63. Part 4: On Building a Work Life after Corporate Life with Kathy Oneto & Philip VanDusen

Overview

In this episode, I’m excited to be joined by my good friend and mentor, Philip VanDusen, whose been on the podcast with me two times before. Philip comes back to join me for this 5-part series on Building a Work Life after Corporate Life. How do you leave corporate and move into self-employment or starting a business? Our intent with this series is to create a guide to going out on your own.

This became a topic for The Sustainable Ambition Podcast based on a listener request, and I thought who better to discuss this with than Philip. Both of us have had 25+ year careers in Corporate and then went out on our own and even have a shared journey on our post-Corporate path that will share along the way.

The series will be aired here on The Sustainable Ambition Podcast, as well as on Philip’s podcast, Brand Design Masters.

In Part 4 of the series, we talk about getting resourced for going out on your own and running your business. What is the “infrastructure” you need to put in place to have your business operate.

Another way to think about it is what do you need for your front office (like your website, social, email lists, and more) and back office (like administrative systems and your physical office) and with whom are you going to work (not clients, but partners or team members) to deliver your product or services.

A fun discussion, Philip! On to Part 5 in the series! To close things out: Getting your brand and new business going: The set-up and beyond.

More About Our Guest

Philip VanDusen is a creative entrepreneur and owner of Verhaal Brand Design a branding agency based in New Jersey, USA. As a thought leader, Philip shares his expertise in marketing, design and entrepreneurship on YouTube to his 250k subscribers, in his Brand•Muse newsletter, on the Brand Design Masters podcast, and in his Brand Design Masters Facebook community.

In his career, Philip has led creative teams on both the client and agency-sides— serving as VP of Design for PepsiCo and Old Navy and Executive Creative Director at the iconic branding firm Landor Associates. Past clients include a host of Fortune 100 companies.

Topics Covered

  • In this episode, we talk about getting resourced for going out on your own and running your business. What is the “infrastructure” you need to put in place to have your business operate.

  • Another way to think about it is what do you need for your front office and back office and with whom are you going to work.

  • We delve deeper into building your brand and your home base, your website. We talk about the importance of being intentional with your brand design, that it’s a worthy investment, and how brand consistency is important.

  • We share how we made choices around where to show up on social and note that it isn’t a requirement for all.

  • Philip adds a pro tip of making sure to pay attention to your analytics to track what is working and what is not.

  • We talk about leveraging email and lead magnets, essentially offering something of value to your tribe in exchange for them becoming a part of your community and sharing a valuable asset, their email and their time and mindshare.

  • We cover how to think about your office environment, which may be old hat coming out of the pandemic, and the back-office systems you may need.

  • We close with discussing people and how you might partner or resource your business with a range of resources.

Resources Mentioned

Find Philip:

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63. Part 4: On Building a Work Life after Corporate Life with Kathy Oneto & Philip VanDusen

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2022Kathy OnetoRight Success, Right Aspiration