Before any of it, a full NCAA Division I soccer scholarship to the University of Hawaii at sixteen, and dual majors in finance and international business while I played. First generation lawyer. Bottom half of my law school class. I fought my way into M&A anyway, one of the most cutthroat, male-dominated, highest paying corners of the profession, and I am great at it.
From under six figures to multiple six figures in less than three years. Partner at a 230-attorney national firm, nominated after eighteen months when most people wait a decade. A top closer at the firm. Named a 2025 Notable Dealmaker and a six-time Michigan Super Lawyers Rising Star. Built the book.
Then I left. After my highest earning year. When most people would lock in. Not because it fell apart. Because I finally got honest about what I actually wanted.
I've spent twelve years getting people out of companies they built. Someone starts a business in a spare room, scales it, and one day a buyer wires them millions of dollars for it. I'm the lawyer making it happen that day.
Sellers ask me how I do this for a living. It's fast, it comes at you from every direction, and complex issues that need quick, creative, pragmatic solutions all land at once. The truth is I live for it. I'm still an M&A lawyer because I love it. But now I take on fewer deals, so it doesn't consume my whole life.
Here's what all of it taught me. The hard part is almost never the deal. It's that a person's whole identity is inside that business, and no amount of money makes walking away from it simple.
Sitting in a job they'd outgrown, holding an idea, knowing a pivot is necessary, waiting to feel ready. Not knowing what next step to take. Waiting for someone to tell them this is allowed. That leaving behind what they know, what they're good at, and who they have been, is a good idea.
Same fear. Same identity problem. Different fact pattern, but the work is the same.
Chances are there are few people around you who have taken the leap you're about to take. They may even think you've lost your mind. Nobody is going to tell you it's allowed. But someone can help you decide whether the plan holds, when to go, and what needs to happen before you do.
Now my time is split between the two kinds of exits.
For founders, it's the sale. For you, it's pivoting out of a job and into something that's yours. Sometimes that means building on the side until it can pay you. Sometimes it's a part-time bridge that takes the financial pressure off while the real thing gets built. Sometimes it's the work you already do, for your own clients instead of your employer's.
Either way I'm working both halves at once, leaving the familiar and building the new thing. One without the other is how people end up right back where they started.
And the mental, identity work isn't a soft add-on. I'm trained in RTT, somatic release, and NLP, and those are the tools we use when what's stopping you isn't strategic.
I run two businesses and I'm not going to pretend they're one.
The consulting practice is where I help you plan the exit and build the business. My law firm, the Law Offices of Vanessa L. Bailey, PLLC, is where the legal work happens if you want me to negotiate your exit from your employer, form your business, or draft the contracts that will protect what you're building. Separate company, separate engagement, and I'll tell you plainly when you're crossing from one to the other.
Proof I Don't Do Life By The Default Setting
Before you apply
A free live Zoom workshop · Wednesday, October 14 · 8:00 PM ET
If you want to see how I think before you apply, I am teaching a free workshop on how to plan the way out and the way in at the same time.