Why I am leaving a comfortable corporate job to start my own business?
My background:
Entrepreneurship has always been part of my identity, seemingly in my very DNA. My father is a very hard-working man and in order to spend time with him while growing up in, Brittany, I would go and work with him sanding wooden floors. He always offered me pay for the work that I had done.
I have seen him fail in business ventures but I have also him succeed, continuing to work hard and provide for his family.
From the time I was 14, I have been passionate about motorcycles, and I was an early active adopter of the Internet (1999). I would buy bike parts online (I stored them everywhere at home) and I started building a good network of both suppliers and customers online through forums and websites. The objective was to purchase parts that could not be found locally, and I would sell these onto my friends and local network. I did this for almost 4 years before moving on to selling clothing and car parts.
In 2009 I relocated to Felixstowe in the UK where I started working for a Freight Forwarder. Alongside this, I still continued selling car parts online between the UK and France. Then one year later in 2010 I started at Norbert Dentressangle (XPO Logistics as of 2015) . With my drive and unstoppable willingness to give everything I have, I got promoted every 18 months. Finally, in 2015, following my manager’s departure, I moved up into his role as head of Product (European Pallet Distribution).
Within four years of hard work, commitment, drive and passion I grew the business by taking small but certain steps, one at the time. I created a vision for my department and instilled this in the team. As a result colleagues and customers alike believed in me and chose to follow my lead in always making sure we kept the end goal in mind. Together, my team and I created an environment where everyone could feel safe and openly be their best selves.
Since then the business has done exceptionally well as we created a structure that sustained our vision and that enabled us to grow. 2018 was a tipping point commercially, as we attracted large customers through the services that we offered, the way that we worked, and the value we gave to them every day. This was further developed in 2019 through bigger customer wins, greater commercial success, and continuously improving our quality customer service and transport network.
The corporate world & large organisations:
In 2018 my skills, hard work, and inspiration were recognized by my Director and he has asked me to take over a different business unit (Regional Partners) in addition to my existing responsibilities. I accepted the offer with the view to continue progressing whilst getting out of my comfort zone.
And let me tell you; it was a massive change! I went from managing a business with seven employees, looking after every step of the process (prospecting, building a solution, operating and account managing) to an additional business unit that turns over £100,000,000 per annum and employs 1000 people (with the largest part of employees being drivers and warehouse staff).
Through these experiences, I’ve seen first-hand what impact cost-cutting has in order to satisfy short-term profitability goals. I have witnessed the impact on staff and moral. I have felt what it was like to be in an environment where people don’t feel safe, with initiatives and cost-reduction dictated from the top to the bottom.
I was lucky to have managed only my small business unit within this big organisation.That said, I have also realised that this small business unit will not be protected forever from the narrow-minded view of the quarterly results cycle, and this became the biggest motivator for me to take the risk I am taking today.
The trigger:
In early 2019, I read Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki, a book that completely transformed my views of the corporate world and made me realise one very important thing:
All those perks you get in a corporate environment such as a company car, health insurance, good basic salary and bonuses simply buy your loyalty to that system so you keep trading your valuable time for money. It gives you the illusion of job security and not only feeds the fear of not having money, but also feeds that desire of working only for money. This is a joy that is short-lived and soon you are calling for more of it.
You are so busy managing all the different aspects of your work that you don’t have the time to put your heart into other activities. My son is five years old now and I don’t want the be the person that misses out on all of the precious moments you get whilst he is growing older.
In the last twelve months, I had the opportunity to climb the next rung of the corporate ladder by taking over another part of the company, and this put into perspective how lucky I have been. In other words, lucky to be given so much freedom when the rest of the company suffered through a cost-cutting approach geared around the next financial quarter. This is in direct contrast to the business ethos I promote and love: to lead a business with a long-term mission that expresses itself in years and gives people something to believe in.
After 8 years at XPO logistics, I decided to hand in my notice on the 15.11.2019.
And this is WHY:
Over time I was able to reach a good level of self-awareness and clearly understood what I stand for and what I value.
Firstly, it is not about money, trust me! It is about the human adventure. I love to meet people, build rapport and relationships with them. More importantly, I love to find solutions whilst facing challenges and make customers happy.
Secondly, a big contributor to my behaviour is my measure of success, which I see through the number of times I put on a smile on my face. To put it into context, I would much rather earn paid £30,000 a year and make a difference to people’s lives or businesses as opposed to earn £150,000 and work in a cost-cutting environment that puts numbers before people.
This is the story of my business, TRANSPORTIFY. I invite you to become part of the adventure and to read my regular blog posts as I move towards my goal of building a business that will deliver the best customer experience in our industry.
Yours faithfully,
Jean-Philippe Guérin
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