I Didn’t Leave. I Built My Way Out.
What looks like a career was always a strategy for optionality.
Before I was a Corporate Exit Strategist,
before Choice Destinations,
before the Corporate to Calling™ brand—
I was a professional beauty instructor.
I hosted what we now call masterclasses in small hotel conference rooms.
The lighting was bad. The coffee was worse.
And I loved it.
I had already taken my path from:
stylist in a salon
to salon owner
to national product distributor
to master educator
From the outside, it looked like a career.
But in reality, it was a runway.
Because the whole time—quietly, intentionally—
I was building an exit.
Building an exit doesn’t always look like leaving.
Sometimes it looks like enrolling.
The Two Degrees Nobody Asked About
I earned not one, but two college degrees while running businesses, teaching, and traveling for work.
Entrepreneurship gave me the flexibility to do it.
And I used every inch of it.
I wasn’t preparing to escape.
I was preparing for optionality.
There’s a difference.
Escape is about getting out.
Optionality is about getting somewhere.
When I Entered Corporate
So when I decided to test the waters of a corporate career,
I didn’t just walk in.
I flew in—literally.
Multiple promotions.
Top 10% U.S. salary range.
Paid relocation to a city I had dreamed of living in.
Not a brag.
A blueprint.
The Multi-Lane Highway
I’ve never believed in one path.
I was operating on a multi-lane highway:
Corporate was one lane.
Entrepreneurship was another.
Education was a third.
Sometimes I drove all three.
Because the goal was never to commit to a single road.
The goal was always to stay in motion toward the destination.
I left the beauty industry on my own terms.
And later, I made the decision not to return to corporate—on my own terms, too.
Both exits were strategic.
Both were planned.
Neither was reactive.
That’s the part most people miss when they hear my story.
They assume there was a moment.
A breakdown.
A wake-up call.There wasn’t.
There was a blueprint.
What Corporate Forced Me to Remember
After closing a multi-million dollar deal for a Fortune 50 company during COVID,
I was invited to a private Zoom call.
You already know how that goes.
“We’re going in a different direction.”
Layoff.
Packaged out.
And what that moment forced me to remember was this:
The power was never in the title.
The role.
Or the organization.It was always in the entrepreneurial toolkit.
The experience.
The ability to create value.
What I wish I had at that moment wasn’t just savings.
It was something I had already built that I could step into
Why I Built This Work
The tenured professionals who find me now are brilliant.
VPs. Directors. Senior leaders.
They’ve spent 15+ years building credibility—and they’re tired.
They think they need more courage to leave.
They don’t.
They need better infrastructure.
Because there’s a difference between:
An exit that protects everything you’ve built…
And one that costs you
your savings,
your reputation,
and your peace.
It’s why I wrote Choice Destinations.
It’s why I created The CAPE™ framework.
It’s why I host The Crossing.
And it’s why I’m hosting a free 90-minute workshop:
Build Your Corporate Exit Plan
In 90 minutes, you’ll walk away with:
↳ Your Exit Readiness Score — so you know exactly where you stand
↳ Your Strategic Exit Pathway — a plan that protects your income and reputation
↳ Your Realistic Exit Timeline — based on your leverage, not your emotions
It’s normally $97.
For this session, it’s complimentary.
If you’ve been quietly thinking about your next move the way I once did—
this is the room you want to be in.
For me, it’s never been about where I came from.
It’s always been about where I’m going.
The highway doesn't care where you started.
It only cares whether you're still moving.
That’s how I make decisions.
That’s how I build.
That’s how I move.
If that's you,
You don’t need permission.
You need a plan.
If this resonated, Choice Destinations expands the full framework.