The push that ended in the best kind of shove: Katie's Story

Who I was and the brave ask I plucked up the courage to make

After 15 years in the corporate world, I was hurled into what can only be described as the most challenging chapter of my career. I had built a sustainable career as a recognized expert in recruitment practices relating to students and diverse talent pipelines in the Investment Banking, Insurance and Tech sectors.

After 4 years with my most recent employer, I plucked up the courage to ask for my first ever sabbatical of 3 months to refresh and recalibrate in the middle of the pandemic in 2020. After an acceptance of my request, off I went into the world for the longest break I had ever experienced since leaving university.

Due to covid, travel was restricted to South Africa where I had moved 18 months prior, so I set out to explore safari lodges, vineyards and hotels at amazing local resident rates. I also took it upon myself to invest in a career coach to shake up my skills and basically lived like a queen with the reassurance that in just a few months I would be back at work and earning good salary once again.

When push came to shove

Boy, was I wrong! In an interesting turn of events, my role was dissolved and I was faced with redundancy at the very peak of my career as a senior regional leader in my space. I was suddenly hit with the reality that one of the key reasons I had stayed in a corporate career for so long, was in fact a slight myth; job security!

Despite finding a huge amount of joy in various roles throughout my career, there were times when I felt it just wasn’t quite me. In those moments I reminded myself that if I worked hard, I would have something very important; job security. This is not always how it works and corporate environments face challenges just as anyone else and this is when push came to shove!

After months of working together to find a solution, I left my most recent employer with no solid plan, but a sigh of relief!

Maybe this is what the universe already had in store for me

After consuming heaps of cake I saw that the situation opened my eyes to a few key points. Firstly that I may have actually manifested this myself. If I am deeply honest with myself, I wanted to escape the corporate world. It’s just that I wanted it in my time and on my own terms, I didn’t feel ready. Secondly that I may well have never plucked up the courage to escape if I had not been pushed. Thirdly, as much as it felt like the end of a long successful career, it was in fact a chance to use the knowledge I had built up over the years to create something meaningful and impactful on my terms, in my own voice.

It is safe to say that although the current gap/break/end/re-birth of my corporate career is super fresh, it is in fact something I have become extremely grateful for!

Learning to find my voice

With this freedom came disbelief and anxiety at first, which turned into excitement and possibility. Who knows where it will go next, no doubt an absolute rollercoaster of emotions and changing plans!

In my journey to find my voice, I unearthed many childhood passions and unfinished projects through a mix of coaching, shamanic and psychic session...It’s really not as weird as you might be thinking! Through this, I have become super clear on what makes me tick and can safely sum it up in a few words: to give help and to offer hope. It became apparent to me that this mantra was a part of my corporate life in some ways, but that it is the glue that holds together my dreams and wishes for the future and how I serve this beautiful world.

This is already blossoming in the form of my Joyful Stationery brand named after me; Cheeky Mantwa (www.cheekymantwa.com). Mantwa is my middle name which translates to Cheeky…Clever hey! Through this brand, I give hope in the form of inspirational cards sent to those in need of a positive boost for every product sold.

I am also working on a few books; one about my niece and nephew and one in which I plan to publish my poems in collaboration with artists in South Africa and the UK. In addition to this, I’m looking into ways to leverage my 15 years of recruiting and inclusions and diversity knowledge to help corporates do better, but on my terms! Watch this space!

How did I get Cheeky Mantwa moving

If you’re anything like me, you need to find some focus with the many many ideas that float around in your dreams, so this is a really important point. Choosing to focus on Cheeky Mantwa first was partly down to the fact that I had already designed most of the designs when I was a kid, so I ‘just’ needed to self-learn how to use Illustrator to refresh them and get going…not easy, but fun!

It helped me to be passionate about my business so consider if you should try to align your business to your personal values so that when you put it out there, you truly believe in it and feel proud of it.

Elements such as target audience, sustainability and quality played a huge part in who and where my products were produced and how they are marketed. Researching and learning about how to do all this was critical. So I joined networks such as Future Females and AllBright to access experts and inspiration from women who played a big part in motivating and educating me on so many different topics from finance to legal as well as marketing and social media magic!

A big lesson that took me quite a while to accept was that as much as I self-trained, I could not be an expert at everything and that I had wasted time and money trying to either do things myself or cutting costs by trying to get services on the cheap. The moment I took the plunge to ask real professionals to do things such as creating my brand identity or making my website a slick e-commerce platform, things really started to change for the positive. Ask and pay for the right kind of help where you can!

My slice of advice

There are of course many emotions relating to my experience; both good and bad. The balancing act of deciding whether to make safe or risky career decisions and the rollercoaster of emotions relating to self-worth has been very real for me. Working through these emotions rather than scooting round them is key to finding direction. Anchoring into my childhood or early adult passions has been another.

Finding unfinished projects or ideas is just so much fun! Both my stationery brand and my poetry and writing were things I created or started as a child/teenager. Sort out that unfinished business my friends!

So, my slice of advice if you face a similar situation is to have fun, unearth your earlier life passions and bring your creativity back to the forefront of who you really are...You never know where it will take you.

Overall, I am well on my way to accepting and embracing the push that I so badly needed!