Build Your Corporate Escape Plan: Tabatha Jones' Scalable Shift

Welcome to the Scalable Expert, the podcast where we unlock the secrets to building a business that grows with you, not around you. I'm your host, Tara Bryan, business strategist, mentor, and creator of the Infinite Scale Method. If you're a coach, consultant, or service provider who's maxed out with one-on-one work. Overwhelmed by the grind and ready to scale your expertise into a business that works for you, then you are in the right place. Each week I'll share actionable tips, inspiring success stories, and proven strategies to help you reclaim your time, grow your income, and create a business that delivers results without sacrificing quality. Let's dive in and make your business infinitely scalable. Hey everybody welcome to this week's podcast. I am thrilled to introduce you to Tabatha Jones. Tabatha, welcome to our podcast. I am so thrilled that you are on today to get us started tell us a little bit about yourself, who you are, and a little bit about your business.

Absolutely. Thank you so much, Tara. I am Tabatha Jones, the Corporate Escape Sherpa and the owner of Empowered Leadership Coaching and I help women leverage their decades of corporate leadership experience to build thriving businesses that they love, AKA create their escape plan. So let's see a little background. I spent more than 30 years in corporate 20 plus years of that, I was climbing the ladder and, just loved my job. I led technical teams and I had a lot of fun, did some amazing things, big projects and such. And like I said, I loved my job until one day I realized I didn't, it was having an impact on my health, I wasn't super happy after a reorganization that had happened and had been building my business on the side. So coaching clients after hours on the weekends, really starting to build the business and decided one day, if not now, when, and I gave notice and took the leap into this business at the age of 50. Like I said, just really helping other women do the same now.

Yeah, that's amazing. Okay. So there's so many things. I'm so excited to talk to you about this. First of all, I want to be called a Sherpa. Like that's super cool. Like, I love that you, I love that you do that. So first of all, one of the things around the scalable expert podcast is my audience loves hearing stories about people who have an expertise have been able to take that expertise, have the confidence and turn it into a business. And then stories about like how you've been able to grow and scale it from, creating something from scratch. And so I love your story because I think it's something that's similar to a lot of people, right? You're in your J-O-B and then you decide to put your shingle up, whether it's a side hustle or becomes a full time gig at first, right? Usually always becomes a full time gig, especially the people that I'm talking to. And so tell us a little bit about, What was that shift like for you? Because you're really helping your, like, your ideal customer is really you, right? Like, when you left corporate is to be able to go and do the same thing. Like, how did you wrestle through that?

When I first left corporate, I was coaching on career advancement strategies. It was something I was really passionate about women. We don't promote ourselves enough and it causes us to fall behind. And I actually had a bit of a shift just very recently, actually a few months back. And I thought, man, what am I spending most of my time doing? What's really giving me and feeding this fire? What am I so happy to do every day? And I realized I had been talking more and working more and more with women who wanted to do what I did. And one of the things that I'm seeing is these women were waiting until they were given either an option for an early retirement package or not so much of an option, a severance package because their job was going away and there was a lot of panic around it. And as you know, as your listeners know, building a business takes time. And some of us learn the hard way. It also takes a lot of money sometimes. And when I realized that I was helping women make the right decisions and where they're spending their money, start getting themselves more visible and advocating for themselves, really using a lot of those career advancement strategies, they were finding themselves feeling very successful. One of my favorite stories is a woman who wanted to leave. She was offered an early retirement package three years ago. And she was so upset with herself, she couldn't take it. She said financially I have too many bills. I've got all this stuff going. And she said, you know, she told me, she said, the next time this happens, I'm going to be ready. And we did started building her business. She would come to me for advice. She would build. The package was offered again at the end of 2024, and she was able to say, heck yes, I'm out. And, interestingly enough, I'm helping her still with, the building and the growing. But it just, it feels so good to be able to take women on the same journey and that's where the Sherpa came from. It's a supportive journey. I'm here to help guide you and I'm catching you. And. If you stumble, I'm right here to help pick you back up and get you right back on that path. So it's been great. It's been so fun.

I love that. I love the heck yes. Like that just gives me chills, right? Make me happy. Because I think that there are two different things that are, that you're bringing to the table, right? One is obviously the skills to be able to help somebody transition from, a corporate career to, to something else. But I think there's also like, As a, as a woman over 50, that sense of when you turn 50, you're like, wait, what have I been doing? A lot of times, like in my case, right? The kids are getting older. Now there's like, okay, now it's my turn, right? Like now let's go. And you're 50 and thinking, okay, where I am right now isn't where I want to stay. So whether it's corporate, whether it's, whatever it is that you're doing. Talk a little bit about do you incorporate that into your coaching that you're doing? Because I don't think I'm unique. Where it's you're getting to that point in your life where you're like, all right, let's go. What are we going to do? How do we take this 50 years of experience and take it into the next chapter?

That is a big part of the journey. And that was, in corporate, when I was coming up to 50 years old, I'd been building my business for four years or so. And I said, if not now, when, and it comes down to. A lot of us, as we're approaching 50 to your point, we start looking at things a little differently. The kids are grown up and maybe out of the house and you have more time to finally focus on yourself and figuring out who you are and what do you really like to do and why are you not doing that? And we have that really similar story. I hear that a lot with women in this 50 plus bracket and it's scary. I don't want to downplay it. It's not for everyone. It is so rewarding in so many ways, there's a lot of unknowns, especially when you're coming from 30 years in corporate, where things are very set a certain way you have all these people supporting you, you're supporting them. It's different, but I say, you've got to pick your plan, pick what's going to work for you. And for me, I just couldn't face that feeling of regret when I'm older. And I kept thinking, God, what about when I hit 70, am I going to say, why didn't you do this? What made you stay if you weren't happy or even if you were, but you knew there was something more calling you to the outside. And I don't want to live with regrets. Life's too short. We see people around us all the time that their lives are just taken too soon. And I'm like, I don't want to get to that end and say, why didn't you do this?

Yeah, for sure. If you're in my audience and you're thinking that same thing, you're not alone. Just remember you're not alone, right? Like it's very common in whatever section of your life you're in, right? Like you don't want to not do something. that you're going to look back on with regret. So, so very, very good advice. Okay so let's shift here and talk a little bit about your business model. So how are you serving your women as their Sherpa?

So a couple of different ways, I do have an upcoming two day workshop, which I can share with you. So you have the information where we're going to talk about gaining some clarity and taking action from there. I do offer a group program that's fully supportive, as I sure put you through this transition and getting again, very clear because you want to know, what is your why. What is it you really want to do and helping you through that discomfort because it's going to be uncomfortable. There is a lot of mindset coaching because we don't always feel like we deserve something. I don't deserve it. We have identity things. I've always identified with being a high achieving corporate woman who brings on this great six, multiple six figure salary. What if I can't replace that? What if, right? All the worries. A lot of mindset coaching and then strategy, really, where do you want to invest your time, your money, and your energy? I laugh a lot because we know social media is a part of the game when you're running an online business. There are other options, and we want to make sure that you're aware of those. Making sure that you're investing money in the right places and investing it in yourself. So it is a fully guided 12 week program, and then there are options to continue in different ways. And then I have the one on one coaching. So there are women that just say, you know what? I want to do this by myself. I want you telling me every day what I need to do. And we offer that as well. So there's multiple ways that I can support women who are ready to make this transition.

Yeah. I love that. And what I love about your business model is you really have. Created scalable offers. You've created ways that people can work with you one on one as your top tier, but then you have additional ways where people can get involved, either a workshop or group coaching or whatever, so very smart, very good, that's the way to go. So when you think about, what scaling looks like for you, as a scalable expert, what does that look like for you? How do you start to think about scaling beyond your time and attention for your customer?

That's a really great question that I probably should have put even more thought into. I'm a goal setter. So every January, I don't do the wishy washy resolution kind of things. I sat down and I set my goals, life, career, health, finances, et cetera. For me, scaling means having a larger impact, impacting more lives, preferably spending less time doing that, you know, so looking for ways that I can offer more, maybe courses or getting into larger talks and conversations, there's just so much. I guess I just paused as I laughed because there's just so many opportunities for scaling and often we forget about them, Growing the business, I will have coaches who work for me at some point that will be taking on a lot of the hands on coaching aspects. They'll likely be women that I've trained who are ready to take the leap and have walked the journey and can understand it because it takes a different level of empathy and compassion to understand where this woman's journey has come from and where it's going to. So when I think of that, there's so much I could probably talk to you all day about. Lots of ideas and plans on whiteboards, right?

Right, right. Well, and I mean, one of the one of the best ways, just like what you just mentioned, is to create your own certification program where you can certify coaches to be out there, actually helping people on your behalf, because then that becomes that scalable model where you can make an impact when you're not even there. Absolutely. So that's cool. Yeah.

Absolutely. My financial advisor always asks, she says, how much longer do you plan to work? And I said, until I don't want to She said, is there a number? I'm like, no. It's until I don't want to

Yeah. And I think for me, one of the things that when we're helping our customers, it's about choice. It's if you have a scalable offer, if you have those things in place where, you know, things are, are operating without your time, then you still have the choice to do one on one, you still have the choice to show up as much as you want to, but your business is still growing and doing things when you're not involved in it. And that to me is the trick, right? Like it's yes, until I don't want to, because I have other things that I want to be doing, but the business is still serving you as you're moving forward. And that's the scalable part from my perspective is you take your expertise, what you're really good at, and then you start to grow it beyond yourself. So it's such an exciting. place to be and to take that for me, it comes up where I specialize in, scalable systems. And I'm like, how do you turn your Sherpa concept into a scalable version of you being the Sherpa, right? Like how do you automate that? How do you make that into kind of your, animated character or whatever, as you're helping people. So that's where my mind goes. All right, tell us, what's one, big, tip or trick, or actionable item that you would give to my audience around, what you do?

You know, I would say that I'm just going to use the one thing I hear all the time, which is I just don't have time to start building a business before I leave corporate. I'm too busy. I work full time. I've got kids, dogs, parents, whatever it is. I'm too busy. The reality is one hour a day. You can find one hour a day that gives you six full weeks a year. I just did the math on this for a post the other day. Six full weeks in a year that you could get ahead. So think about that over a three to five year period of time where you're building it doesn't have to be huge. It could be sitting down and getting clear on your unique value. It can be identifying who you want to work with or reaching out and talking to someone like us, either one of us who have been through this type of journey and picking our brains. It can be. Anything you want, but just do something and use your calendar to block that time and hold it sacred,

just like working out, just like all the things.

That's why we get up at five in the morning.

Exactly.

But we find ourselves doing so many things without even realizing it. Full confession. I had a candy crush. Obsession.

How much time I spending on that?

And I wasn't making progress on something that was really important to me. And I was like, what are you doing? You know what you're doing? You're spending time, not one hour a day, you could be spending on something productive instead of popping little candies. And you know, so we're all doing things, scrolling, looking at funny animal videos or calling it our downtime. But why not just start making it your uptime and start building toward that thing that you're really passionate about?

Yeah, and I think two things about that, which I think are very interesting. One is when you're in corporate your time is dictated within a window, right? Eight hours, 40 hours a week. Like that's how that's how time works when you're working. When you go into business for yourself, you don't have to be under that same construct. So I love your point about an hour a day, you can actually build a lucrative business one hour a day, you don't need to sit in a chair for eight hours, 40 hours a week, in order to be successful and so I love that because I think that's definitely a mindset shift that happens when you leave corporate and go somewhere else and build your own thing is that time shifts. And then the other thing is and I'm sure you teach this too, but you know that by doing Candy Crush, you're just avoiding something like, it's just an avoidance tactic to the thing that you're supposed to be doing. And so if you just were to do the thing that you were doing, you probably could do it in an hour, get it done, and then you would have some time for Candy Crush, right? I'm sure you handle, yeah, I'm sure you handle all of that.

Yeah, absolutely, and it comes down to, it's hard, I'm not going to lie. Finding an hour a day when you're working full time, just let's face it. Most people in corporate don't work eight hour days. There are longer days. There's a commute, there's traveling, there's whatever it is. It's hard, but you got to pick your hard. Is it going to be the hard where you take an hour and do something that's going to move you forward? Or is it the hard where you just stay stuck and unhappy? If you are in that space, you got to pick your hard. And I'll tell you, the hard that is building your future is the one that I will choose every time.

Yep, of course. Yeah, I agree. Okay, so tell us about a tool or a book or resource that you could not live without as a business owner.

Oh my gosh, there's so many things. Resources, I would say podcasts, podcasts like yours. I have a podcast called the Gen X Remix. There are so many things that you can get just quick tips while you're getting ready in the morning. You don't even have to count that toward your hour a day because you can multitask. So that would be a resource. I would say as far as a book, the 10X Is Easier Than 2X book. I listened to it on audible also because I could multitask while I'm getting ready in the morning. It just, makes you think about, and when you come into scaling, right, it makes you think about what's holding me back? Why am I trying to scale to 2 times when I could scale to 10 times just by doing a couple of things that make total sense when you hear someone else say them. So I would say those are a couple of things that I would highly recommend.

Yeah. Awesome. All right. We will put those in the show note. It's interesting. I did Benjamin Hardy's, 10X. He has a coaching program in this last quarter, that was just fascinating because every single week he'd be like, just remember, 10X is easier than 2X and you're like, oh yeah, you're right. Okay. I'm gonna write it down again. It is something that's hard. I mean, it's hard to remember, that it's easier to actually do something that seems unattainable than it is to just do, one or two-sy things as you're going forward. So get the book. It's amazing. It'll change the way that you think about things. So I, I agree with that for sure. Um, all right. So how are you said the GenX Remix, which I love because I'm a Gen Xer. So people can check you out on that podcast, but how else can we get ahold of you if we want to learn more about what you do?

Honestly, the two easiest ways. One is connect with me on LinkedIn. I share a lot of actionable insights. You can grab my free resource from LinkedIn, which is 10 Steps to Map Your Bold Escape Plan. And you can also hop onto my website, it's empowered-leader.Com, and we share all kinds of great updates out there as well.

Awesome. Very cool. All right, Tabatha, give us the final word that we can take with us as we go forth from this podcast episode.

Oh my gosh. It's never too late. It is never too late to pivot. It's never too late to go after your dream. It's never too late to change your direction. So that's what I share. It's a Gen X motto, I think at this point, because we worry about that. So it's never too late.

Amazing. All right, Tabatha. Thank you so much for being on the podcast. We appreciate you for my audience, have a great week and we will talk to you next week.