All by myself
The most obvious thing about leaving a corporate job to start up yourself is the solitude and the sense of personal responsibility. It needn’t necessarily be lonely, but it can be. Unless you’re joining a startup with others, the solitude is just a reality with which you pretty quickly come to terms.
In a corporate you’re surrounded by people – asking about your Christmas break, commiserating about home-schooling and lockdowns, trading gossip – and of course helping and blocking you from doing what you want. The help is nice, the blocking not so much. When the former outweighs the latter you’re good: you’re learning, you’re making progress, your goal is in sight.
For me, I think the latter had taken over and some of the “help” had become a blocker. Much of it was self-imposed I admit; I’d fallen into a bit of corporate victimhood: “I’ll never be able to do that”, “leadership won’t see it through”, “they can’t see what I see” etc etc.
So, leaving bp leaves just me: success or failure is all mine. And right now it feels pretty good. It’s giving me energy and a fire I haven’t felt for a while. But tomorrow I might feel different.
I’ll admit the sense of personal responsibility is why leaving bp’s comfy slippers is hard. The emails drop off. The days stretch out. The calendar is wide open. Meanwhile, the direct debits continue to fly out without any income to offset.
You don’t have to look far to find Founders talking about the loneliness and the aching responsibility, the lack of escape from the business. A great quote I found from serial entrepreneur, Alex Shye, really sums up how it can feel sometimes: "I am in my head all the time, and a lot of ideas echo around."
I have found walking has really helped me get some perspective, put things in order, build on ideas, make connections. I take my phone and stop when my head gets full or I think of something good and write it in Notes.
Here are some other things I do to embrace the solitude and the sense of personal responsibility – I hope they will help you too:
Firstly, I have forced myself to relax into this new life, lowering my expectations for this first month or two. It’s a huge adjustment after twenty years of having my days, weeks, months and, even, years mapped out.
It’s a cliché but create some artificial structure to your day. It might just be an hour in the morning and one in the afternoon where you get into “work mode”. Shoot off a few emails, update your LinkedIn, write up your latest ideas. Schedule a phone call or two in this time. And then consciously stop. Don’t create a bad habit where work happens all the time – and beware busy work. You did enough of that in your old corporate job.
Do things you never made time for before, invest in what will enrich you. Set yourself a couple of chapters or articles to read – and make notes so it feels different from the reading you’d have done in a job. I’m reading Testing Business Ideas right now, one of the Strategyzer series (highly recommended). It’s full of practical tips to test your business ideas. And I’m doing something I once could never do (stupidly regarding books as sacrosanct), I’m scribbling all over it. I’m also an avid Medium reader – I recommend subscribing too, not least for the feeling of being part of the startup, entrepreneurial community.
And finally, you don’t need to be alone – there are thousands of places where you can connect with people just like you. Get on to Slack and your world will open up. I’ve joined and left a few over the last year but ones I dip in and out of most are #Launch, TechLondon and Startup Foundation. There are also a bunch of Whatsapp groups where you can connect with people just like you. I’m not cool enough for them yet, but if I get some suggestions I’ll be sure to share them.
So, face the solitude; it’s part of becoming a #corporateescapologist, and maybe you’ll enjoy it. Or some of it. And if you don’t, there are plenty of people like you keen to help and be helped, so dive in.
It is all about you now. And while it’s ok to find that a bit terrifying, it’s also exciting – and liberating.
Feel free to drop me a line at adam@gofamiliarize.com if you want to chat one #corporateescapologist to another.