Category: lifestyle

My Corporate Career

I started my professional career working for large corporations, before working for a start-up and eventually transitioning to being a full-time entrepreneur.  I’m actually really proud of my background in the corporate world and I think it has helped me immensely in starting my own business.  I’ve worked in a lot of different finance-related roles starting with being a teller at a bank after I graduated.  I would jump roles every few years, but the most impactful experience I’ve ever had was working for nearly four years at the same bank.  I’m proud to say that this bank is Capital One Canada and this company has forged the foundations of my professional career to this day.

In a large company, I didn’t have to look far to see a good manager or a bad one.  When I first started at the bank, I had a manager that took me under his wings and showed me the ropes.  He helped me with the most menial of things such as how to wordsmith emails and I am forever grateful.  I had another manager who mastered the art of building a team and bringing people together.  He was my manager, but I also consider him my friend.  He knew when I was upset even when I didn’t say anything.  He had a soft touch with people always being considerate of their viewpoints.  Only looking back did I realize how big of a task it was for him to bring a team of very different personalities together.  I also have the experience and understanding of what it is like to be managed by incompetent middle-managers, which in turn made me motivated to avoid replicating a similar environment for my own team.

Refreshing Chat with Brent Reynolds

Recently, I met with Brent Reynolds, a former senior leader at Capital One Canada.  He recently left his full-time role at the bank to start his own business.  It was refreshing to briefly connect with him.  I thought that we saw eye-to-eye on many points as we discussed hiring talent and structuring our teams.  Even though we were both building our companies from nothing, we really aren’t starting from scratch.  We’re building our teams from the knowledge-base of our respective corporate careers.  And that’s the advantage of starting a corporate career first before moving into the entrepreneur space.

Brent and I also discussed the obvious corporate life to entrepreneur life topic: letting go of the idea of a stable income.  This is the most daunting thought, especially when one has a family.  Since blogging about being an entrepreneur, several people have come to me about their interest in being an entrepreneur but tell me they aren’t ready to just leave their jobs.  I wrote a separate blog post here about options to consider before taking the pluge of being a full-time entrepreneur.  This is probably the factor that makes this decision the most difficult.

Corporate Life to Entrepreneur Life

Being an entrepreneur means taking risks and making mistakes to get to the end goal.  There really isn’t a lot of guidance, unless one is lucky enough to have a really good mentor that can help pave the way.  This may be a reason why I find that entrepreneurs also tend to do a lot of reading for guidance.  Learning lessons in this way could be painful and financially risky.  For those who are interested in being an entrepreneur but lack a business idea and work experience, I would recommend the corporate to entrepreneur path.  In my opinion, it makes sense to work in a restaurant before opening one.  Also, why make a mistake on your own dime when you can make a salary learning how to do it?

The alternative is people who decide to take the entrepreneur plunge immediately without ever touching foot in the corporate world.  It’s not necessarily the wrong path and there are benefits and drawbacks of doing it in this way.  I think these people are a unique breed and I will discuss more in a future post.

So what does the lifestyle of a full-time entrepreneur in the tech industry look like?  That varies vastly, but I think most people associate this with rolling out of bed at whatever time, working out of hip coffee shops and going to tech events.  It’s the cool part of my job, but it isn’t a real depiction of what I do most of the time.  This blog post is largely dedicated to those who want a more comprehensive look at what my entrepreneur life is like beyond the rosy highlights on my Instagram account.  So what exactly is it that I do?

Self Introduction

I think it’s important to re-introduce yourself on your social platform from time to time, especially when there are new followers.  So here is my self-introduction: My name is Jenny Tran and I am the founder and president of Fint Cloud Accounting.  My company uses finance technology to make bookkeeping and accounting easy for small business owners.  I lead a team of really cool people who all work with me virtually.

 

Daily Schedule

Even though I can roll out of bed and work at any time, I don’t just work whenever I feel like it. A schedule helps me stay disciplined and productive.  My working hours are similar to those working in a normal office with flex hours; 9am to 5pm roughly with a lot of extra overtime.  On the weekends, I like my extravagant hipster brunches.

 

A challenge for me and I’m sure for many entrepreneurs is figuring out what the right thing to do is on a daily basis in order to move your initiative or organization forward.  I see many aspiring entrepreneurs who set out to accomplish big things, but then get stuck reading books and going tech events endlessly.  As an entrepreneur, there isn’t that simple validation of what you are doing is right from another person.  I could easily become that entrepreneur that never gets anything done, and there would be nobody to tell me not to do that until it’s too late.  Every day I question whether what I am doing is getting me closer to what I want to accomplish, and I try to seek validation through mentors and others who have been in my shoes.

 

Social Activities

Being in Toronto, there is no shortage of business networking and tech events.  I’m selective of which events I go to now.  Whether I go to an event or not now is a function of how fun it is, how relevant it is and if food is involved.  Events are hit or miss, but if there’s good food served then that always makes things better.  I’m a huge foodie and have written over 300 Yelp reviews over ten years.  I also get invited to a lot of food events.  My company’s very first client came from a casual conversation at a food event, but generally speaking, events are not how I acquire clients.

I try to keep healthy and maintain an active lifestyle.  I used to like trying different fad diets, but I’ve been doing intermittent fasting now for roughly 6 months.  I love rock climbing and would generally say yes to most physical activities if asked to join.

Social Media

Being on social media is a large part of my life.  I’ve always been an entertainer, a story teller amongst my friends and social media provides me with an outlet of telling stories.  I embrace this creative outlet, and like many entertainers, I am set on growing an audience.  I also recognize the power of social media presence as a business and more recently I am working on finding a way to create a personal brand that is fun and can bring more personality to my business.

I see my social media presence as being an important part of my growing business.  This is totally unconventional for an accounting practice, but I think of my business as being more than just an accounting practice.  I want my business to motivate others to embrace entrepreneurship.  I am grateful for every social media like, tweet, direct message that I get.  I see each positive social media interaction as a message of support for what I am doing.