The Fierce Business Babe Podcast Ep 122: Leaving My Chemical Engineering Career

In today’s episode I am going to go over my journey of how I left my Chemical Engineering Career to focus on coaching and running my own successful online business and how you can do it too. We will be diving into knowing when the right time is and how to get everything in order and ready for you to take that next step.

Leaving My Chemical Engineering Career

By: Melissa Lin

When new people connect with me in the social space, I get so many head turns and confused looks when I mention that I left my chemical engineering career to go full time in my online coaching business. Like, “Wait, what? Say that again.”

I know that there are so many of you listening today in your nine to fives wanting to leave, and maybe you're just not sure when the right time is how to plan to leave your nine to five or what ducks need to be in order. Today, I want to share with you more of my story and journey leading up to my nine to five, because I know there's a lot of you in a very similar spot. Now, let's dive into all things about my journey and just how I started and how I really went from chemical engineering to coaching and running my own successful online business.

Growing Up

Now my journey growing up. So this is something that I share a lot, especially when I'm interviewed on other podcast episodes. And it's something that is 100% true. Now, growing up, my parents really pushed me. They've always wanted me to be successful. My younger sisters as well. I have two younger sisters and they've always pushed us to, you know, find success, find happiness, and always just go above and beyond to whatever that looks like for us.

Growing up from the age of, I want to say, like maybe three or four years old, I can remember my grandparents. I love them so much. Like they looked up to them, they meant the world to me and I know growing up, they, so they came over from Hong Kong when my mom was very, very young and they spoke very little English. I used to actually go to, like, the grocery stores with them and the gas stations with them to help communicate with the checkout people, the cashiers, that type of thing. So they did not speak much of any English. However, they did know the two words, doctor and husband, and I kid you not, that is what success looks like to them. And that's okay, that's their experiences. That's what they were taught growing up and that's what, you know, my parents pushed on me as well, you know, find a great job, get educated, go to college. I think a lot of you can relate to that.

Most parents taught their kids the same things. I mean, schools teach the same thing as well. Most counselors will tell you, you know, this is the road you take. I want to say I did this a few times back in high school where I had to, even in middle school, actually, I had to take a test to determine where it looked like I was going to go when it came to my career choice, my career path, like a simple two, three page, like multiple choice test was going to determine my future.

I believed it and I knew growing up, I was just so great at math and science. I always had been, and my parents were really pushing the doctor route on me. Same with my grandparents. But I really couldn't handle the blood. Like does anyone else relate? I-I squirm so much when I watch any kind of scary movie, anything that has any kind of gory stuff or anything like that, I have to cover my eyes. I have to like plug my ears. I can't handle it. So I really have no idea how in the world, I thought I was going to be able to be a doctor, like no idea where that came from. I mean, I know where it came from, came from my grandparents, my parents. But for me to actually believe I can do it, not sure and it was pretty evident in high school.

So this is a little embarrassing. Anyways, in high school, I was in, it was some type of health class, um, but it was like at a different campus, but it was for those that wanted to pursue either a doctor or a nurse something along those lines. It was a pretty rigorous program that I was in during high school and I passed out one day cause we were having to, you know, grab blood from ourselves or prick ourselves to determine blood type and different things like that. And just, boom, I passed out in front of the entire class. Pretty embarrassing. It happened. That was the moment that I knew there was no way in the world I was going to be a doctor, just no way. So from there on out, I started to go the engineering route. So starting to go to engineering camps, I wasn’t the cool kid. I was that kid that went to engineering camps in the summertime. Even from a young age, I was always, always pushing my education. I started to actually go to a community college nearby to get ahead in math, just because I had such a strong math skill set. My parents really pushed me above and beyond.

So starting in sixth grade, I was that one who was going and taking community college classes. And I was 11 years old and I was getting ahead in math by taking community college classes at that age. I actually finished all of my math for engineering that I needed to before I finished high school, which was amazing. It was so amazing that you know, my high school, my middle school allowed me to go off campus to a community college to take all these classes. You know, my parents really pushed me. They're the one that drove me back and forth. I obviously could not drive at 11 years old, but as you can see, my parents really pushed me towards that traditional route because that's what success looks like to them. And that's what it looked like to me at the time, too. I didn't know any better. Right. I only know what my parents do.

I did all the things, went to college, got my chemical engineering degree and graduated and right out of graduation, I had some pretty incredible job offers. I mean, I was. I want to say, thinking back, I think I was 21 when I graduated college. So, I graduated college and got my first job, like 65, 70K per year. As the years continued, I moved to a few different companies and eventually got to a job where I was making about 86,000 and I had made it right from the outside, looking in, I had made it, you know, I was the friend everyone looked up to. I was the one where my parents, you know, shared it with my other family members. Like, this is what you've got to do to find success. Like, look at Melissa, look what she's done.

However, they didn't see what was really going on, right? They weren't living with me. I was living on my own at the time. They didn't see what was really happening. I was working 12 hour days. I literally never traveled. Never traveled, never took my vacation days. I typically always cashed my vacation days out because I really didn't have the chance to take my vacation days or travel because I was just such a go-getter and just so go, go, go. Just so loyal and all of the things where my big projects really just didn't give me the flexibility to go and take like two, three, four weeks off to go and travel abroad. I actually only had, depending on what company I was at, like one week of vacation. Or maximum two weeks of vacation. So that really isn't enough time for you to go and travel abroad and really get a great experience.

So I was doing the things, really overworking and I had met my boyfriend, my current boyfriend, Ryan, a few years ago. We've been together for almost four years now. It's crazy how fast it goes. I love it though. He had spent most of his life traveling. Yet, I had never stepped foot off of North America. So we met back in 2017 and it's totally fine that I never left North America. However, I did want to travel. I just never really felt like I could because of my lack of vacation time and all of the work I was doing, but what was starting to happen was I had this incredible, incredible bubble of dreams I wanted to accomplish. Right. I wanted to travel the world literally six months out of the year. Like that's what I want to be doing. I really wanted to be able to travel six months of the year, go live abroad for months at a time. I wanted to be able to fund charities, start my own charities. Really create an impact in my community and create a bigger impact in the world. And I really couldn't do that in my nine to five. Right? You're in your nine to five, you are capped at an income. Your income is capped and can’t go any higher and this was me about 2017.

Wanting More

I was starting to, really well, actually bit earlier, 2014, I started to house some of these feelings and things that really got things set in motion in 2017, 2018. But, I started having these feelings back in 2014 of like, I want to do more. There's gotta be more, because I was looking at my mentor, I was looking at my mentor’s mentor, everyone around me where I worked. For the longest time I told myself the story that this is what it is, this is what it takes. You've got to hustle in your mid twenties, early thirties until you I'm like air quoting right now, “until you make it”. And then it's going to be easy. Then you need to delegate. Then you get to have people helping you. But I was looking around, I saw my mentor, my mentor's mentor, still there at the site or at the office, wherever we're working and staying even later than I was, and I was already working 12 hour days, so I could already almost see my future right there in front of me. I wasn't okay with that. I did not want that for myself.

So 2014, was when I first started. My first venture into the coaching space and the online space and started my first business as an online health and fitness coach. So that's what really got me going and I continued to grow that, eventually transitioning to business coaching after I had scaled my fitness coaching business. For me, leaving my nine to five was... it was not easy. It was definitely a little harder than I had anticipated. I had so much fear, so many limiting beliefs, so many stories that I had holding me back. and I was ready, but I wasn’t sure when the right time was going to be to leave. I kept telling myself, okay, it's going to be, you know, another six months and another six months, another six months.

Deciding The Right Time

So, I want to share the few questions I asked myself that finally made me take the plunge and leave my nine to five. What I ended up doing was my boyfriend and I sat down, had a conversation and we both agreed. We're both very logical, very data driven, and we sat down and, you know, realistically asked ourselves, like, how much do we want to save up? How much do we need just for us to feel safe and secure, right? What we determined was let's have six months of savings ready to go, and then let's go full force into your business. Then, I got to the six month mark of savings pretty quickly. So we sat down and had another conversation. Okay. You know what let's, let's just be a little more careful. Let's have eight months saved up. We got there pretty quick, then had the conversation again. Okay. You know what, 10 months. Then, you can imagine, it just kept going and going and going. What was happening was I had my nine to five, while continuing to build my business, which I had been in for a few years at that point and I knew that I could not take on any more clients, so I was like physically drained. I was taking client calls on my lunch in my car, before work, after work, I was spending most of my free time with clients. Which is amazing, but I knew that I could not take my business to the next level while still in my nine to five. I had taken it so far. I could not really take it to the next level until I left.

3 Questions To Determine You Are Ready

So, I want to share some of the questions I asked myself, because this may be helpful. For me, it really was an outside perspective. That was one of the first things, that outside perspective, looking into my business, we had another friend in the area, who was also an entrepreneur. That we were, you know, grabbing lunch or dinner and I was sharing how my business was doing and how successful I had been while I am still in my nine to five and our friends looked at us and they asked me like, “Melissa, what are you doing? Like, why are you still in your nine to five? Why are you letting that hold you back?” It was definitely a big mix of a few things. My parents had spent so much of my childhood really preparing me for either being a doctor or being an engineer. I really didn't want to let anybody down and entrepreneurship was something very new to my family. It's not something that I'd ever seen my parents venture into, or really anybody that I knew at all. So it was a whole new world for me. So I was really scared of putting everything, all my eggs in one basket. And that friend of ours asked, “Melissa, like, what in the world were you doing?” And then I started to ask myself these three questions and I want you to ask yourself these three questions too if you are in a similar spot or if you're wondering or thinking about leaving your nine to five.

The first question I asked myself was, “Okay, Melissa, what is the worst possible case scenario? Like, if you leave your nine to five and go all in on your business, like you're already seeing success. What is the worst case scenario for you?” For me, as I started to take myself through that first question, you know, Ryan and I had already chatted. We've been saving already and we were living together, I knew I wasn't going to end up homeless. I had a home to live in. I had food on the table and I knew that we, I, could survive.

I knew that was not going to be the worst case scenario. If things didn't work out, it wasn't going to kick me out on the streets. So for me, the worst case scenario was maybe I leave my nine to five, get going to my business and it's not as successful as I thought it was going to be. I don't grow as quickly as I thought I was going to and I'll have to go and work at a coffee shop for a few hours a week. That was literally the worst case scenario for me, and I was okay with that.

A lot of the time, like the worst case scenario is not nearly as bad as you think it is, right? My worst case scenario was totally fine. I knew I could do it. I knew I could be very happy temporarily in my worst case scenario.

So the other two questions are questions that I asked myself, but I ask my clients these questions as well when they're thinking about anything or if something's holding them back and they're not sure. The second question is, “Okay, well, if that's the worst case scenario, what is the best case scenario?” So in my case, the best case scenario was amazing. Leave your nine to five and boom, your business scales and you blow up! You’re just going, going, going and growing so quickly and you're going to have a million dollar business tomorrow. Like that's the best case scenario.

Then the third question is, okay, “What's the most realistic case scenario?” Then, for me at the time, and I can only predict so much, but for me, the realistic thing was I would leave my nine to five. My business would be fine and I'd be continuing to grow and scale. Especially as I continue to invest in myself, my business continues to hire mentors to, to really be there with me. So those were the three questions I asked myself and I love going through this exercise still to this day as I continue to, you know, hit new challenges.

As you continue to grow your business, you will see that the challenges don't disappear, they shift, they evolve, right? As you move from, six figures to multiple six figures, there's new challenges at that level. When you move from multiple six figures to seven figures, new challenges at that level. Some of the bigger things too that I get asked by a lot of people because I went from my Engineering job to something more non-traditional is “Was I afraid I would disappoint my family?” The answer is yes. I most definitely was. I was absolutely afraid of that. Was I afraid I would disappoint shocks and friends? Yes. Most definitely, but guess what? I did it anyways, because this wasn't just about me at this point. It was also about the impact that I get to create, the lives I get to change. It was about my bigger vision and it wasn't about me anymore.

Not Everyone Will Understand

So I also learned that not everyone's going to understand. And that's okay. It's okay that not, everyone's going to understand. I was actually so afraid to tell my parents that I had left my nine to five, that it took me two months to tell my dad, but my parents were so, so, so, so supportive after. However, I did have some people in my life that were not as supportive. And again, it's okay. However, I had a friend, we were very close friends and they reached out to me right after I had left my nine to five and shared with me that they didn't agree with the things I was doing. The moves I was making, going full-time in my business, leaving my nine to five that I worked so hard for and that they were, you know, disappointed and they thought I was going to end up going back to my nine to five. It was definitely hard to hear.

However, I knew deep down that this was a story that they were going through. This was something that they were experiencing, and this was something they were projecting. That it wasn't anything about me and said nothing about me or my business or what I want to do with my life. It turned out, about six to eight months later, that person reached back out to me and really shared with me that they, you know, were so, so, so proud of me for what I was able to accomplish and all the success I was seeing that I was able to get out of my nine to five and that they were very unhappy with their current situation. So it was most definitely a story that was happening with them. So the reason I share this is, if you are wanting to leave your nine to five, if you're even wanting to just start your business, as you know, as a side hustle while you're in your nine to five. Amazing! Do it. I'm so excited for you and know that not everyone's going to agree with you, not everyone's going to get it and that's okay. It says nothing about you. It says nothing about your business. It says nothing about your dreams. You have to go after what you want to achieve. You absolutely can create anything in this life that you desire. That's something I believe to be true. And I will always, always, always say this, You can create anything.

Should You Go For It?

So now years later, looking back, if you were to ask me, “Melissa, was it the right time to leave your nine to five? How do we know when the right time is? Do I just go for it?” My answer is, Yes, and be logical. Make sure you can put food on the table, make sure you've got a roof over your head. Make sure you're taking care of yourself and your family always. Also push past the fear of failure and go for it. There will always be more jobs if needed to go back to. You can create anything in your life you desire. So ask yourself if the things that you're spending your day doing right now, will it help you get more of what you want? I knew that in that moment, staying in my nine to five was not going to get me more of what I wanted. I could not take any more clients in my nine to five because I was spending all my time with clients already. I was maxed out. So I put my two weeks in and I haven't looked back.

So, I would love to hear from you if you felt that this really helped you. If you have questions, if you're on the fence, if you're wanting to leave your nine to five, you're just not sure, if you just want somebody to share that with feel free, to send me a message over on Instagram @TheMelissaLin. I'm so excited for you and just know that you can create anything in your life that you truly desire, and I'm always going to support you. I'm just so excited to see what you create next. Thank you for hanging out with me today. I'm always going to be your biggest cheerleader. I'll see you next time.

Topics we cover include:

Growing Up
Wanting More
Deciding On The Right Time
3 Questions I asked Myself
Knowing Not Everyone Will Understand

And so much more!

Times to check out:

(5:24) Growing Up

(13:26) Wanting More

(17:09) Deciding On The Right Time

(18:40) 3 Questions I Asked Myself

(23:59) Not Everyone Will Understand

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