so anywhere

from, I don't know, 7080 people around the tables, and then all

of us around the edge of the, you know, the surrounding walls.

And we were we were there to be coaches and help, and I don't

know what all. I didn't even know what a coach was if it

wasn't a sporting event. So I'm sitting there, and I'm finally

figuring out that I have just agreed to do a lot more work

than I thought I had agreed to. And this woman comes out with a

mic. It's right after lunch, and I'll just use my own name just

for fun. But she walks out in the middle of the room and goes,

hello. My name is Jennifer, and this afternoon, and I thought,

oh my gosh, are you even kidding me? Right now, nobody can hear

her. It's after lunch, the whole carbs have set in, because, you

know you're eating nothing but fun food in Washington, DC, and

now she's gonna engage us with being soft spoken, like I get,

there's a time to be soft spoken. People will lean in and

listen, but right after lunch is not the time, not the time. I

have kidded that many times I have been the last speaker

before lunch or the first speaker after lunch, and I

literally took the stage and said, Well, I think I'm right

before lunch because I can keep you engaged enough until you're

out of here, and then I've done right after lunch. I think they

picked me because I could be loud enough and engaging enough

to keep you awake while you digest your food. So I'm like,

I'm good with it. Initially I was like, Holy crap. Holy Why do

I have this time? And then it was like, Oh, I've got them now.

I just need them eating out of the palm of my hand. So I

watched this woman, and I'm like, and that night, a group of

us went to dinner, of us, you know, Coach lead people, and I

didn't know any of these people at all. They didn't work in my

division. It was the first time that multifamily housing had

been a part of this. I had really, kind of no idea what was

going on, but I leaned to the gal next to me, and I said, What

do you think about that speaker after lunch? And she was like,

well, she had some good information. And I said, Well, I

just want to say if they had given me that three ring binder

she was working out of the night before, I think I could have

done a better job. I could have engaged that room full of

people. It started as a simple thought, a simple statement,

and as the months went by and I participated in many online

phone calls and trainings, I didn't really participate. I was

an observer, so I could give feedback. And we get to the end

of the year, and now there's a graduation ceremony for all the

people who went through this program. And I had never met the

man in charge of the program like he had been there. We our

paths had crossed, but I had never officially met him, and

again, he didn't work in my division. Decision. And they had

decided some years before to completely silo all the

different areas of HUD so you didn't cross paths like you used

to. You used to know a lot about a lot, but then they were like,

Oh no, you only need a new no your cylinder. So I didn't know

this man at all, but I had seen him because he had, like,

introduced people, but he had never bothered to introduce

himself to myself, to me, or any of us. And come to think of it,

that's really odd. You're the team lead for a project, but you

don't bother to meet the people on the team. Food for Thought,

ladies and gentlemen, if you're the team lead. Take time to

introduce yourself to everybody on the team, whether it's online

or in person. Take time to do that. That's ridiculous. I just

thought of that all these years later. I just thought of that. I

had a thought, did you feel the earth shift when I did so I went

up to him. I passed him in the hallway, somebody was speaking,

and I just had to go to the bathroom. I hate to do that, but

sometimes you have to, and I'm on my way back in, and I he had

come out, and I said, Excuse me, I'm Jennifer Takagi from

Oklahoma City, and I'm really curious. I read through people's

bios, and it looks to me like a lot of the people leading these

sessions have PhDs in psychology, like, if I wanted to

do this kind of work, when I need to get a PhD in psychology.

And he was like, oh, no, you just need to be a coach. Okay.

Again, I never heard of that? I never heard of that. I was like,

okay, huh? And he goes, Yeah, you just need to go find a

program. And usually they do it online. Sometimes it's in person

and and you go and you get certified to be a coach, yeah,

that's what you do. And I was like, All right, so now my

thought has gotten a little deeper, and I'm like, Hmm, I

just wonder. I wonder what that would be like in a long time

when I retire, like, I wonder if I could do that. A lot of people

would leave federal work and they would do other things. I

was like, I wonder if I could do that. Fast forward a couple

years, and I went to Washington, DC. No, I did not. I went to Los

Angeles for a business trip for a week, and I was on the

airplane, and it was LAX to DFW, DFW at Oklahoma City. So I'm on

this flight, and I get to talking to the gal next to me,

which, if you know me at all, that's not surprising at all.

But I get to talking to her, and she is on her way to the Dallas

area to a conference, okay? And it's a retreat, all right, like,

Okay, I don't really know much about that, but all right. And

she's starts talking about all this spiritual stuff and

connection stuff. And to be quite honest, I kind of didn't

even know what she was talking about, to be clear. So in the

end, she looks at me and said, If you could do anything, what

would it be? And I said I would be a trainer, because I was at

this event a couple of years ago, and I swear I could have

done a better delivery than this woman did. And she said, Well,

you have now opened the universe to what you want, and many

opportunities will come your way. Many doors will present

themselves, and many you will say no and not step through, but

they will keep showing up until you say yes, because you have

just declared what you want. Now, when I tell you,

I felt like that was the most airy fairy thing I had ever

heard of my life. It was the most airy fairy thing I'd ever

heard of my life. My uncle used to live in California for a lot

of years, and he said, Yeah, California is the land of airy

fairy nuts and berries. I don't know where he came up with that,

but I liked it. I hung on to it. So there you go. That's where

that came from. It's not to meant to be derogatory. It's

just that there's a plethora of things in California to choose

from. But I can remember thinking, I don't even know

about this woman. She had a book, and she gave it to me, and

I remember reading it. It is somewhere in my house. I have so

many books in this house. I can't lay my fingers on it, but

I know it's in the house somewhere, and it was all about

how we're all connected. That's interesting and universal

thought, and we put our thoughts out into the universe and. In,

they connect with other thoughts, and they all and I was

like, Okay, this is over my head. All right, we're just

gonna set this aside for now. All right, I set it aside for

now. And I go about my life, my business. I work for the federal

government. I go to work, I do my job, I try desperately to

have a positive impact on the clients that we serve. And then

one day after traveling for a year training my colleagues on a

new way of doing business, I come back to work, only to find

out I've worked my way out of a job. Completely worked my way

out and I had the choice, I could retire or relocate, and

that was a hard choice. I live in Oklahoma City. My whole

family is here. Most of my family have nieces and nephews

who've now moved away, but most of my family's here. My husband

and I have a little lake place two hours from here. We spend

every single weekend to the point that, when he went into

kind of semi retirement, it's fake. He works all the time. He

moved there full time. So I drive back and forth. I keep i

40 hot like I know my car just can get there on its own now.

And after much debate, it was like, what, what am I going to

do in the midst of this training and traveling the country? I

thought, Man, when I retire, I really, really want to do that.

I do I like it. I'm good at it. I've been trained in stuffed

animals since I was a little girl, yeah, I think I can do

this. After much debate, after much discussion with my husband,

I decided I was going to retire early, and it was a huge

financial consideration. I think I took about a 75% pay cut, and

I did not want to minimize my lifestyle in any way, but I did

it. And after I retired, I don't know how many months, if not a

year or so, I had been home, and I knew I had brought home some

training material from some workshop I had attended, and I

found a piece of paper in there, and it was from a notepad like

eight and a half by 11 notepad, and it was horizontal, so

landscape, not portrait, and it was come up with your goals for

the next three to five years. And so you need to break it down

into, what can I do in the next six months to start on the path

to the next three to five years. And my goal on there was to

become a coach and retire early so that I could do that and I

could step out of the federal government. I do not have a date

on that piece of paper, which is a little bit surprising, but I

don't, but I think that was five or six years before I actually

retired. I had written it all out. I had made my plan. And if

you take anything away from this episode if you're still here,

thanks. Thanks for being here. I'm happy to have you like,

share, subscribe, do all those things, leave a comment, all a

review, all those things. But the one thing I want you to take

away with is we can begin to map out our future life, our future

self. The question is, what do you want it to be? What is that

simple thought that has come up more than once?

Am I telling you to leave your job and start something new?

Absolutely not. But the more you percolate on it, the more you

think about it, the more attention you put to that

thought, the better chance you have of making it come true. I'm

Jennifer Takagi with destin for success. I look forward to

connecting with you soon, and if you want, you can book a call

with me. Your success call.com I'm Jennifer Troy, let's connect

you.