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 top job twelve years ago to make a good living 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.

But you do get to a kind of tipping point at which you have to take courage in both hands and go.

In practice that 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 learned, and spent the first ten years of my 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.

Things changed, however, when a global reorganisation hit. My own role was deleted from the 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.

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, believing the spin of the corporate 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 would fix me.

I joined Gemini Consulting because they said they believed that people were the core of business change. And, in their client facing work, they endorsed this well.

But things were not so good behind the scenes. Professional and intellectual competition was rife and debilitating.

Worst of all was the consulting lifestyle that their onsite business model demanded. Every Monday, I packed a suitcase for the week and every Friday unpacked it. I spent all day every day with clients, and all evening doing Gemini work back at whatever team hotel we were using as a residential base. A few open minded project managers supported and enabled consultants to work from home on Fridays. But they were the exception to the rule.

My point of no return came during an eighteen month project in South Africa. The challenge of leading a multi-million dollar change process was one thing. Doing without basic needs of regular accommodation, good food, sleep, rest and exercise quite another. I remember one night lying in bed in this shit hotel, that was having power cuts because it was mid winter and demand for electricity was crippling the supply in this outback location. I was shivering with cold. And asking myself what on earth I was doing with my life.

And deciding that things had to change.

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 suddenly 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. 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 for me was creating a picture 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. Risk-averse freelancing
2. The journey to freelancing confidence
3. Lost heart with your current job? Don’t rush to escape
4. Five Things That Help New Work Pioneers Make Real Change
5. Why Freelancers Hold The Key To Happiness At Work