Don’t Quit Your Day Job, Sis. Signed, An Entrepreneur

From Brianna Doe, author of The Unapologetic Professional

Jun 22, 2026

by Brianna Doe

I remember sitting at the kitchen table telling my parents I wanted to major in Film & Media Studies.

I was 16, only a few months into my freshman year of college. My mom looked at me like I’d said I wanted to join the circus. My dad just stared at me and got quiet, the kind of quiet where you know they’re doing math in their head. And the math ain’t mathing.

To understand what that moment meant in my house, you have to meet my family. My mom immigrated to the States, from Jamaica, with her mom and brothers when she was a child. My dad’s family immigrated to the U.S. from Liberia. To a great extent, they left everything behind so their future family could have more options. And by options, they meant stable ones. Good ones. Specifically, the kind that come with a benefits package and a title your aunties can brag about at church.

My siblings got the memo, of course. My sister went into accounting, and my brother studied urban planning before graduating and transitioning into campus ministry. And then there was me. The film student.

I was serious about it, though! I wanted to write screenplays. I’ve always loved storytelling—the power of it, the way you can build a world and walk someone through it. It wasn’t a phase or just a placeholder while I figured out something more practical.

By junior year, most of my Honors College friends had dropped out to build nonprofits or chase their own thing. I was still in it, still studying film, and on track to graduate with that degree.I’d been doing photography since high school, and by college, it started opening doors I didn’t expect. Friends would ask me to shoot content for them, and then I’d end up looking at their nonprofits’ social channels and thinking, “This could be so much better.” So I’d help. I started studying graphic design, paid advertising, and the basics of marketing in my free time. Then I’d tweak their pages, put together posts, and think about how to actually get people to pay attention. And I was weirdly good at it.

I still graduated with my film degree. No marketing coursework, no business classes, and nothing on my transcript that said “this person knows how to build a brand!” aside from a few freelance clients I’d picked up along the way. But I knew, and I wanted to chase it.

Except I had no idea how to actually… chase it. I was painfully aware of the fact that I didn’t have the internships everyone else seemed to stack up by junior year. And my mom, as much as she loved me, couldn’t coach me through this side of corporate America. I didn’t know what a “sponsor” was. I barely understood mentorship as a concept beyond something vague that successful people mentioned in interviews.

So for about ten years, I just… figured it out. I took roles that didn’t make sense on paper, said yes to things I shouldn’t have, and said no to things that scared me even when I knew they were right. I also made mistakes that people with better guidance would’ve sidestepped entirely. It was messy and inefficient, and it worked, eventually.

But the whole time, I was carrying a feeling I couldn’t quite name yet. “Imposter syndrome” is the shorthand, but for me it had layers. When you’re first-gen, it’s not as simple as wondering, “Ddo I belong in this room?” It’s more like, “Did”did I waste the sacrifices my parents made to get me here?” It’s also looking around at colleagues who had mentors and family connections and summer internships at 14, and realizing you started the race a mile behind everyone else.

And then there was the family of it all. I was the youngest, but I was also the “good kid,” which sounds like a compliment.

It’s not.

It means you’re the one everyone expects to get it right. You set a standard nobody asked you to set, and now you can’t drop it. When your career path is the one that makes the least sense to the people who love you most, that pressure compounds. Every holiday, and every family gathering, there’s a version of “Sso, what exactly do you do again?” that lands differently when you know your parents gave up everything for you to have a clear answer to that question.

But I figured it out. Now in my thirties, I own a marketing agency. I have a podcast and newsletters and a book. I’m all-in on entrepreneurship, and I love it. Even the hard days and challenging moments. I love the work, I love the team I’ve built, and I love that I get to wake up every day and do creative work that actually means something to me. I’m not out here grinding miserably and romanticizing hustle culture. This is the life I wanted.

And it’s because I love it that I can see it for what it is: a choice. One of many, but not the only one, and not always the right choice.

So I’m sure you think I’d be one of those people on your timeline telling you to quit your job and “just bet on yourself!!”.

I’m not.

I spent years in corporate environments where people kept trying to fix the parts of me that didn’t fit their ‘template.’ I was too direct. Then I was too quiet. I couldn’t pick a lane. And honestly, some of that feedback was fair. I did need to get better at advocating for myself and articulating my impact. But a lot of it had nothing to do with growth. My personality just made someone uncomfortable, or maybe my communication style didn’t match what they were used to seeing.

The hardest thing I had to learn was how to tell the difference between “I need to grow” and “I need to go.” Those are two very different problems, and confusing them cost me years.

But that realization didn’t mean corporate was the enemy. It meant I was in the wrong seat. That distinction really matters, especially because the internet loves to skip right past it. Everyone loves the leap. They love the “I walked out of the office, launched my business, and never looked back” story. But not everyone wants the leap. Some people want a slower shift. Some people want more clarity before they move. And some people don’t want to move at all. Maybe they love their work, or love being able to unplug on the weekends. Or maybe they just enjoy having benefits and a steady paycheck (so valid, truly).

I think a 9-5 can be beautiful. I think there’s absolutely nothing wrong with working for someone else, if the work fills you up and you still have energy left to live your actual life.

The internet has this obsession with entrepreneurship as the only legitimate path, and I think it’s doing real damage, especially to Black women who would thrive in a structured environment if they just gave themselves permission to want that. It just has to be the right environment.

Quitting your job is risky. So is staying in one that drains you. Juggling a side hustle and a 9-5 could burn you out. So could going all-in on entrepreneurship with no safety net. There’s risk everywhere. That’s not the issue. The issue is pretending one path is automatically safer or more worthy than the others.

Along the way, I realized that the question I had to answer for myself wasn’t “should I start a business or stay in corporate?” It was “do I even know what I want? Or am I chasing what I think I’m supposed to want?”

That took years to untangle. I had to stop measuring my career against people who had completely different starting points and safety nets. I had to accept that nonlinear doesn’t mean broken.

In my 20s, I defined success as a CMO title and a corner office at some flashy company. Now, all I want is a business and a life I don’t feel like I need an escape from. A few years ago, I would’ve thought that sounded boring. Now I think it might be the most ambitious dream I’ve ever pursued.

But at some point I chose to accept that I only had 0.1% of this figured out, and then I realized that other people felt the same way. The book that came out of that process surprised me. I thought I was writing a strategy guide, and instead I ended up writing about imposter syndrome, identity, and what happens when you stop letting other people’s definitions of success run your life. Turns out that was the book I needed to write. Maybe because it was the one I needed to read ten years ago.

I still have days where imposter syndrome shows up and I have to remind myself I earned what I have. I still catch myself comparing my path to people who had a decade of mentorship before they ever sent a cold email. But I don’t let that run the show anymore. I’ve learned to sit with the discomfort of being different and keep building anyway.

You don’t have to blow up your life to build one that fits. Sometimes the most radical thing you can do is stay , and make it yours.

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