Evan Carmichael and Stephen Kelly tell Kathleen Tate, a social worker wanting to launch a fashion brand full-time, to keep her job while building nights and weekends. Break the goal into 90-day milestones, do focused half-hour work daily on high-value tasks, and don't quit until the business shows real momentum.
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Next up is Kathleen Tate. Now Kathleen, she attended Sage Summit. She came to my session and then when I was leaving, she drove me to the airport. So she's a hardcore fan from Chicago. She writes in to say, my fear is that I'm a social worker attempting to get into the fashion world. I get motivation from Evan's channel, now his book, Your One Word. Do you have advice on moving from a part-time entrepreneur to a full-time entrepreneur?
Yeah. Hey, Kathleen, I'm sorry that I didn't give you a ride to the airport, but Evan Almighty, he rocked in Chicago. He set the Windy City alive. And, you know, I think some context around that. I think we really have an opportunity here in social work. Wow, what a great— what a great job you do. You know, without you, the world would be just a lesser place, and people who do social work in their communities should be valued by everybody. And, you know, it creates great social cohesion. We've talked before about caring for the vulnerable, so you walk it every day. Now, I think if you want to get into things like fashion, designer fashion, actually you've got a great platform in terms of your current job. What I'd advocate you do is again, you know, you've got a big dream. It could be around fashion, and we love that. You get inspired by Evan, which is brilliant, but you have got the platform where, I hate to use that word, but you could kind of moonlight doing your current job while you get an income from being a social worker, but use that and use the time at weekends and evenings to start creating your big idea. And you probably, you know, gonna have a website associated with that product. And design and maybe even start talking to potential customers and potential sort of distributors and stuff like that and even potential manufacturer. So you could, what would be a really cool idea, right? This would be it, Kathleen. And you gotta promise you're gonna do this. We're gonna do another of these broadcasts in a year's time and you're gonna come on the channel and say, Evan, I'm now running a designer fashion business with a million-dollar turnover. And I did it because of that broadcast gave me the inspiration. And I spent 6 months still being a social worker, but actually that gave me the platform to build, even if it's a few hundred thousand dollars, you know, that would be unbelievable and totally amazing. So I'd kind of say, you know, great with all these things, kind of cut the elephant down into little chunks. You've got a great, hopefully secure income being a social worker. Use it as a platform, do an amazing job as a social worker, do some moonlighting in the evenings and weekends to say, how am I gonna use this platform to connect me with my dreams, my passion, which is all about fashion? And then build that business, go after it, build the business, fund it sensibly just to kind of kick it off, get some product sales, then reinvest that in growth. And then you'll find you've got a business you love and nurture. The only tough decision you've got is when do you stop being the social worker and give your notice, really. And I would advocate that you kind of jump off the diving board. Once you've got your business and a bit of momentum and you believe in it, then you should go. Now, the other thing, right? I've got this great piece of advice from someone. Oh, wow. When I went off to, it was a startup company at the time. It was a company called Oracle, technology company. Everybody knows them. But at the time, nobody knew them. They were a no-name company and they were a startup. And I was with a pretty safe company at the time. And I went to my boss and said, look, I got this offer from Oracle. They sound like a pretty crazy American company, going to rule the world, big vision. They got this guy Larry Ellison running them. And I said, I really am torn because I've got a great career here, pretty safe, but I think I would want to risk it, early-stage company. And he said, the good thing is, Stephen, he said, if you leave and resign, you know the door's always open if you leave well and you never burn your bridges. So actually, there should be no fear about your decision because you're well liked, you're trusted, you do a great job for us. But most of all, you should go and try that, and if it worked out, you're going to be a rainmaker somewhere else. 'But if it didn't work out, the door's always open here, and the only thing that you might have to swallow is your pride. But you're a big guy, you're a grown-up, that'll be no problem for you.' Good advice. So Kathleen, I'd love 2017 to be the year where you make it happen and you follow your dreams and you're an incredible brand in terms of design and fashion. That'd be amazing.
I like the one-year challenge to get to a million. I love that. And what did you say about elephant cutting it into chunks? What was that expression?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey, oh, they say this, like they say, let's bring the moose in the room. Yeah. In Canada we say over in Europe, let's get the elephant on the table. But how do you eat an elephant? You cut it into very small chunks. Yeah. Break it into 2,000 chunks. So when you put the business plan together, and you're going to be the biggest designer fashion brand on the planet, Kathleen, you've got to break it into little chunks. What do I want to do for 90 days, 180 days? And, you know, and then you'll find momentum. You'll find you'll have a following. You'll find you'll have raving fanatics as customers, uh, and you'll develop partners, and you're— hopefully all your employees will be brand ambassadors for you. And then you've got rolling thunder, you've got momentum. But you have to kind of start small, have a massive dream, big dream. And just a phrase I use, yeah, cut the elephant up in 1,000 chunks and then you can eat it and enjoy it.
Eat the elephant one chunk at a time. All right. I like that.
I like that.
For people who are part-time trying to move full-time, I agree with Stephen. I would say you need to make sure that you are spending time every day on your business. It's easy to get caught up in your job and responsibilities, and if you have kids, and life can get in the way, and then you never actually do the thing that is also supposedly important to you, which is your business. So make sure you're spending time on it every single day, even if it's half an hour. Like, every day, something to help your business grow. And then try to figure out where your skills are best used. What's the highest value that Kathleen can bring? Because people will throw all sorts of ideas at you, like, Kathleen, you gotta get on YouTube. Kathleen, you gotta be on Instagram. Kathleen, you gotta, Talk to this manufacturer, Kathleen, you know, you got to go to these presentations, whatever it is, and you end up doing everything in a mediocre way instead of, you know, one thing really, really right. So what's, what's the highest use of Kathleen's time that you can apply in those 30 to 60 to 90 to 120 minutes a day to really make them count? You figure that out, and then you're on your way to going from part-time to full-time and beyond.
Hey, Kathleen, by the way, Evan and I, you know, we're pretty humble guys. We're really happy to do product placements for really cool designer clothes that you're going to create over the next year or so. So we'd be pretty cool to come on, you know, Evan's Blap. And, you know, I guess Evan would love to wear a Blue Jays shirt or designer clothes created and brilliantly inspired and nurtured by Kathleen. So, so we'll do product placements for you and we'll pump— and the other thing actually, if you get going and you follow your dreams, I love, I love— what I love doing is pumping out great ideas from, um, on social media. So we'll give you all the help you can.
