Have a little patience

I’ve started the Corporate Escapology podcast.  To shine a light on the amazing stories of people who’ve left their corporate careers to do something different, using their incredible skills, experience and knowledge.

This week I recorded my first two podcasts – one with Steve Cook and the second with Katie Tucker. 

Steve left bp about a year ago, having had a 25 year career in innovation, strategy and technology commercialisation. Now he’s a part-time ceramicist (check out https://www.instagram.com/stevecook__), part-time startup advisor and he sits on several boards and is chair of another. 

Katie left a career in product management, after a career in journalism, and is now author of the soon-to-launch Do Penguins eat Peaches – all about better understanding your customers, targeted at small businesses who don’t have access to big market research capabilities.  Katie’s also a part-time consultant and mentor, working for corporates and smaller businesses.

It was fascinating to listen to both of their stories. Both positively exuded satisfaction with what they’re working on – and how they’re fitting work (and the cash it generates) alongside projects (which may soon become businesses) that they love: Steve as a potter, Katie as an author.

But what really struck me was something they both mentioned at the end of the podcast: the need for patience.  How getting ready to leave their corporate jobs took time. In Steve’s case he’d been talking to head-hunters long before the restructure that precipitated his exit; in Katie’s case she gave nine months’ notice and went travelling with two small children (yikes) and her partner. It took a year after her return home before she properly decided what she wanted to do next.

Both of them said their advice to others (and their former selves) would be to exercise more patience when it comes to breaking free from the corporate job and working out what’s next.  And indeed, in letting that new life take shape.

It got me thinking that what has made many of us corporate types successful is our lack of patience: rushing through education, getting The Job, climbing the corporate ladder.  I’d bet my house that every person reading this thought, at one time, felt frustrated that they weren’t progressing fast enough.

That impatience made you successful.  It got you noticed.  It helped position you. It showed up as ambition, hunger, possibly even a desire to please.

And it might be the same thing driving you to do something different now.

Maybe it’s gnawing away at you.  Or maybe it’s something that hits you when you’re feeling a bit vulnerable.  After a bad day.  Or as Sunday draws to a close.

Impatience tells us there’s something more, that we can be something more, but it can lead us to make bad choices.  Bad, reactive choices.

It can make us hand in our notice without a plan.  Apply for a job we don’t really want.  Commit to something we later regret.

I’ve spoken to many people who feel their life has become so comfortable they have to take extreme action just to break the insidious cycle.

But I wouldn’t recommend that.

Instead, I’d recommend these three things:

1.     Recognise that impatience as just a nudge that what you’re doing now isn’t right but you aren’t quite ready to make the jump just yet.  What steps do you need to take, what hoops do you need to go through…maybe it’s building a financial buffer, maybe it’s enrolling a partner, maybe it’s validating an idea with potential customers.

2.     Use your impatience to prepare.  Because then you’ll feel like you’re doing something that moves you forward, helps you make progress, allows you to test out ideas.  The first thing to do is write down how you are feeling – why are you feeling impatient?  What’s driving you to want the change?  Is it a reaction to something that will go away or is it more enduring?

3.     Think through the sacrifices, short-term though they may be, associated with taking action.  What will you leave behind? Will you have regret costs?  Can you find substitutes?  Don’t be naive when choosing change or overly optimistic that all the benefits will accrue immediately – or even for months and years.  Be honest with yourself.

Impatience doesn’t say ‘never’, it says ‘not yet’.

So, take the advice of Katie and Steve, be more patient with yourself; it will likely take time to exit your corporate job and land safely somewhere more fulfilling.

But also take mine, use that impatience as a fire in your belly to go where they and others like them have gone.  Build your Escape Plan.

And if you know anyone impatient for change who might need some support and advice, please share the Corporate Escapologist blog with them.

I’ll let you know when I’ve launched the podcast, but it will be this month – and thereafter once every three weeks.

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Thanks to those of you who took my not-so-subtle hint to download my Escape Plan course.  I’m really grateful as it will help me demonstrate the market for Corporate Escapology to a publisher – and help me birth this book!  It’s just £20 and I’ll give you a discount off the book when it’s published.