I want to tell you about the day a man yelled "don't get upset" at me while I was sitting completely calm asking straightforward questions in a soft voice about my own termination.

I was not upset. I was composed. I was professional. And none of it mattered because he had already decided who I was before I opened my mouth.

And that was the moment it clicked. There was nothing I could say or do to change how he saw me. So I walked out of that building and said something to myself that I have never forgotten.

They will always treat you this way. There is nothing you can say or do to change how they see you. So you have got to get out of here and build your own thing.

That was over fifteen years ago. And it is still happening today.

In this episode I am telling that story in full. And I am connecting it to data that most people in the faith and business space are not talking about. In a single quarter of 2025, over 300,000 Black women exited the labor force. Black women are now the fastest growing group of entrepreneurs in the United States. Black women owned businesses grew 13 percent between 2024 and 2025 and now generate over 118 billion dollars annually.

We did not leave because we failed. We left because we figured something out.

This episode is for the woman who just left corporate, whether she walked out or got walked out, and is standing in that space trying to figure out what to build next. I am not going to give you a pep talk. I am going to give you the truth, the data, the story, and the practical first steps that I wish someone had handed me fifteen years ago when I walked out of that building.

This is not a survival story. It is a strategic leadership story. And it is time we started telling it that way.

In this episode you will hear the full story of the termination meeting that changed everything and what it revealed about the table I had been sitting at. The data on why Black women are leaving corporate at historic rates and what they are building instead. The psychological cost of code switching and over performing for decades and why so many women describe their exit as a recalibration not a crisis. What the first 90 days after leaving corporate actually look like and the questions worth asking before you start building. Why God did not give you those gifts for corporate to ignore them. And what it actually means to build your own table instead of waiting for a seat at someone else's.

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Music credit: Katori Walker / Know I Got It (Instrumental Version) / courtesy of https://www.epidemicsound.com/

Basixx / Disc Me Bro / courtesy of https://www.epidemicsound.com/

Sulu / Sparkles / courtesy of https://www.epidemicsound.com/

Maybe We’ll Meet Again / Baegel / courtesy of https://www.epidemicsound.com/

Urban Legend / William Claeson / courtesy of https://www.epidemicsound.com/