I thought I was building side projects. I was building a way out.
On corporate life, entrepreneurship, and the work I’m finally choosing fully
A few weeks ago, I said out loud that I’m pivoting toward the thing that lights me up the most, which is expanding On Your Terms. But the moment I said the word pivot, something in me wanted to correct it, because pivot makes it sound like a sharp turn, like I was facing one direction and suddenly decided to face another. The truth is, this feels less like a pivot and more like a return.
I have been walking toward this my whole career… I just kept doing it in the margins, in the early mornings, late nights, weekends, and random pockets of time my real job had not completely claimed.
I have always built in the margins
My first real job was as a management consultant at Accenture, and almost immediately, I started building something on the side. It was a nonprofit called Colligold Resources, and the whole point was to help university students build employability skills. I would partner with firms like PwC, Accenture, and KPMG, bring in professionals to mentor students during events I organized, and watch something click for a young person who had not had that kind of access before.
I loved it.
I loved creating something from nothing, gathering people around a mission, and helping young people see a wider version of what was possible for themselves. I did not have the language for it then, but I can see the thread clearly now: I have always been drawn to helping people build a life beyond the limits they were handed.
Then came Olori, and a life I was living twice
When I moved to the U.S. for my MBA in 2015, I started working on another idea and this one came from a frustration I had carried with me for a while. I was tired of seeing Africa viewed mostly through a charity lens, as if the continent was only need, struggle, or lack, when I knew there was so much beauty, creativity, craftsmanship, and excellence there too.
I wanted to showcase that beauty and make it accessible to people, regardless of origin, so they could experience and appreciate Africa in a fuller way, and see Africa the way I do. That became Olori, my handbag brand. I started working on the brand during my MBA at Wharton and launched it formally in 2018, the same year I started working at Twitter after business school.
For years after that, I lived two lives at once. I ran Olori while working full-time at Twitter and then at Meta. I worked all kinds of hours on my main job and then turned around and worked all kinds of hours on the brand, although “side hustle” is such a cute little phrase for what was basically a second full-time job with worse boundaries and no benefits.
I told myself this was what ambition looked like. You carry both, you don’t complain, you are grateful, and you make it work, and for a long time, I did make it work, until I couldn’t.
I knew I couldn’t stay
Over time, I started to become disillusioned at work. There were many reasons, but one of the clearest was when the stress of work started affecting my health and I had to go on medical leave. That period SHOOK me, because it is one thing to be tired and another thing for your body to stop cooperating with you because the life you have built around achievement is no longer sustainable.
Somewhere in there, I knew I could not continue like that. The thing is, I had always known I wanted to end up in entrepreneurship, I just did not know when or how it would happen. I still remember getting my offer letter for my job at Meta and saying to myself (honestly… praying to God) that this would be the last corporate job I ever worked (Still a prayer, by the way. Haha).
So when my health started being affected by the stress of work, I started exploring my options for replacing my income. That was when I began coaching women who wanted to start their own businesses while still in corporate, because I felt like it could not be right that we pour the whole of ourselves into one job, one company, one ladder, one bottom line that ultimately belongs to somebody else.
And this is important to evaluate, especially if we love the job… because loving the work makes it so much easier to abandon yourself inside it in the name of being excellent.
The first time I tried this, I used someone else’s voice
I loved coaching women in corporate to start product-based businesses on the side of their jobs. I loved sitting with women and helping them see what they were capable of, helping them take an idea seriously, and watching them move from “maybe one day” to “wait, I can actually do this.” That part felt natural.
What I could not stand was the selling. In hindsight, I can see what happened … I was following what a lot of other coaches were teaching, and so much of it felt like bro marketing to me: the urgency, the exaggerated claims, the weird pressure, and the subtle suggestion that if someone did not buy, they simply did not want success badly enough.
None of that had anything to do with who I am. The work was mine, but the voice I had borrowed to talk about it belonged to someone else entirely, and because it did not fit me, the whole thing eventually stopped feeling good.
What I wanted was always bigger
There was also something else underneath the discomfort, and it took me a while to name it. The thing I actually wanted to help women do was much bigger than “start a product-based business.” That language had become too small.
Helping someone launch a product was fine, but it was never the real point for me. The real point was the woman herself: who she was becoming, what kind of life she was trying to build, and what she wanted outside of the identity that had rewarded her for being excellent, dependable, and safe.
I cared about the business idea, yes, but I cared even more about the life around the business. That gap, between the small thing I was selling and the much larger thing I cared about, is where On Your Terms started to bud. It needed to mean more than “start a business.” So did I.
Consulting could pay me, but it couldn’t reach me
You know what happened next, because you were here for it. I got laid off, and I went looking for the steady thing. I explored consulting / Fractional COO, and here is the honest part: I am good at it.
It uses the exact muscles I spent my corporate career building. It can pay well, it makes sense on paper, it is easy to explain, and it sounds responsible. There is a version of my life where consulting / being a fractional COO would be the obvious next step.
But it does not light me up. I could finish a piece of consulting work and feel competent, but not alive. Then I would spend an hour inside On Your Terms, writing or thinking or talking to one of you, and something in me would wake up. The contrast got too loud to keep ignoring.
What feels like living, for me, is this. It is here.
So here is what I am building
On Your Terms is becoming a platform that helps women move from a corporate identity into a self-authored life through entrepreneurship. There are several pillars to it, and I will share more about those over time, but the one I am pouring myself into right now is the coaching experience.
I am building it for the woman who has already left corporate, who has no shortage of ideas, who is sharp and capable, and who is tired of spinning around the question of where to even begin.
Introducing The Self-Authored Blueprint: Design Your 90-Day Path to Replacing Your Corporate Income.
It is a private 1:1 coaching program for high-achieving women who walked away from corporate and are ready to build the business that comes next. Not just any business, not the idea that sounds most impressive at a dinner party, and not the thing everyone says you should do because it looks obvious on LinkedIn. The thing that actually fits your skills, your season of life, your income goals, your energy, and the kind of days you want to be living.
Inside the program, we move from a scattered pile of ideas to one clear direction. Then we turn that direction into a real business path inside a focused 90-day sprint. We will clarify the idea you should build first, shape it into a strong offer, identify who it is for, map the path to revenue, and create a practical execution plan that helps you move with focus instead of panic.
Because the messy middle can be messy, but it does not have to be chaotic.
You do not need more inspiration. You have had enough inspiration to last a lifetime, and you do not need another brainstorm either, because the problem was never a shortage of ideas. What you need is someone who can sit with you, look at everything on the table, help you choose the right path, and then help you build a real business around it.
And we are going to build it in a way that does not subconsciously recreate the exact exhaustion you walked away from, because replacing your corporate income was never supposed to cost you what corporate already did.
I’m opening this to 3 case study clients
If you know me at all, you know I am a woman’s woman through and through. Getting to take everything I have learned, every talent, every hard-won lesson, every founder mistake I survived, and every strategy muscle I built in corporate, and pointing all of it toward helping women build businesses that line their own pockets? That is my dream.
I am opening The Self-Authored Blueprint to 3 case study clients.
If you have walked away from corporate, have multiple business ideas, and are ready to stop spinning, I’ve put the full details here.
If it feels like a fit after reading, you’ll find the link inside to book a private fit call with me.
💭 Your Turn
What is the thing you keep doing in the margins, even when life is already full?
Hit reply and tell me. I’d love to know.
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P.S. If a specific woman came to mind while reading this, send it to her. She is probably sitting in her own messy middle telling everyone she’s fine, because that is what high achievers do best. It is an annoying habit, and she’ll thank you for the nudge.
About the Author
I’m Tomide, the founder of On Your Terms. I write and speak about career transitions, identity shifts, and the process of building a life that feels as good on the inside as it looks on paper.
Through my writing and coaching, I help ambitious women build work and lives that feel more aligned, meaningful, and their own.
The title alone told my story. The reframe from pivot to return is the whole thing, isn't it. Most of us aren't changing direction we're finally turning to face the work we were always doing in the margins. And the part about borrowing someone else's voice because it's what the other coaches were teaching? I felt that in my chest. The borrowed voice is always the tell. It was never going to fit. Glad you found your own building in the open suits it. Loved this.
That reframe is everything.
Most people spend years treating the thing that matters most as something they'll get to later, after the real work is done. Then they look back and realize it was the real work all along.
Building it in the open takes a different kind of courage than building it privately. Glad you're doing it.