From Corporate to Startup: Key Strategies for a Successful Transition

Many of us dream of launching our own business or starting the project we’ve always envisioned. But the vast, unstructured nature of the business world often makes this leap seem daunting. Our lack of expertise is even more paralyzing, leaving the most ambitious clinging to the familiar comforts of their current careers.

Our guest today, Drew Harnish, was able to make that transition through structured planning and strategic decision-making. His story is full of practical insights and strategies, offering a lot of valuable lessons for anyone looking to navigate change and overcome challenges in their entrepreneurial journey.

In this discussion, we dive into:

• Planning the transition from employee to entrepreneur
• How to leverage seasoned corporate skills for innovative start-up strategies
• The role of trust in building lasting client connections
• Why resilience and adaptability are essential in your journey
• Effective ways to manage the uncertainty of new business ventures

Let’s get to it.

Introducing Drew Harnish: A Journey of Entrepreneurial Transformation

Drew Harnish is the founder and CEO of Arpeggio Consulting Group, with over 15 years of experience in manufacturing and supply chain operations consulting. His professional journey spans roles in the Department of Defense, aerospace manufacturing, and pure consulting, emphasizing operational strategy and organizational change management. 

Having transitioned from a corporate career to entrepreneurship, Drew now leverages his extensive industry knowledge to assist businesses in navigating complex operational challenges. His industrial engineering background equips him with a keen eye for identifying inefficiencies and solving multifaceted operational problems. 

Drew’s experiences in leadership, process improvement, and adaptability provide him with the strategic and practical insights necessary for serving both emerging and established companies.

Key Lessons About Corporate Wisdom and Startup Agility

1) Combining Planning With Adaptability for Career Growth

Navigating a career often feels like walking a tightrope between careful planning and riding the waves of unexpected opportunities. Sometimes, the path seems clear, with deliberate steps taken to acquire specific skills and build particular capabilities. Other times, you’re thrown off course, finding yourself in roles you hadn’t anticipated yet that surprisingly fit your strengths and interests.

Reflecting on this, Drew Harnish shares his personal journey:

“It’s easy to say there’s like this grand plan of how I got here… I wanted to learn this skill and then build this and be able to add this capability… There were some pieces of intentionality along the way… I always kind of knew that that was kind of the area I like to play in. But how I navigated my whole career from start to now… There’s some elements of reacting, accidental switching of roles that I didn’t expect… Some of it was intentional, some of it was not.”

Lessons Learned: Navigate with Purpose and Adaptability

To strike the perfect balance between adaptability and growth, start by identifying your core career goals and the skills you need to achieve them. Establish a clear plan but remain open to modifying it as new opportunities or challenges present themselves. This way, you maintain a sense of direction while allowing room for valuable, unanticipated experiences.

2) Planting the Seed for Entrepreneurship

Embarking on an entrepreneurial journey is often about waiting for the right moment when your resources, ideas, and preparation align perfectly. Sometimes the perfect storm of circumstances and readiness doesn’t materialize instantly. It’s about the patient accumulation of knowledge, connections, and confidence. When preparation meets opportunity, the leap can feel more like a calculated step.

Illustrating his entrepreneurial venture, Drew Harnish recounts the following:

“I was having a conversation with a mentor of mine, and we were leaving our companies about the same time, and he went to go start his own firm. And I was like, that sounds really cool. Never thought about that… And then over the years… I’ve just had notes in my phone of ideas… And then last fall, when I had the opportunity to start, I was like, I had kind of this nucleus of thought over the last several years… I think having that thought was… enough of a plan to start. So I didn’t feel like it was scary to start from scratch.”

Lessons Learned: Build On Your Insights Incrementally

Start by capturing your ideas as they come to you, whether through notes on your phone, sketches on a board, or jottings in a small notebook. These snippets might seem small individually, but collectively, they can form the foundation for a business venture in the future. Review and refine these ideas periodically to ensure they remain aligned with your evolving vision and capabilities.

Opportunities to start a business often arise unexpectedly. When they do, having a repository of well-thought-out ideas can make the leap into entrepreneurship less daunting. Trust that the incremental planning and ideation you’ve done over the years provides a nucleus of thought—a critical mass that can transform an abstract idea into a tangible venture.

3) Retooling Skillset to Focus on Key Objectives

Many entrepreneurs find themselves mired in tasks that seem productive but do little to propel their business forward, such as endlessly tweaking logos, perfecting their contact page, or organizing files. While these elements are not entirely unimportant, they can often become a distraction from the core activities that drive real growth, such as acquiring new customers.

In our discussion, Drew states how he quickly recognized this pitfall:

“I’ve had to retrain myself [on] how to spend that time… The biggest thing I had to learn was to… stop spending time on the business. Start spending time trying to grow the business, or there won’t be a business. So it wasn’t so much a new skill as it was, like, retooling.”

Lessons Learned: Prioritize Thought–Out Growth Initiatives

You need to shift your mindset to prioritize growth and high-impact activities. Instead of getting bogged down in running day-to-day operations, for example, try to channel your energy into activities that drive expansion. For Drew Harnish, this included strategic planning, client outreach, and market analysis — but it depends on where you are in your journey and what your specific growth targets are.

💎Outsourcing allows you to offload daily tasks essential to growth while freeing up your time to build meaningful business relationships. Discover how outsourcing sales works in this comprehensive guide. 

4) Approaching the Unknown With Purposeful Questions

The power of asking questions lies in its ability to transform uncertainty into a pathway of discovery. Targeted questioning acts as a compass, guiding you through complex client needs or market dynamics with a sense of direction and purpose. By asking specific, well-thought-out questions, you can effectively illuminate hidden customer pain points, uncover valuable insights, and clarify market ambiguities.

Drew explains how he leverages this methodical approach to uncover the unknown:

“It’s similar to how I approach consulting in that I’m going to ask really dumb questions first for two reasons… maybe three. One… You should always ask the things you don’t know about. Two is to maybe challenge my hypothesis. This is what I think, but I’m going to ask questions instead of stating it to see if I get the same response back that I’m expecting, and if not. Oh, that’s interesting. And then third is… to kind of get the conversation going and figure out what we should be asking questions about.”

Lessons Learned: Cultivate a Culture of Curiosity

When facing a new situation, you should start by asking fundamental questions, even if you believe you know the answer. This initial step clarifies the unknowns and paves the way for deeper understanding. It’s also essential to challenge your hypotheses by inquiring rather than assuming — a practice that can reveal unexpected perspectives and solutions.

5) Establishing Trust in Client Relationships

Unlike personal relationships, where trust often grows gradually, trust in a business setting must be built swiftly through commitment and reliability. The reason why many businesses today fail to establish trust is because they either neglect transparent communication, overpromise and underdeliver, or ultimately fail to meet their client’s goals.

Drew Harnish dives into two tactics he uses to establish trust with his clients:

“It comes down to trust… Number one is… I try to think through… what are really good questions that I can ask to understand and help diagnose what my customer is struggling with or needs help with… especially for those, those early stage calls… The second thing that builds trust is doing what you say you’re going to do, which is, to me, table stakes… I know that I am not a computer programmer. I am not going to sell coding work.”

Lessons Learned: Foster Trust Through Understanding and Reliability

To build trust with clients, start by asking insightful questions that help you fully grasp their needs and aspirations. This approach is excellent for reflecting genuine interest right from the start and showing that you prioritize the concerns and objectives of your customers.

Another important aspect of trust is following through on your promises to showcase reliability. By consistently delivering on what you say, clients will see you as a dependable partner. This combination of understanding their needs and reliable delivery is vital for driving long-term business success.

🌐 Want to know how buyers perceive your brand? Discover how our free trust element assessment can help. 

6) Navigating Pushback in Professional Contexts

Rejection is an unavoidable companion in any business journey — appearing in many forms and from various sources — whether as outright refusal, silent indifference, or nuanced objections. Such responses are often powerful demotivators, casting doubt on even the most seasoned entrepreneurs.

Drew Harnish touches on how he embraces setbacks, turning them into essential learning experiences:

“Teaching myself how to get rejected is a good thing… There’s always people arguing about the solution. ‘This won’t work because we tried this two years ago and this technology system couldn’t accept the inputs in the right format,’ whatever the reason why… I was conditioned also to hear no from…. ‘why?’ Why will this change not be acceptable to the organization for whatever reason? Help me understand why your experiences are telling you that this is not right. And then, and then let’s make sure we’re on the same page with that.”

Lessons Learned: Harness Feedback to Refine Your Approach

One effective method to overcome rejection is to seek the reasons behind the “no.” Engage your prospects in a conversation that helps you understand their hesitation. Ask questions like “Why?” and “What are your concerns?” to show empathy and tailor your solution to their specific needs.

Another key strategy is to frame the rejection as a valuable learning experience. Every setback offers an opportunity to refine your approach and address potential shortcomings. By welcoming feedback and viewing each “no” as a stepping stone rather than a barrier, you can continually adapt and improve your business strategy.

7) Accepting the Unpredictability of Business

While the corporate world often provides a structured and predictable environment, entrepreneurship is fraught with unexpected challenges and sudden changes. Overcoming this inherent uncertainty requires flexibility and resilience, enabling you to pivot and adapt your strategies as new information and circumstances arise.

Drew Harnish highlights a key aspect of dealing with uncertainty:

“Be okay with things not going as you expect … I’ve always been a fairly confident person in my ability to tackle whatever I try to go do… Sometimes I get humbled by biting off more than I can chew, too… That’s a good learning opportunity…”

Lessons Learned: Adopt Flexibility In Your Business Strategy

When uncertainty hits in your journey, embrace it by staying adaptable and open-minded. Accept that not everything will align with your expectations, and use these moments to foster growth. Maintain focus on your objectives but stay flexible in your approach. By doing so, you’ll discover new skills and strategies that can only emerge through unplanned experiences.

8) Embracing Change for Strategic Growth

While a steadfast vision is crucial, change should sometimes be the only constant in your plan to keep moving forward. Having the agility to pivot and change direction when necessary is essential for responding to market feedback and adjusting your strategies to better meet organizational goals.

Drew showcased how this mindset helps him foster a resilient, adaptable company culture:

“Be okay. Pivoting and changing, too…. The companies and the people that I shifted my focus to after some initial conversations and reactions with… I shifted how I was spending my time and who I was talking to as well, based on the results of some of those conversations. So it hasn’t gone how I’ve expected, and it won’t continue to do so… knowing that every day is different and it’s my opportunity to shape it…”

Lessons Learned: Leverage Flexibility as a Strategic Asset

Accepting change as a strategic tool means continuously listening to feedback and being ready to act on it. If your initial approach isn’t yielding the desired results, don’t fear the pivot. Reassess your target market or service offering and make the adjustments needed to stay relevant.

Wrap-Up: A Venture Where Experience Meets Innovation

In this episode of Martal’s Fireside Chats, we delved into the intricacies of transitioning from a corporate career to launching a successful startup. Drew Harnish shared his entrepreneurial journey, highlighting that tangible growth is achievable with confidence and a willingness to learn from potential failures. 

Drew emphasized the pivotal role of curiosity, adaptability, and constant recalibration in navigating the unpredictable landscape of a solo business venture. He shared valuable insights on key strategies for managing the multifaceted demands of running a startup — from adjusting business focus based on market feedback to building trust with clients, as well as maintaining a balance between client delivery and business growth.

We hope Drew Harnish’s story has offered you inspiration and practical advice for your own entrepreneurial endeavors. Stay tuned for more episodes where we continue to explore cutting-edge strategies and success stories with industry experts!