INTERVIEW: Natalie's Journey to Business Ownership

If you know that you want to run a giant seven figure business and you have that at the forefront, you're going to create processes and systems to get there. And if you know that you just want the flexibility to be a solopreneur then you can set up different set of systems and processes to do that as well.

Check out this interview I had with Miller IP Law on how to manage your business and self-employment.

Natalie Cook 0:11
actually similar to that worse decision, I give us advice a lot. Actually. It's one of the questions I ask when clients come and talk to me about is, what are your goals? And whether that's the first 90 days or the first two to three years I think that drives a lot of how you're going to do it. So in my instance, I knew I wanted to start a business but I didn't really set that as a goal. And then some people really just want the flexibility to own their job and so I was owning my job, but I wasn't starting a business and there was conflict there. And some people just, it's just different. So if you know that you want to run a giant seven figure business and you have that at the forefront, you're going to create processes and systems to get there. And if you know that you just want the flexibility to be a solopreneur then you can set up different set of systems and processes to do that as well.

Devin Miller 1:18
Everyone this is Devin Miller here with another episode of the inventive journey. I'm your host, Devin Miller, the serial entrepreneur that's grown several startups in the seven and eight figure businesses as well as the founder and CEO of Miller IP law where we help startups and small businesses with their patents and trademarks ever need help with yours just go to strategy meeting.com Grab some time with us to chat and we're always here to help. Now today we got a another great guests on the podcast, Natalie cook and Natalie graduated in the undergraduate in humanities and about 2008 indicated there was a bit of a difficult time securing a job after graduation went to teach English and South Korea for a period of time, came back met or met and married her husband moved to Seattle, still a tough job market. So then became a receptionist. At a real estate company, worked at the Gates Foundation for about four or five years, got an MBA while doing that had a child left that and then found another job and then started doing some freelancing work worked for Starbucks for finances for about a year. And then about 2020 decided to quit while she was pregnant. And they were in their own words no backup plan, started networking and built their own business and finance and took about four months off I think with the baby then came back to the business and is now doing fractional CFO services while building a small team. So with that much as an introduction, welcome on the podcast, Natalie.

Natalie 2:44
Yeah, thanks so much for having me, Devin.

Devin 2:45
absolutely excited to have you on. So with that I just took a much longer journey and condense it into the 30 or 45 second version of it. So maybe the kick things off. Let's unpack that a bit. So tell us a little bit about coming out of undergraduate and background 2008 and having a difficult time in the job market. Which, by the way, you're not probably not the only one at that period of time.

Natalie 3:10
Yes, yeah. It was a struggle for everyone I think except for a few of my friends that graduated with engineering degrees that you know, when I started college, everyone told me just go get a degree it doesn't matter what you get it in and within the four years that I went to college that that had shifted. And that was no longer the case. I didn't really have a great career plan in place. I really wanted to go into Christian ministry actually. And I was in undergrad thought I wanted to just travel overseas and be a missionary like my grandparents. But I that changed quite a bit while I was in college and realized that wasn't what I wanted to do. So I graduated with no understanding of what I had an interest in. I knew I like to travel. And so when I couldn't get a job I decided to kind of seek out this English teaching business that had a cousin was teaching English in China and another study abroad friend from Australia that was teaching in Korea so I knew a little bit about it just kind of got the job off of I don't remember where some website, got my visa and left in September of 2008. And it was it was a wonderful experience. I did not enjoy teaching young children but I loved living in South Korea. And it was it was such a fun year. It felt like an extended year of having fun in college with no stress of what was I going to do at the end of it. But then I came back and I met my husband and we decided to get married and he he did not have a bachelor's degree at the time so we couldn't go back to Korea which was my plan. He was a requirement to go teach English there and I don't think he would have really liked it. And we he's from the Bay Area. And we were deciding between Seattle and Bay Area and we kind of just at some point flipped a coin and we're like, well, we'll just try Seattle, which I don't looking back and like why didn't we think about maybe a third option or

Devin 5:21
whatever you just dive into this one question to rewind the story just a little bit so graduated the hard time finding a job which I said I even I came out of engineering and it was maybe better than the for engineers but I think ever it was a hard time for everybody to find a job and so you're saying okay, button or one it sounds like a fundamental go somewhere else. In a different places in the world. Maybe you don't love teaching but you get the opportunity to see different parts get a different culture. Now as you're doing that you were in South Korea for about a year. Is that right? Yep. And then what made you decide to come back from south because this was still what 2009 2010 timeframe? It's not like the job market was why were recovered. So what made you decide to come back supposed to stay in South Korea?

Natalie 6:07
I was gonna I was actually just to watch traveling for a little bit. So I spent some time in Vietnam and then I spent some time in India. Came back for Christmas essentially was like well I'll come back because you don't really get vacation when you're teaching in the world that we existed in 2008 might have shifted now in South Korea, you don't get vacation you get a week off and maybe a one one day one holiday. So to take vacation, you had to switch jobs. And so that was my plan and I was gonna just come home for a couple of months, hang out to your family and friends, and then go back and I actually had already started the process of getting back to South Korea, and was maybe even going to leave right before Christmas to start another job. But my friend, one of my good friends who lived in San Jose, California at the time, said, come and visit me and I was like, Yeah, I haven't seen you in a year she had gotten engaged while I was gone. So I went to visit her and I met my husband. And that kind of shifted my plans pretty drastically. So I had every intention to go back to South Korea and teach because I didn't know what I was. Going to do and there were no jobs.

Devin 7:13
No, it makes sense. So and then you're saying okay, sounds great. There's nothing it's a fun opportunity, good culture but nothing tiny there. Say hey, I met who will be your future spouse and wanted to stick around and see where that went out. So now you decide to you know, stay in stay in the States. See where the relationship goes and explore different things. And I think as you were staying in the States got married, or maybe your husband got married, which is awesome. And congratulations. And then you stayed in Seattle and you still had I think you mentioned maybe there was still a tough job market. So kind of what did you do as you ended up staying in the States?

Natalie 7:49
Yeah. So while we were navigating this like new relationship where we had already decided to get married after 10 days of meeting each other, we waited six months you know, an appropriate amount of time. And we both were actually unemployed because my husband had a tough time also finding a job and he had kind of just been going from startup to startup. So we ended up in Seattle. We moved to Seattle in July of 2010. So right when we got married, and I had been trying to look for jobs in Seattle, but I wasn't in the city. I was a little bit outside where I grew up. My I was helping my grandma a lot she had gone through knee replacement surgery so I'd taken some time off to help with her and then I had done some other like house sitting for family friends just because I was kind of in this weird like I'm a planning a wedding and I don't know what I'm actually doing with my life kind of business. So it was it was about two months. From the time that we got married and moved into the city of Seattle. My husband got a job the week before our wedding. And then I just kind of started searching but I didn't have any skills. I didn't know what I didn't know what I was supposed to search for. And that was the hardest thing and I mean, I think at the time the best way to find a job was still Craigslist. So like I had a friend that house had just moved the same friend that introduced us. We were both searching for jobs at the same time. So we would like hang out at coffee shops and just like search Craigslist ads to try to find a job and I didn't realize until much later that at the time Seattle was one of the worst job markets like had I known I may or may not have added and not have moved there but it was impossible. Like nope, everyone was way overqualified for their jobs. And so I wish I had known that because I would have it would have helped mentally but I really what I was looking for was just something that could accelerate my career where I could learn a skill and so I focused on administrative jobs because I knew that even if it wasn't the right fit, I would learn something about and having a practical skill. And so that's what I focused on. I ended up at a real estate company very small as a receptionist office manager. And and it was it was weird because it was just kind of my first like real job that felt more real than anything else. And I you know I did really well there but I didn't enjoy it. I wasn't like passionate about real estate wasn't really it was a weird culture. Just did it. I just was two months in I was already trying to find another job. You know, there are 14 months to find a job move to data center consulting firm which was still again, not an area that I ever understood, but I kept with that administrative like what's the next step that I could go get more skills? And that Job was really interesting because I got to travel. They did they did professional development courses for data center operators. And so I got to produce events while I was there. And that was a new skill for me and I also got to travel I got to go to Singapore and Prague while I worked there and produce these events which was a whole which was kind of tied back to my interest in travel. But while I was there, I also had this longing I still kind of had that humanities background and like I wanted to work in nonprofit and the Gates Foundation I had a friend that worked at the Gates Foundation and so I kind of at some point, became interested in pursuing that as a as the next step. And that took me is it took me nine months to get a job there. Which was crazy from the time I started like resume building and networking and figuring out where I could where it could go. So ended up there in global development, thinking okay, great. I finally found like the footing in my career that I want of this life travel world and this helping people and it was great like I loved it so much but I was a tub when I started. So in order to stay I had to get a full time role there and the two options when I was at that point of getting a full time role. One was in US education and one was still in global development. I ended up getting the US education role, which I didn't expect I was like well I still want to go like I just want to travel I just want to be out, you know go from from country to country.

But what that did, which I thought was such a cool story, and when I look back was I was on a team of MBAs that were doing good in this education space and that was what sparked my interest in kind of, okay, now I'm ready to go get another degree. And I was looking at Master of Public Administration and Masters of Business Administration at the same time, but back to that kind of hole of like, well, what what will keep me safe in my career because I had gone through this kind of traumatic event of not being able to find a job. And so when I looked at the public administration, and then MBA, it was like, well, the MBA opens up a lot more doors than I felt like public administration did. And so and then, because I was working with a team of a lot of like several Harvard MBAs that I really enjoyed working with. That to me was like, Oh, I could, I could do the MBA, and I could still work in nonprofit. So all of these kinds of things kind of piece together. And I ended up applying to an MBA program at University of Washington, an evening MBA so that I could keep my job because I was not going to give up a job to go back to school. And while I was in the MBA, and we can unpack this even more, I really switched to wanting to work for for profit companies I had worked with I was in the education tech space, advocate Sunday foundation doing investments in ad tech. And there were there was a mix of for profit, and nonprofit companies and I and I, and they were startups. And I was like, Oh, this feels like a much bigger pole to me than where I thought that I wanted to go in my career. So just like little kind of pieces kind of started to fit together. And when I was in my MBA, I really focused on the hard skills that I didn't have before. Like, I didn't have the business language. I didn't have the finance expert expertise and so I focused on that I had the soft skills of like dealing with people, but I didn't have that that hard skill. So all of these pieces come together. I had my first child while I was in my MBA kind of midway through took maternity leave. Came back to my job at gates graduated quit my job at gates within like five weeks and started freelancing for startups. I basically just begged a founder that I had done an in a free internship with and I was like, Can you pay me to do anything for your company? Like I don't care what it is just pay me and so that kind of propelled into getting these kind of scrappy roles at startups and I didn't feel like I had a real job at the time, but I felt like I was getting closer to doing what I wanted to do. And I got to spend a lot of time with my daughter which was really important. She was also very clingy. And so it worked really well for us. To be spending that time together. She basically wouldn't let anyone watch her except my husband and I so

Devin 15:24
one of the things you mentioned because I you know, I get it from the sense of hey, I figured I figured out what I don't want to do, which is the end up being I don't want to do non for profits and I also kind of figured out the direction I want to go but if I remember when we talked a little bit before when you quit or you left the job, you didn't really have a backup plan or you didn't really I mean, you say you kind of went and asked for you know, kind of the scrappy jobs but it was kind of like there was no guarantee you really didn't have any Hey, we were paying client or here's the plan or here's how you're gonna make money and so it was that nerve racking was kind of, hey, I've got you know, my husband's got an income we can get by on that are kind of how did that transition go as you're saying, Okay, I've kind of figured out what I want to do now and I had to figure out how to implement on it.

Natalie 16:06
Yeah, that's a great question. So I had been the main earner of our family up until that point, and my husband had been self employed and for several years and I kind of always little bit envied that and he knew it. But at that point, he had an opportunity to go take a full time job at a at one of the places he was sub contracting for and basically he just offered to take the job so that I could figure it out. And that was like a just a very kind thing for him to do. So it gave us that financial security, whereas prior he has his income was very lumpy, and I was the provider of the steady income. And so he took on the steady job so that I could take on a very not steady job. And because we were very, you know there we were live very frugally. We had bought our house already. So our mortgage was low. We had a renter and our mother in law unit. So we had other ways of kind of spreading out that income to take this risk. It was still very nerve wracking because I didn't know what was going to come from it. But it was also nerve wracking because I had already tried to apply for for profit jobs like I knew I wanted to switch into for profit. It's really hard to go from philanthropy to for profit because the rolls don't translate it took me probably now I could go back and translate what I did because I know that it translate for the time I did it and I didn't know how to talk about it. My puppies rolling around. But it was very nerve wracking. But it also like to me I think, the way that I live my life. I feel like if my gut says this is the right decision, even if it's nerve wracking at the time, it usually is the right decision and that was the case like I felt like this is the right decision. I'm continuing to do this thing. And looking back it was it paid off. So it was

Devin 18:04
great to know and that's great that it paid off and it is always a bit nerve racking and always wondering if it's the right decision and the only way we usually find out is if you make that jump and try it out and you'll see whether or not it is what you want and what you have what it takes or if it's not what you want or you need to go in a different direction. So definitely make sense. So now as you're you know you're doing that you start out kind of taking what you know what, what people are, send your way kind of being scrappy and doing that and then you kind of maybe pivoted transition moved over to kind of doing fractional CFO and start building a team. So how did that transition?

Natalie 18:41
Yeah, so in that midst of freelancing, I did actually have by the by the end of like six months, I did have a panic of like, Wait, I don't have a real job. And now, looking back, I'm like I totally had a real job. Like I would have given myself all the confidence if I could have given my past advice, you know, come back into the future. But I had all these MBA classmates that were getting jobs at corporate companies that seemed really cushy, and I felt like oh, I need a real job. And so I actually stopped consulting, I'm doing this freelance work, and went into work in finance at Starbucks, because I just felt like I needed some other thing to kind of figure it out. And but what was really interesting is that while I was freelancing, all of the people that I freelance for needed help with finance. They were all very young startups, and that was the gap that they had like that. That was the thing that I kept coming back to and because I had focused on finance in my MBA, specifically entrepreneurial finance, it was a great match for me because I had been in finance a decent roles at Gates Foundation to kind of build this thread. So I went to Starbucks in Supply Chain Finance, which was such a cool opportunity because I got to really see like, I was in CES tech focus and I was like do I like tech or to just fall into it? You know, it's always fun to know, do you really enjoy something or is it just happened to you? So I got to learn so much. And I worked on the warehouse and transportation side. The p&l I oversaw was a billion dollars which was pretty cool to see all that together. I got to learn corporate finance. Corporate was not for me, I loved my team, and I loved what I did. And I think that I have this really cool opportunity to have the job that I felt like was the most exciting corporate job that I could have come up with at the time for what I wanted, and I just was like, Oh, I love working for myself like that was the thing that I kept coming back to is like, I just didn't know what I wanted to do. I was afraid to go sell this work, because I didn't have confidence in it. So let's see March 2020. I had been at Starbucks seven or eight months, maybe I think the world shuts down. Because of COVID My husband quit his job because I had stable income. So he was like, I'm back to self employment because he's just as entrepreneurial as I am. And I'm like, Well, I gotta I gotta keep my job at Starbucks for a little while because he basically couldn't work because they shut down construction, which is what he did. And then kind of fast forward to the summer. I'm pregnant with my second son or second, second child first son. And I know that I want to leave like I know I have I've been kind of like I kind of on the side was building a website kind of figuring out what I could offer. I knew what I wanted to do the finance first startup thing, I didn't know exactly what that was going to be. And in August 2020 The timing kind of worked out where my husband's job was back up and running. And i we i was able to make the jump. And it was a little it was more scary than before because we were both kind of self employed no buffer of income. But again, my gut said this is the right move. And I felt like being pregnant. I was three months pregnant. Nobody on my team at Starbucks knew which is the benefit of remote work at the time was I knew that I needed to build the business before I had my son because if I had waited, it would have it just would have been a lot harder. And so I left and I kind of did a similar kind of scrappy approach. I just networked and was like I will take any work up front so I worked a little bit it was hard to sell when I was like yeah, I can't do ongoing stuff because I'm about to have a baby. I actually met I got like a whole bunch of traction the week before my son was born. I probably met like four or five different clients right before he was born. And then I I purposely took time off so that I could hang out with him and recover. And then I started and then I just kind of started working part time about four months after he was born. And and that is just been growing ever since. And within about that from the four months from when he was four months old. to eight months old. Then I had gotten back to full time work and I had the work to keep going and I just kind of kept structuring my business so that it was clearer and clearer and had a path forward. And so here we are.

Devin 23:29
Well, that's awesome. That's a fun journey and glad that you know even with the different paths that you took and the detours and that that it was legit to be able to grow the business and then to be able to pursue the for profit dream that you always wanted. So with that now as we kind of catch up to the present day, it's always a great time to transition to the two questions that was asked at the end of each episode. So let's jump to those now. So the first question I always ask is along your journey, what was the worst business decision you ever made? I want to learn from it.

Natalie 24:02
Oh, that's a tough question. Um, I feel like I made a lot. I think when I first did the freelancing, I didn't know what the end goal was going to be. It was I kind of needed to do this now. But had I had I really thought through what was like, am I gonna create a business or am I just creating a job for myself? I think that was a bad decision. There's not sense like not taking the risk necessarily. That was still a good decision, but the not having clarity on what was the end goal and setting some sort of like Target like I have to go make this revenue and I don't know how I'm gonna go do it. I would have changed that.

Devin 24:42
No, I think that you know, it's one of those where as you get further in your journey, you have the ability to look back you can find things you would change or mistakes you made but at the time if you do the make the best decisions with the information you have, so definitely make sense, some great mistake to learn from. Second question I always ask is that if you're talking to somebody who's just getting into a startup or a small business would be the one piece of advice you'd give them?

Natalie 25:05
Yeah. So actually similar to that worst decision, I give us advice a lot. Actually. It's one of the questions I asked when clients come and talk to me about is, what are your goals? And whether that's the first 90 days or the first two to three years I think that drives a lot of how you're going to do it. So in my instance I knew I wanted to start a business but I didn't really set that as a goal. And then some people really just want the flexibility to own their job and so I was owning my job but I wasn't starting a business and there was conflict there. And some people just, it's just different. So if you know that you want to run a giant seven figure business and you have that at the forefront, you're going to create processes and systems to get there. And if you know that you just want the flexibility to be a solopreneur then you can set up different sized systems and processes to do that as well.

Devin 26:03
No, I think that that's a good point. I mean, I think everybody most people say go in probably go into their own business. You know, one is they're probably saying hey, I hate working for other people or I don't get along with other people. I want to do my own thing or make my own decisions. But I think too, is also coming to the realization sometimes you're saying, you know, money's nice and I still need to make money and make the payment but sometimes people are saying, I just want to be an empire builder. I want to make as much money and build as big a business and be successful. And other times you're getting into and you're saying, you know I'd rather just have you know, quote unquote, and always, you know, sounds like people are making fun of it. But the lifestyle business. In other words, you're saying I want to not have to work a million hours a week and I don't want to have to be you know, be it feel like I'm always strapped down in the office. I want to be able to make the decisions as long as I make a good income maybe I only work three or four days a week and I have a bit more free time where I get to, you know, make more direction. I think that having that you know goals and that understanding in mind, the sooner you can get to it can set you up for being a lot happier with the business as you run up. Yeah, absolutely. Well, awesome. Well now is we wrapped towards the end of the episode of people want to reach out to you. They want to be a customer. They want to be a client. They want to be a employee. They want to be an investor. They want to be your next best friend, any or all of the above. What's the best way to reach out to contact you find out more.

Natalie Cook 27:20
So LinkedIn, Natalie Cook, there's probably a few coporate strategies for that Natalie cook you could find me that way. My website is coporate strategies.com and my email is on there and then my email is Natalie at coporate strategies.com. So

Devin 27:35
awesome. Well I definitely encourage everybody to reach out to your contact yeah and and support a great business and and help you along your journey as you help others along their journey. So with that thank you again for coming on the podcast. It's been a fun it's been a pleasure. Now for all of you that are listeners you have your own journey to tell me like to be You