How to quit corporate life

This is the first in a series of three posts on quitting paid employment and reinventing your life and work. It’s based on my own experience of having exited a so-called top job twelve years ago, and having subsequently made a good living from doing what I love.

Know when enough is enough

If you’re currently working for some big corporate and waiting for the time to be right for you to start living your dreams, let me tell you that the time will never be right until you decide that you’ve had enough of the bullshit you’re doing and that it’s time to go.

Easy for me to say now, but in practice it took me a while. I’d had a fantasy of doing my own gig for years, but it was not until things got seriously ugly in my corporate life that I allowed that fantasy to become a possibility. Coming from a working class part of Glasgow, Scotland, I was brought up to expect to work all my life and to do so through the “employed” route. This was a script that I digested wholeheartedly and spent the first ten years of my working life enacting. By working hard and playing by the rules, I got to be an HR Director for American Express, based in London; a role which was beyond my parents’ imagination of what I could achieve. For a while I thought I was doing very well and figured that everyone else would think so too. Which seemed important at the time.

Amex had the kind of culture that rewarded hard work, which it often confused with results, nevertheless for years I was completely addicted to the buzz of being busy, making things happen and getting praised for it. The thing that really kept me hooked at Amex was their espoused belief that people were the key to its success, and that HR was about inspiring managers to inspire their people. A belief which, in good times, they backed with big budgets for training and development.

“I suddenly regretted the extreme sacrifices I had made in the name of this heartless brand.”

Things changed, however, when a global reorganisation hit. My own role was deleted from the org charts along with those of half of the people who’d reported to me. I wasn’t made redundant, but I had to impart the news to a team that had been loyal and supportive of me for several years. There was no acknowledgment by the wider organisation for the work they’d all done, nor of the human impact that this change was having on me personally. When I told my boss how I felt, he told me that I was a professional, and this was business. Get over it. But a bubble had burst. I suddenly regretted the extreme sacrifices I had made in the name of supporting this heartless brand.

What I really wanted to do then was quit and figure out how I was going to work for myself. But I hadn’t the confidence or courage at that point. Nor, as it turns out, had I decided to tear up the “me as corporate employee” script.

So I got another job, convinced that’d sort me out. Ever hopeful in the possibility that some corporation might actually care for people, I joined Gemini Consulting because it believed that people were the core of business change. And this was something that, in their client facing work, they endorsed, and indeed did well. But things were not so good behind the scenes. Professional and intellectual competition were rife and extremely debilitating. But the lifestyle was worst of all. Every Monday of life I packed a suitcase for the week and every Friday unpacked it. We spent all day every day with clients, and all evening doing Gemini work back at our team hotel, where we were resident. A few open minded project managers allowed consultants to work from home on Fridays.

It was during an eighteen month project in South Africa, at a point where we had no guaranteed, regular  accomodation, when I was getting little sleep, good food or exercise, and trying to deliver multi-million pound change that I realised I’d had enough. I knew I could apply for other senior jobs and get them. I knew that I could stay at Gemini and get promoted. But neither of these routes suited me. And that was okay. Didn’t make them good and me bad, nor the reverse. We just no longer suited one another.

Making that decision was a turning point. Immediately I realised how hard I’d been trying to fit my square peg into a round hole. Allowing myself to let go of that struggle freed up considerable energy in me to think about the next step.

Build an inspiring picture of what you want to do

The next step was me creating a picture for myself of what I was moving to. By that stage I knew it was not just my work, but my whole life that needed a revamp. So I wrote the story of my ideal day.

I thought about where in the world I wanted to live, in what kind of dwelling and how that would be decorated and furnished. I thought about what time I was waking up, who I’d be waking up with and who else was around in my life.

I thought about work, the skills I had, the things I loved and how I was being able to do them as a self-employed person. I envisaged where I’d be working, what kind of people I’d be working with, how they’d feel about working with me, what they’d give me as feedback and how much I’d charge them.

I built into my story how fit and healthy I was and what I was doing during the course of my day to bring these things to life. I wove into my picture hobbies and interests, friends and socialising.

It took a few attempts for me to feel that I’d got it right. In my first few goes, the whole thing felt a bit flat and still quite unimaginable. I clocked, however, that I had held back and aimed low, playing safe with my dream. But when I allowed myself free reign to write what I really wanted, what my heart desired, my vision became exciting and compelling. I began to know that I could make it happen.

So some questions for you:

• What’s pushing you out of your corporate job? When will enough be enough for you?
• What scripts are you living out about work and employment? Where and when did you learn it? Do they still work for you? What would be a more powerful, up-to-date work script for you?
• What’s your vision for your self-employed or entrepreneurial life? Have you described it for yourself in detail? What happens when you allow yourself to believe that your undiluted dream could become reality?

The next post in the series is: How to do your own thing successfully. If you don’t want to miss it, you’d better subscribe!

Related posts:

1. The journey to freelancing confidence
2. Risk-averse freelancing