Today we're joined by guest Adam Forbes, the original Corporate Escapologist. He's here to talk to us about the possibilities beyond corporate and valuing the breadth of experience that corporate roles have given us. Adam spent 25 years working happily and successfully within the four walls of major corporates in marketing strategy, business development, and finance, ducking and weaving within energy retail, government, and consulting.
Adam saw firsthand what happens when restructuring or other significant disruptions to the workforce result in individuals making the choice to leave or having that decision forced upon them, and observed how talented people from across all levels and roles often struggle to see beyond traditional corporate career paths. So in 2020, he made his own leap, establishing himself in a new career as a valued adviser to corporates, startups, and individuals as well as the founder of Familiarize, a marketing consultancy for startups and program director for Startup Bootcamp, which is an accelerator. Adam writes a successful blog as the Corporate Escapologist about his time leaving a leading corporate to start a new business and build a more varied dynamic career designed around his values and needs. Through his work coaching and advising fellow corporate escapologists preparing to leave corporate jobs through choice or redundancy, Adam has identified a simple method to help them effectively through the stage of disorientation, fear, and panic to a greater appreciation of their own capabilities and options for the next phase of their career.
Transcript below:
Erica D'Eramo 0:10
Hello, and welcome to the Two Piers podcast. I'm your host, Erica D'Eramo, and this is season four. Today we're joined by guest Adam Forbes, the original Corporate Escapologist. He's here to talk to us about the possibilities beyond corporate and valuing the breadth of experience that corporate roles have given us. Adam spent 25 years working happily and successfully within the four walls of major corporates in marketing strategy, business development, and finance, ducking and weaving within Energy Retail government and consulting. Looking forward to having a great discussion with us today.
Adam saw firsthand what happens when restructuring or other significant disruptions to the workforce result in individuals making the choice to leave or having that decision forced upon them, and observed how talented people from across all levels and roles often struggle to see beyond traditional corporate career paths. So in 2020, he made his own leap, establishing himself in a new career as a valued adviser to corporates, startups and individuals as well as founder of Familiarize, a marketing consultancy for startups and program director for Startup Bootcamp, which is an accelerator. Adam writes a successful blog as the Corporate Escapologist about his time leaving a leading corporate to start a new business and build a more varied dynamic career designed around his values and needs. Through his work coaching and advising fellow corporate escapologists preparing to leave corporate jobs through choice or redundancy, Adam has identified a simple method to help them effectively through the stage of disorientation, fear and panic to a greater appreciation of their own capabilities and options for the next phase of their career. We are so excited to have you join us, Adam, thank you so much.
Adam Forbes 2:11
Thanks very much for having me. I'm super excited too.
Erica D'Eramo 2:15
If you were to introduce yourself in just a couple personal words, what would that sound like?
Adam Forbes 2:23
Well, I guess I'm a dad, I'm a I'm a father of three kids, my husband, I, somebody that gets bored very easily. And I like
Erica D'Eramo 2:39
Feel ya there
Adam Forbes 2:40
Lots of variety in my life and three kids that that helps. And I feel like I'm now a very happy person, a much happier person than I may have been in previous life because of some of the choices I've made.
Erica D'Eramo 2:59
Yeah, I think that kind of dispels some of the how we view entrepreneurs is like these solo people going out into the world with not a care, no responsibilities, and just taking these big, risky leaps. But actually, entrepreneurs have loved ones too.
Adam Forbes 3:18
Well, like everything, there's a spectrum, you know, there are those people who kill themselves to work for building their startup and give everything else up in pursuit of that goal, just like there are in corporate with CEOs that go to the top and, and do everything to make themselves successful. And there's a bunch of people at different points along that spectrum. And I think, you know, founders of startups, they have choices, too, they can kill themselves like that. Or they can find a balance. I like to think I've got a bit of balance. I mean, there's plenty of times when I don't have much balance, but I like to think mainly, I know when I'm not in balance, certainly, and that's always a big alarm bell to say, are you doing the things you need to be doing?
Erica D'Eramo 4:03
Yeah, I mean, similar to like you mentioned with the CEO path at a company. I think the media probably portrays certain individuals that don't necessarily seek that balance. And so that's, that's what many people envision when they think of an entrepreneur.
Adam Forbes 4:19
Yeah.
Erica D'Eramo 4:21
So what brought you to this work? I kind of mentioned it a little bit in the intro, but you know, what, what was your origin story?
Adam Forbes 4:29
Well, I spent, I mean, I grew up like most people my age thinking, I'm going to get a job, maybe not a job for life. I grew up with that kind of uncertainty that that many people and kids grew up with in in the 80s of job insecurity and in their parents at least, and I suppose I thought I best get a good job. That means that I don't have that kind of insecurity when I'm older, that sort of my parents face at various times. And so I did that. I worked hard super hard at university and college and, and got a series of pretty good jobs I think you know, and by 20 years into that, I could look back thinking I'd learned an awful lot. And I've had quite good fun too, you know, working in big companies has lots of perks, relatively stable, relatively stable, good salary, nice holidays, bit of foreign travel with with work, scale projects so you can see real impact. I mean, there's so I had lots of that throughout 20 years working in consulting for various companies. And then I joined BP and I worked there for 16 years in, I'm just gonna say a variety of roles. I mean, it was a variety compared to a lot of people in BP, who just work a fairly linear path. But so, but I worked in a bunch of different roles that got me to experience different parts of the company, and also sort of test me and develop me too. So that was really the origin. And, but I suppose during that time, I started to have questions, is this the right place for me? Are the benefits really outweigh the costs that I was starting to see and feel more acutely? And? And that eventually led me to where I am today, really?
Erica D'Eramo 6:30
Yeah. So tell us a little bit more about Corporate Escapologist. I kind of dropped that into the intro, but I didn't really explain what that is.
Adam Forbes 6:39
Original corporate escapologist that's not really true.
Erica D'Eramo 6:44
The first one ever to escape.
Adam Forbes 6:47
And, of course, you know, escape is a kind of, yeah, it's a word that that gets a reaction. Like, you've been a prisoner beforehand. But, but, but I do feel, I did feel when I was leaving that there was something fairly interesting about somebody who was leaving corporate life, particularly within a restructuring, a pretty major restructuring, actually, to go and do something completely different. And also to a degree to do it without really having a plan. You know, many people leave corporates, jobs, you know, they get some outplacement support. And they dive back into another corporate and I was really, really determined that was going, that wasn't going to happen. I was made redundant, but it was it was voluntary redundant redundancy. So I chose to do it. And I had some ideas, but I really wanted to explore, you know, it felt like such an opportunity after 20 years, working nine to kind of not five, but you know, nine to five, and instead think let's do something different and, and the corporate escapologist idea came up as a way to share what I was doing with others.
Erica D'Eramo 8:04
Yeah. And that's one of the reasons that I really wanted to have you on the podcast actually is because for us and our mission, the alignment there is that I find that so many people that I work with, individuals that I work with, they're feeling unfulfilled, or they're feeling they're in the midst of like, maybe a pretty toxic work environment, or a place where they can't bring their full selves to work their individuality and they can't like leverage all the diversity that they might bring diversity of thought. And I think that people so often feel like they don't have any options, right? That they have to just stay or if they leave, it's going to something very similar, right. So all of those like transition services that we saw when we decided to leave, those sort of like, route you right back into something very similar, if not exactly the same. And so I love that the work you do is sort of like opening up the pathways where people can decide their own path and, and maybe rid themselves of some of those narratives that they've acquired along the way that are are not as helpful.
Adam Forbes 9:19
I obviously love that. Yeah, that's exactly it. It's, it's all about choice. And of course, one of the things you don't really have much of when you're in a job, particularly if you're really reliant on that job, which, you know, I was, I mean, I had, certainly of 20 of those years. I mean, of 20 years, certainly 10 of those years, I was absolutely reliant on the income, the stability, my wife stopped work to have a family, we needed me to be very, very stable. So so there are times when you when you need, you need to be there and I recognize that but there are also times when it's not the right place, or it served its purpose, you know, it served a purpose for me for such a long time, and then it became, it came less useful to me I wasn't developing. I was, I think missing out on things that I really wanted to do. You get, I mean, I was, what, 45 or so. And I was thinking is this really what I'm going to do for the next 20 years, there was some toxic, toxicity in the team that I worked in, which is not uncommon. It wasn't like that throughout. There were also lots of energy, positive energy in that team, too. So it was a mix of things. But, but I did start, I suppose it did expose not only that I'd exhausted this, but also that I was missing out on things. And I think it's, for me, that was probably the bigger push to move that there was more outside than there was from what I was gaining inside. And it was ready to try something new.
Erica D'Eramo 10:53
Yeah. So in your experience, what do you think, you know, you talked a little bit about why you left then. What do you what do you think the primary reasons are that people stay in corporate careers?
Adam Forbes 11:08
Yeah. And I, I mean, I'm really, really clear on this about not to sort of vilify corporates, you know, I mean, I really don't want this. I don't really want while I talk about to be how corporate are, you know, that sort of demonizing the nasty side of corporates that just, you know, really exhausts and spits out people. And it's really toxic, because there's so many great things about corporate,
Erica D'Eramo 11:33
We had both stayed for 20 years.
Adam Forbes 11:34
Yes, exactly. And we we gained lots from it, we would not know, yeah, we were without, without doing that. But there is a lot of risk aversion, which, by the way, we're like trained to, to be super wary of any risks with
Erica D'Eramo 11:52
Mechanical engineers specializing in risk management?!
Adam Forbes 11:57
Yeah, but even me, like marketer, you know, I was always kind of like, Oh, God is I mean, it was from a reputational risk. I was absolutely obsessed with my reputational risk, or not obsessed enough, some would argue, but but, you know, the, that risk aversion that would that, you know, looking at risk all the time as something that should be avoided in many ways.
Erica D'Eramo 12:18
Downside risk.
Adam Forbes 12:19
Yeah, it keeps us where we are, you know, and I think I, what I observed is a lot of fear, as Well. And I think in some ways, the more successful you have been, often can make that fear of moving even higher, that, you know, bigger, much bigger fear, you've got much further to drop. And I think the other one of the other things that happens in corporates is, we, we get more and more sort of specialized, you know, as you go up, you you become less of a generalist, you tend to, I mean, when you get to the very, very top, you might have a broader area, but on the way up for a long time, you become more and more specialized. And I think that's when you start thinking, I don't know that I could do a job outside, I don't know that my skills are transferable. I know this world really, really well. Everybody trusts me here. I can, I can do this job, I am the ultimate safe pair of hands, I might be the only person in, you know, around that can do this, we saw a kind of flip, it can really flip into sort of an arrogant side too. But I think a lot of that is a fear that, that we couldn't get the money that we want outside, we couldn't get the opportunities, we'd have to start lower down, it would all be a big, big risk. And that's and that's if you're just trying to sort of flip to something reasonably similar let alone jumping to something totally different. Like, I'm going to build a startup or I'm going to go back into education and retrain or, or whatever. So yeah, I think it's a lot of it is that fear. And, you know, we're not looking critically at ourselves enough to say, "Are we valuable outside?" And of course, we actually are, but we're not testing that. And when you're not testing something regularly, you start to think that you know the truth. Well you have a different view of truth.
Erica D'Eramo 14:12
Right? I mean, ironically, failing and succeeding are what gives us confidence in an area. So when you haven't had any opportunity to say, do the accounting and the contract development for something, then it can feel daunting to decide to take all that on when you've had like a department that does that before, you know, throughout your whole career. Department will handle that the legal department will handle that and everything.
Adam Forbes 14:41
There's this great book called Extreme Ownership that I was reading when I was at BP and it's it's a Navy SEALs. So you know, the one and it's all about that idea that you know, we don't take ownership of things in corporates because there are other people to do their bit. So you're just constantly saying, "I've done my bit, it's now with HR or it's now with finance to do," and no one is really seeing that full owning something or it's when you move outside or the outside world, you have to because there's no one else to do it. There's no redundancy around you, when you're working by yourself, you are everything. And that is daunting to a lot of people, but actually liberating and exciting for other people too.
Erica D'Eramo 15:25
Just like you had to learn for the first time, at some point what like a project management plan looked like, or whatever it is that you had to learn in those early days, like, you still have access to that beginner mindset, it just is a little further in the past. But yeah, we can learn to do we can learn to do things still even in our 40s.
Adam Forbes 15:44
We definitely can. But I think one of the points I'm trying to make as well is there are so many things that we have started to do, begun to do unconsciously that other people can't do. And I see that now, you know, it's been three years since I left, and you know for the first year, I of course, was anxious and uncertain and wondered whether I'd done the right thing for the second year, still a bit. By the third year, I see. And I'm fully confident that I can do things and I'm valuable outside because of that corporate experience. And in some ways, I appreciate it more now than I ever did when I was there because it was normalized, because others were thinking the same thing. Or they're, as you say, there were others that were picking up other bits of the job, that meant that I only needed to do my slither of it. But most importantly, I just see how we're viewed outside quite differently from how I thought we were viewed when I was inside.
Erica D'Eramo 16:41
Right. And it's a pretty, I don't want to say it's a pretty rare set of experiences. But like that combination isn't necessarily something that you see every day, that extended period of time and corporate and then somebody going out on their own. And so I think that that combination is quite powerful, and not all that common.
Adam Forbes 17:05
Hmm. I think so too.
Erica D'Eramo 17:08
It brings a difference that it's refreshing.
Adam Forbes 17:10
Yeah, I think so. And I think it's, I mean, of course, it's mainly not common, because most people are staying in jobs. Even if they want to leave, they're not like like me for a long time, you know, probably five years I was wanting to leave but didn't. So most people are not leaving. So the competition is probably a bit smaller. But the people that have just worked for small companies or just work for themselves or being a consultant, they, they won't have access and experience to some of the skills and knowledge that we have, when we've worked for a big company, it's just a fact, it's just you don't, you don't have it. I mean, it's every day, it's all around you, this is how people are working. And of course, when I when I say it's valuable, who is it valuable to? Because, you know, when I was at BP, and we're working with lots of startups, it was seen as a real hindrance to have some of this corporate mindset, some of these corporate skills and experiences, to the point that, you know, patronizing being trained to be more startup by there's so much of that stuff. And I agree to a, to a degree with that, because a corporate and a really early stage startup, there's very little in common with those two. But as that startup starts to scale up and starts to go for investment, and wants to be treated really credibly by a bigger company, that's maybe going to be either you know, buy it or be a customer, the corporate skills that we have, can be extremely useful to a founder or CEO at that stage, because we can help be a bridge between that kind of corporate investment or the corporate buyer. And the and the startup that is that is growing. Of course, we bring credibility, we you know, we we know things, we have identity around that, we have skills, we also, we can also challenge them those people like "have you thought about this? Have you thought about this?" So some of the ways we think is different and are very, very useful to to to a founder, for example, looking to scale up their, their business.
Erica D'Eramo 19:19
Right, it's that uncommoness that makes it valuable, I think right? Like to pepper that in, that that's a voice that's valuable to have in the room, versus most of what exists. So it's the very diversity and the tension that it brings that I think it brings the value.
Adam Forbes 19:38
Yeah, I think that's right. I think it is that diversity. And it's that it's that fact that we've seen things that others haven't seen and therefore, or we can ask the questions that make somebody think differently about something in spotted risk or an opportunity. And the other side of course, is one of the things that we do very, very well in when we work in corporate says we stabilize things, you know, we bring structure and order to things. So, you know, sometimes to make them very boring, but boring is good when you're running a business, right? If you're worried about safety, whoring is really important. Boring is also quite important if you're running a, you know, running a factory or production of some sort, you know, so lots of things need people that can look at processes and improve them look at things and say, "How can we get better? How can we make this cheaper? How can we reduce the downtime?" Whatever it might be? And those are some of the things that training again, that we have, you know, personally, they're not the sort of things that I'm very good at. But I recognize that lots of people I've worked with, were extremely good. You know, if you say, Okay, that was a brilliant project. But now we need to, you know, turn it into business as usual, we need to stabilize that we need to scale that across five countries, these people do that stuff really, really well. And there comes a point in your development, building your business, you need that, otherwise, you're going to fall over because you can no longer do everything through a relationship. You need to hire talent that's going to do this, you need to have systems in place.
Erica D'Eramo 21:10
It's funny that while I was in corporate, I always felt like a bit of a dreamer, you know, and a dabbler. And then, once I was birthed out of corporate, I realized that actually I am very structured and I love structure and I will spreadsheet anything. Anything you let me get my hands on.
Adam Forbes 21:30
I was the same. You know, I was this Maverick in BP, this kind of comms maverick that was always kind of doing kind of videos that were not on brand and producing various...
Erica D'Eramo 21:44
Did you not use the color palette?
Adam Forbes 21:47
Yeah, exactly. And then you come out? Well, I mean, I've gotten it before because I've been
Erica D'Eramo 21:50
Unapproved orange.
Adam Forbes 21:52
Oh my god, I'm so boring. There's nothing maverick about me. Because I'm constantly thinking, is this person going to get annoyed by what I do? Can I engineer it, so this person doesn't see what I'm doing? You know, and that's, again, one of those things, that skills that we we have a sort of instinct, instinct for stakeholders, I think that's another really important skill that we have when we've worked in a corporate that I saw so many times. And I see so many times with, with, with the startups that I worked with on this accelerator program. They're just, they like this, they just think with, you know, in a tunnel the whole time, because they're so confident that what they're doing the business they're running is, is great, that they they only see that they're not seeing anything outside. So they miss that whole kind of stakeholder perspective. And that's what we are really good at too.
Erica D'Eramo 22:45
They haven't been locked for hours on end, in a conference room with a whiteboard, doing stakeholder mapping, they don't have that shared trauma.
Adam Forbes 22:53
And of course, it's awful when you're there. And you know, if I was invited to a meeting like that, now I would find any excuse, I could have avoid it. But there are times in a business's development for a reason. And that's not just I mean, I've mentioned startups, just cuz I've worked with them. But there are loads of opportunities like that, where you can work with smaller companies or the corporate. I mean, one of the things somebody said to me the other day, which I thought this is a tow blind spot is, remember that most of the income you're making now is from other corporates, you know, corporate, you know, you have a certain expectation of the kind of salary and the life lifestyle you want. And you might be drawn to go and work for a charity or social enterprise. But you may not be able to do that because you need to bring in income linking that you've lost from working in a in a in a salary job. But you can probably earn more money as a consultant working with corporates like that, that value your time and don't want you for a full week than you were earning certainly by the hour working for the corporate itself. So corporates are important, I think, as a source of revenue, as you're transitioning out. And you may go and do something totally different at the end, but they become a really great stabilizing force to to give you confidence, as Well as bring in the kind of revenue you need to offset the fall.
Erica D'Eramo 24:16
You mentioned where the skills are valuable and you touched on nonprofits. And while most people might not decide to go into nonprofits, my observation has been that like these skills are actually super important for like, if you were going to pursue maybe a Board of Directors role, and bringing in that insight of like, what is our strategy? what is our risk mitigation, like? what are who are our actual stakeholders? Who is our customer here, like who are our clients, right? Like our sponsors, our beneficiaries, all of these viewpoints. And so, and nonprofits often have people who are in it because they really, really care, but they won't necessarily have had that big picture experience beforehand. So,
Adam Forbes 25:05
Yeah, I agree. Again, it's that diversity, that challenge that you can provide based on experience grounded in experience, not just throwing rocks and, and an ideas that are impractical, but actually sensible, thoughtful, thought provoking challenge that will help a business make progress. And I think it transcends, you know, obviously, industry and sector too so, you know, the charity sector, and the bits that I've come across, they're chaotic, they actually really need a lot of the corporate skills, but they, you they genuinely can't afford to take on people that are used to earning good money in a corporate job, to come and work for a startup, you need to have a very special kind of person that's willing to forego that, but but actually working one day a week, there might be really valuable. And it also allows you to, you know, feel a sense of purpose and achievement, about what you're doing. And then you might go do a couple of days somewhere else and earn a bit more money, and you get that nice balance. And that's one of the things that I think is on offer to people from a corporate job, because you can do multiple things. You can do some well paid consultancy, you can do some pro bono work, you can do some mentoring, you can spend a bit more time with your family, if you choose to, you know, there are so many things that you can do because of this experience. It's so valuable. And I want people to really appreciate that. And even if they choose to stay, that's fine, of course, but appreciate it and know it and don't feel like I'm only here because I have to be here or because I'm too afraid of what's outside. Because that's nonsense,
Erica D'Eramo 26:43
right? Yeah, exactly. So what are some of, we've touched on like, you know, entrepreneur, maybe we're doing a little bit of work for nonprofits. Like for me, I did volunteer work. What are some of the other paths or options available to folks, if they're considering that?
Adam Forbes 27:00
Well, I mean, I've done a bunch of different things just in these three years. I've done... So I've done consulting, I've done writing, paid for writing, I've done content development, I've done, I've sat between an agency and a client and been kind of brokering, you know, getting a better brief for the agency on behalf of the client. I've run projects for clients, I'm running this program now for Shell, so I've not really run come too far from BP there. So working again, that's a good example of working with, you know, another corporate, it's for another company. But I'm for all intents and purposes, working with Shell now. So I think there are lots of things. And there's a dozen other things that the key for me is, there's an opportunity to for variety that there never was when I worked in a corporate job. And even though I thought many times, "I wonder if I could go down to four days a week?" Doing something just on a Friday, it's really really hard for another business to really pull you in. And the likelihood of it not intruding in the rest of the week is actually quite small, is that right? It's actually quite quite high that you will be pulled in. So I think even if you do have the side hustle, I think the side hustles can really take over when you're working a corporate. This is the only way I think that you can get that variety, if that's what you want, you know, and some people don't some people might want to go and do four days consulting, that's perfectly fine as well. But for me, I just think there's so many things I am excited by getting involved in I want to try and even if I at some stage go back into a corporate job I want to know that I really lived this experience you know, I really, I really I really exhausted everything out of it because I just thought and I found myself I suppose really I found what I'm really good at what I love debating how I can help people the most.
Erica D'Eramo 28:56
I think that that framing really helped me. Of course I had a spreadsheet when I decided to leave. Obviously. People were like "This is such a risky move!" and I'm like "No no no. I've I've weighted all of my value drivers," and I've scored like most likely scenario best case scenario worst case credible. But I think that the framing for me was important in that I, one of my primary goals was not necessarily get out there and do this thing and succeed, it was "go see" go see how you feel about this and you will be successful either way right like you'll be successful in that effort because you'll know: is this something that I want to do or is this something that I thought I wanted to do? I tried it and now I can rest easy going back into corporate and saying you know what, that that looked better than it fell and cross that off and it's just not for me, but what was not okay with me was getting to the end of my life whenever that happens and not having, not not knowing, not having pursued that at all. And having this like regret. My, I've really just tried to not have those regrets in my life. And that means sometimes trying stuff out knowing that like, there's a significant possibility this isn't going to be a match. And that doesn't mean like, "oh, you failed." You succeeded in the effort of finding out.
Adam Forbes 30:25
Totally. Totally. I mean, I saw that I think, you know, because BP, like all corporates, you know, every sort of three years or so it's making quite big changes restructures. And I saw people that were maybe 10 years older than me leave after 25-30 years, 35 years in some cases. And I saw how the doors shut as they leave. And if they turned back, those doors are still shut, you know, and the company just moves on. And because the I was doing a quite sort of narrow role in in BP, and there was no one else doing quite what I was doing. And I did start to believe, "Oh, no one can do this job. I'm the only one that can do it." You know, and there was some competition.
Erica D'Eramo 31:12
Oh, a little martyrdom.
Adam Forbes 31:14
Yeah. And I, yeah, when it was bad, oh, it's only me that can sort this mess, but the, but the, the thing I saw that moment was, that's totally untrue. And if you're not careful, you'll walk out, and you may not be feel ready to walk out, and there'll be very few options for you at that point, or fewer options, certainly for you at that point, than if you take control of it, and do something yourself. And that was a pivotal moment, for me watching some of these people that had really given their lives to the company. And, you know, and it was a transaction, it's a transaction for the company. So it's a bargain. And, and, you know, and sometimes we think it, you know, it's giving us more than we are getting, and sometimes it is, it's sometimes it isn't, sometimes it's taking more, and you just need to get these things in balance. And part of that, getting that back in balance is really understanding what am I gaining from this? And is it worth what I'm giving and being very conscious and intentional about that?
Erica D'Eramo 32:13
I... Yeah, I think one of the things that horrified me, the most that really did set me on this path towards like, self determination and agency was witnessing some of the managers who, like had made my life hellish at times, because their sole focus and sole source of identity and value was through their position and their career. And they gave everything, they sacrificed their family relationships, they sacrificed their health, they sacrificed everything. And in the end, they were made redundant, with no loyalty, right? Like, the loyalty went in one direction. And I think that that would be pretty tough to get through. I... My like heart goes out to people who have had an identity that they've really cloaked themselves in and believed in, just like ripped away from them, and probably like a sense of self worth and value. And I just hope that they got through that tough part. Like, long enough to be able to see what we've seen, which is that our self worth and our identity is not tied to the position that we have within within corporate, that it is inherent. Right? Because once you can get there, it is such a gift. It's so liberating.
Adam Forbes 33:35
Yeah, I totally agree. And one of the other things I think people really think fear is or once I lose, once I leave, I lose that identity. But you, you don't you carry it for as long as you want to carry it. I mean, there's rarely a week that goes past that I don't say when I was at BP, you know, or use some reference to what I learned there or saw there. It gives me enormous credibility, I don't need to even be working with the company to get that credibility. I, I have it because I worked there. And I think until the point at which I choose, it's no longer valuable to me or it's less, it's less, it's not appealing to the audience, or customers or whoever I'm working with, then I will still keep using that. And I think that's another point. You know, all of these things are a continuity really, they're not these big, you know, schisms in our lives, where where everything fractures, and we're either one thing or the other, of course they're not. I mean, this is the sort of really bad thinking that we can do when we're feeling trapped or when we feel when we feel like we have no options. We think it's it's everything is binary. And it never is, it's always a transition. There's always a spectrum. There's always a degree of choice about how involved you get with something or how far you want to step away and be an observer until you're ready.
Erica D'Eramo 34:56
It's like that putting your well being, your entire well-being in the hands of someone else who's not your family, right? I mean, that is such an interesting thing to like witness from afar. And I know that sometimes we are dependent on these entities for financial security. But it goes beyond that, right? Like we put our entire well-being sometimes in their hands. And when I, one of the questions I'll often ask clients is like, "Would you trust this person to pet sit for you? Would you trust this person to like, watch your beloved pet for a year?" Like whoever this whoever's doing your, your evaluations at the end of the year? If you don't say yes, like quickly, then why are you putting your self worth in their hands? Right? Like, they're not. They are not someone you would trust with their your loved ones, then don't trust... You should be your loved one, right? Like your self worth. It's like, give yourself caretaking.
Adam Forbes 35:55
There was a good example of that for me. And when I so when we I started to work more with startups. At the end of my time in BP. I got, I worked like an absolute dog in setting up this new unit that bench builder unit. And I thought it did so well. And the, I had a very, very senior line manager that didn't have much contact with me, I think he'd seen me like twice or something, you know, one of those. And he just gave me a very average rating. And I just couldn't believe it. I had worked, I mean, nobody around me would have thought this guy needs an average rating, because I was killing it. And, you know, and I was getting all this great feedback from the people I worked with. I mean, it was just a real shock. I was so disappointed. And this friend who was like entrepreneur never worked in a corporate before, and didn't last either. Just said to me, why do you care what he thinks? Why'd.. Why are you putting how you feel about yourself now, in his hands, when you've already told me that you've met him twice this year? Of course, he's not going to have anything. But the problem is if your whole system around you is built up around that, you know, financially, it actually didn't make much difference with us that grade or the grade above, you know, a couple of grand or something. But symbolically, I wanted to be the person that was that
Erica D'Eramo 37:11
That external affirmation. Yeah, it is 100%. That it's interesting, because we don't really talk about that a lot when getting out of corporate. But I do feel like that is one of the biggest berms to shore up, so to speak, like secondary containment, is that that's one of the things that goes away the quickest that I think people don't realize how... I don't want to say addicted to it they are, but how, how much gratification and satisfaction they get from that external affirmation. And so like, what are you going to do when you leave, and it's like radio silent for a little while, and you are your only source of both criticism. And satisfaction, and like affirmation. And that's where I, for me, I think coaches can be very helpful. Mentors can be very helpful, peer, like, peer connections, like you and I were very supportive and helpful through that transition, I think. What do you see that works?
Adam Forbes 38:17
Yeah, I totally agree with that. That is quite hard. Because yeah, my wife has a, you know, runs her own business, and very entrepreneurial, and, and, and sort of runs the family. And she's like, nobody's giving me, I always remember when I was at BP, no one is giving me a performance review. No one has given me a rating, or if they do, it's usually bad. You know, it's really and so I appreciate that. Now, you have to be the one that cheers yourself up in the mornings, you know, you can't just like, I mean, I'm not picking over in bed. But I mean, if I were, I could see how you might just like, you know, have a morning off occasionally. And I mean, I was very disciplined, because I feared that I could start spending too much time in the garden. But I do think that drive to know at the end of the day, you've done a good job, it all comes on to you now to do that. And I think it's amazing how quickly you take that on, because you have to first start, but I think it's in us all, instead of getting this external validation from, from a boss that doesn't see you more than twice a year or, or just getting the, you know, the, the ticks on your, on the documents that you produce. I mean that, you know, measuring your success by how much tracked changes is on the document, you know, that you've produced? It's that, you know, instead of any of that, you just have to look at yourself and say, "Is this working? Am I happy?" I mean, you do have to if you're like me, you have to look at the bank balance and say, Is there enough money coming in that pays for the life that we want? So there is a financial metric in my head too, but the main one is, do I think I've done a good enough job today? And sometimes I have to say no, right? You know, wasted the day, because that's also easy, but it was very easy also in a corporate corporate job, and that might be okay, but you can't do that five days running.
Erica D'Eramo 40:13
Yeah, I think also like, sometimes you'll do projects or you'll try stuff. And it will be a quote unquote, failure. And that's, I know, it sounds cliche, but that's like, literally, okay. And it's good. Because if you're not having any of those failures, you're not trying, you're not taking on enough risks, right? Like you're not pushing to expand and grow enough. If you have, if everything is like easy peasy, lemon squeezy, it's just not, then you're living in your comfort zone, still. That's, that's my opinion, I'll just say that.
Adam Forbes 40:50
No, I mean, that's mine, too, that sort of progress. And, you know, I was lucky, because I've known that kind of coasting. And I've known being really pushed in corporates, as well, when you are feeling very, very exposed. And so I know that I know, you can get both, and you actually can't handle too much of that being exposed all the time. So this is less exposing, in a way, because there's not so many people, you can really let down when you're working for yourself. Whereas when you're in a corporate, everyone can see that you you've failed. But you know, I set up a business, you know, Familiarize that we talked about, I mean, I've sort of changed it now. But I got funding from the UK Government to build this software product, I hired somebody, you know, I was, I mean, it was like, this is like, this is the life I'm going to lead. And it didn't work. And I've had to accept that. I mean, it's taken a bit of time to accept the failure of that, because I did start to invest a lot of myself in it, and financially, but also a lot, invested in a lot of my identity, I was going to be this product founder and I was going to really sell to loads of startups and and it didn't really work. But it led to other things. I mean, I wouldn't be doing this thing I'm doing at the moment, we Startup Bootcamp in Shell, if it wasn't for Familiarise. And building that product, I wouldn't have known how much I really don't like managing people, as much as I'd love to work for me, if I didn't do that, and have that responsibility of somebody else's salary and income, which was, which was pretty tough at the time. So I think all of these things are learning. And I felt like I was growing. And I was, you know, continually growing. But it didn't feel you know, I didn't feel like I was going to be exposed in front of lots of people, I suppose that feels quite different from when I was at BP whereas if you screwed up, everybody would know. And that was enough of an incentive for you to take as few risks as you can, with everything.
Erica D'Eramo 41:08
Yeah, and I do think it's hard to tell because we spent so many years there. And I think that in these, in some of these industries where the risk tolerance is quite low, like in energy, you know, heavy industry where people can make a bad decision and a lot of other people can die. I think that risk tolerance is naturally quite low. And I hear that and other corporates like Google, right, there's a lot more acceptance of taking risks, failing. And, and so I don't know how much of that is specific to ours. But I do think that just corporates in general, the way they naturally work, and the way the performance management works, and the way that competition within a corporate works, there are a lot of dissentives against taking risks, and getting those little failures to be able to learn. And the other thing in corporate like, yeah, everybody looks at it. But I think that failures can be leveraged against you in a corporate sometimes, like, people don't really forget that, like, you effed up that thing, and they're gonna, and that's their chance to edge you out or whatever. There's like that internal competition in a way that there isn't when you're your own boss.
Adam Forbes 44:10
Yeah, yeah, I guess you can move quite far away from things when you're your own boss, where you're kind of stuck there, aren't you, you know, either in the same team or in the vicinity of, of the team. I mean, you could move to the other side of the world, I suppose. But it's hard to character, sort of walk away from something that didn't work. I mean, and usually what you see, of course, is people are just blaming everybody else, rather than doing loans. But that's the easiest thing to do to say, actually, it has nothing to do with me it was either somebody's fault or something else external happened that made this not work. I mean, that's what I spent a lot scarce time. Yeah, I spent, you know, like something didn't happen that should have happened, you know, go through your annual report, your annual performance review and the things that you wrote in January, didn't happen, and you're just excusing them all really, I mean, most of them were out of my control, but still, there's a sort of sense of well delivered other stuff, you know, it's that that becomes the sort of mindset that what you plan to do isn't really delivered, but you kind of did on this stuff. So it all gets a bit forgiven and forgotten. But I think if you do really screw something up, it's hard to. Because the other thing is remember, all those people are coming in to do ratings of you and your boss goes in trying to defend you, but everybody else has to knock you to give their people.
Erica D'Eramo 45:22
That's what I mean. It's like naturally scarcity mindset like there. Yeah. Okay. So we've talked about something like maybe the risks involved in corporate life. What does corporate life give us? So what are some of the
Adam Forbes 45:39
Yeah, well, I think like I said, it's those skills and experiences that we start to, we build as soon as we join, we learn very quickly, because if we do something that's like, poor quality, it gets picked up very, very quickly by somebody else, often, not directly. But indirectly, you heard that what you did wasn't very, wasn't good enough, because it was redone by somebody the next level, up from you. So I think we get really focused on quality, I think we get really focused on like stakeholders, like I said, we get focused on risk, we're naturally more strategic, we connect things up really, really Well. So there are loads of really great things that we do, as corporates that we can monetize later. When we're there, there's loads of things we're getting too, we are getting that training, and I don't think because again, we're not really saying "I know this stuff, and it's quite valuable. And it's quite unique," we're often not appreciating it, while we're there, either. We're developing. So we feel like we're stagnating. And sometimes we are, but often we're not really we're, you know, we've grown, we're just not developing as fast maybe as we did when we first joined, because it's sort of incremental. Now, but there's so many benefits staying, when you're consciously doing it, I think, you know, when you've weighed it up, and you've said, right actually when I look at these things, what I'm gaining, and what I'm what it's costing me to work here, it makes sense. And I'm gonna stay for another year, and I won't waste time kind of moaning about it, I'm just going to commit for another year, and then I will objectively look at it again. And I think that that's a really good practice to have for anything you're doing. I mean, I will be doing that. And sure you will be doing that. You know, for free for all the things that you do you look at them critically and say, "Is this serving me? Is this adding something to me? Am I gaining from this?" and if you're not, you know, you change. You know, it's harder to do that in a corporate, it does feel a bit more binary, I've got to like find a new job in the corporate, I've got to find another corporate job. I guess I'm saying, there's definitely more you can do besides, besides that,
Erica D'Eramo 47:45
I think one of the other things it gives us that we aren't even conscious of until, until it gets put to use is like an expectation of, there's certain expectations that I think we have around, say quality of work, or consistency or follow through or things like that, that I didn't even realize I had until I left. Like for example, working with attorneys to get contracts marked up or to get like redlines done and stuff. And I just had, because I had been in this like smooth running machine, I had expectations of like, what that would look like. And then I realized, "Oh, that's not necessarily typical," but it set my, my expectations quite high, which I think can be a blessing and a curse, right? Like you'll be disappointed, I think when you get outside of the ecosystem. But it kind of sets that baseline that you then know what to look for when when working with people. And you can make again that conscious decision about like, "Okay, well, this doesn't need to be perfect, I'm okay with like, messy but creative." This thing doesn't meet my expectations. I'm not getting a quality service here out of X, Y or Z accountant or bookkeeper or lawyer or whatever service you've had to bring in, right?
Adam Forbes 49:11
Yeah, I think that's right. It's so again, it's always about knowing your customer list goes back to familiarize, really, you know, your customer, you know, what is the expectation in terms of quality or speed, or some other kind of metric that you're, you're you know, somebody's looking at you with and sometimes, what somebody, if you if what you the skills you have are all about quality, and are all about risk and then find customers that really, really value that.
Erica D'Eramo 49:40
Right.
Adam Forbes 49:41
If you really want something that's all about your creativity or how great you are. Or your planning is really great. You know, whatever it might be, yeah, you're really fast at turning things, things around, find those customers. And I think that's the bit of laziness. Sometimes that kit stops us from leaving, because we just think oh, "Oh there's not customers that would, there aren't the customers for what I do." But actually there are customers always, it's just that you've got to hunt them down, you've got like anybody in sales, you've got to go and find the customers that need you more than they need somebody else or that, you know, because those ones there will absolutely lap up the skills that you've got. I mean, in most cases, I've seen this dull people, dumb people in corporates that nobody wants in the corporate or outside of God, but the good people, which is the majority, I mean, you know, BP people super bright, they're very capable people often quite boxed into a much smaller role than they could do. So unleash those people, they can add enormous value elsewhere. But they do need to do that work to say, "Where am I most valuable? Because not everyone will like what you offer."
Erica D'Eramo 50:51
Yeah, actually, I, from a marketing perspective, I think there's probably some benefit, if you have, if you don't look around, if you look around you, you don't see tons of people clamoring for your product, actually, in a way that's kind of good. It's, it's not great if there's no one. But if there's not a lot, that means that there's probably a smaller niche market out there, that's not being served. And you have much less competition than if you've got a bunch of your ideal clients like waving their hands and already being served by all of these other. Like, yeah.
Adam Forbes 51:27
Definitely. But you know, you also trick another thought in me as well around networks. So networks, you know, when you're in, when you're in, within the corporate, your network is really the corporate, I mean, they're the people that have most control over what you're doing. When you come outside, of course, it changes it needs to all be external, there's no internal anymore. So but I'm always amazed how many people I met, who worked for the for corporate, so you know, agencies or contractors, consultants, that I'm in touch with that open things up for me. So yeah, so you know, those sorts of niches there, they can come they those niches emerge there, because through that consultancy or that agency that did one thing that they know you for. So there's this agency, I do some work for occasionally, that does video production. I mean, they're great video production. And they actually are really good at storytelling, but that's one of the things I'm quite good at. And so I just do little bits of storytelling work for them, it helps the client makes costs a bit lower for the client, it helps them winning work in effect for for the agency, very sort of niche. And it's quite technical, technology based field. So it's quite niche, it but it's just enough. And I've got a bit of capability and experience that I built up in BP, at BP's cost, in effect, that I now can go and make money out of those niches via the network. So I think become really, really interesting avenues to explore. And yeah, make potentially make make a name for me certainly make some money from.
Erica D'Eramo 53:00
Yeah. So one thing that you mentioned that I do just want to revisit quickly was you mentioned like the doors closing behind. And, in a way I see that. I have also seen people, though, that have left, have done their own thing, maybe gone to another smaller business, done their own entrepreneurship, and then ended up back with more contacts more like lived experiences. And because they had a good reputation when they left and they left on good terms, right. Like it was it was all good. They have come like that people do sometimes come back, but it's with a very different mindset. And I think you kind of mentioned that, right? Like, the part about it's the it's the intentionality of it.
Adam Forbes 53:48
Yes, that's exactly that's exactly it, if you walk into it really conscious of what you're what you're now leaving behind to go and join that. And you and you weigh that up, and you think this is actually what I want. I mean, I would I wouldn't say never, ever to to work out in a corporate even BP potentially. Yeah, I'm not sure. But potentially even BP, I wouldn't say no to working. Providing it was different. The experience was different. And it would be different, right? Because I'm different. now. My expectations are a bit different. I wouldn't just go in just to do what I did before, certainly. And I think you know, like we've talked haven't been over the last few years. You do get these wobbles sometimes when you think, oh gosh, it would just be easier to have a job stable income. I don't have to think about anything. That's not quite true either. I don't think about anything some work for
Erica D'Eramo 54:41
The grass is always greener.
Adam Forbes 54:42
It's the grass is always greener, but you know, it's quite it's quite attractive when you're having a bit of a rough day. You know, you find yourself on LinkedIn and all of a sudden you actually even looking at job description. I mean, it's happened to me many times because I saw every so often crave something, whether it's They tell us whether it's stability, whether it's whether it's somebody might value me, you know, and give me the attaboy and you know, whether it's, you know, the job sounds interesting, you know, whatever it might be. So but we have to be careful, I think you just have to go into these things not because you're reacting to where you are today that's not working that part of what's not working, and make sure that you're choosing it really consciously, really deliberately, for really good reasons. The other thing of course that flips, I guess this happens, I don't know, maybe it's less than less now. But, you know, I left and you left probably like me on reasonably good terms, like financial terms, we walked away with a bit of a buffer, which gave us some security and allowed us to take a bit more risk. But if I went into a corporate job, now those terms wouldn't be the same. Well, firstly, I wouldn't have done the years, but also the terms have all changed, you know, the final salary pensions aren't there, the, the, the offer is much less than it was when you walked in 20 years ago. So I think the ties are much looser now between employed person and employer, particularly one that has value and proves that they have value outside. So I think that definitely changes the dynamic. So you might say, instead of thinking, oh I'm going to work here for 10 years, you might think I might just work here for 18 months or two years and do and do and have some stability, you know, connecting with the network, again, maybe learn some new skills, take a breather, you know, then come back out again, right. And that becomes an option now, whereas part of the reason I stayed was that the package was actually quite appealing to stay rather than leave. And I think, again, that's all changing. Lots of companies don't offer those same terms. And so your return stays maybe less strong than it was.
Erica D'Eramo 56:55
Yeah. I, I think when I initially did the evaluation, and I did my little spreadsheet, that exercise was not to convince myself to leave. That exercise was actually to convince myself to stay by doing like a full accounting of my values. And just saying, like, Okay, if you stay, let's make sure that you feel like really confident and, and secure in that decision so that you're not like, wishing you didn't miss the boat on this. And then the output was like, "Oh, crap," like it was it was glaring. It was glaring when I when I really did a full accounting of my values, and like what was important to me, and that I think that accounting over time, it doesn't, you know, it morphs and it changes and evolves, but it's, I think it's important to like, keep that document live, so to speak, and just keep revisiting like, what's most important to you? Because as you test some of these theories out about like, okay, freedom is most important to me. Okay, cool. Now you got freedom. Is it still? Is it? Or is it security?
Adam Forbes 58:02
Yeah, because the grass is greener there, right. So you were looking at freedom, imagining it was going to be, you know, long, leisurely lunches, and just like walks that could just take all afternoon, and suddenly, no, I'm here now. So I've got to do the school run. I kind of drink at lunchtime. Of course, I've got a meeting at two o'clock, you know, all those sorts of ideas, ideals you have, I suppose thinking is? Well, you're talking about the spreadsheet? How did I have something like that? No, the thing is, so I made the decision kind of instinctively. But on the day that I had to click the button, I had a call with the coach I work with. And she said and I said to her I'm just not sure because I think my boss had said to me "Are you sure you really want to do it?" Maybe it was giving me doubt. And she said to me, "I have six months time" yeah "six months time, so you've stayed, six months time you're looking back at this decision you know, you're in a job you landed okay in the restructure. Six months time, you're looking back at today, and what are you thinking? And I just said that I made the worst bloody decision of my life. And it was based on that. That's an I, almost within like a minute of the phone call, I clicked the email saying I definitely want to accept.
Erica D'Eramo 59:17
You know what that reminds, that reminds me, Annie Duke wrote a book she she was the professional poker player, but she she wrote, she's written a couple of really interesting books, but one of them that she wrote more recently was called Quit. And she does a similar like thought experiment with people about, you know, six months down the line five years down the line, what is the likelihood that you are happy? And if you're like, it's like, 10% Right? Okay, fine. So you quit the job. You leave. What's the likelihood that you are happy? And it's like 50% Okay, Well, then you have your answer like it's, you will never have all of the information, you will never have all you can do is make a decision in the current moment.
Adam Forbes 1:00:05
Yes, but I could, I could visualize what I'm not even visually I could actually feel how I feel I could properly project forward. And I found myself some, a worse job than I had, then and I just thought, Oh, my God, you idiot, you had that opportunity, because a number of the restructures happen, and I'd hoped I would get made redundant and I didn't. And, you know, I didn't want to volunteer then. So I thought this could be like, 10 years, this opportunity again, and I didn't want to leave, leave it that long.
Erica D'Eramo 1:00:37
Yeah.
Adam Forbes 1:00:38
But, but I'm glad we've also talked about, you know, some of the positives there, because I do think, you know, I don't want, I don't want the Corporate Escapologist to be all about, you know, what you're leaving behind. And it's, it was all terrible there. Because there were so many great things. I mean, you know, like we've talked about before. Great people you meet, great opportunities, stuff you'd never dream of doing as a kid that you would, you would end up doing, and there's lots to gain from it. As long as it's in equilibrium with what you're, it's costing you. And I think that's the, that's the really key thing. And, and never letting yourself become a prisoner to that really. Always consciously thinking that, yeah, I'm gaining just enough, it's okay. But I need to do something next year, because if it goes on like this, then I'm gonna, there's a deficit here. And it's, it's, it's all pain to me. And that's when I think, you know, just to be really practical. That's when I think things like mentoring are really good side hustles are really good pro bono work is really good volunteering, you know, doing something your community, doing things that test some of these skills and give you that confidence that you could do this outside. So I was doing quite a bit of mentoring before I left, left BP with startups. And so I've got that sense, I could do this. I don't know whether I can make money from it. But I believe I've got something valuable. I started a bunch of businesses before none of them would really worked so maybe there was something in that. But I sort of tested the idea of running my own business, I was entrepreneurial, where did I have gaps that I needed to, to fill to de-risk some of this leap that you make. And I think that's really what this book that I'm writing Corporate Escapology is all about, preparing and part of preparing for corporate people is about de risking this, you know, part of it is about opening up and seeing different ways and being inspired by what others are doing. Part of it is systematically, because that's how we think, de-risking that jump so that you don't land on the other side and have huge regrets and have to come crawling back saying can I have my job back?
Erica D'Eramo 1:02:46
Yeah, I mean, prototyping, right, like that little prototyping or beta testing, that we can do. I started Two Piers several years before I finally made the leap right night. And so I was I was sort of prototyping that whole time. And it went through many iterations. So the answer is not like, "Will this work?" But it's like, "how many times will I iterate before it works?" And actually, it might be infinite, right? It might just be a continual evolution and morphing, and that's not failure. It's just, you're experimenting?
Adam Forbes 1:03:25
Yeah, exactly. But I think you can do a bunch of that when you're working in the corporate. Yeah, particularly these days, of course. So when people are working from home, the side hustles are endless. But yeah, I think use that because that will, that will give you the confidence that what you're leaping to is more likely to succeed. And if it's not, then you find that out without having sacrificed too much. Right? That's a big part of what I talk about, really, how what could you do now that could give you the confidence that we're, you know, the to ultimately make that leap without taking that big leap into the unknow. I mean, like the idea of just like walking out without anything, I mean, would it feel would fill me with absolute horror and, and dread something like that. And I, you know, I've got a reasonably high tolerance of risk, but just the idea of doing walking out, of course we've all felt like, it at various times when we didn't have good days, but luckily, our corporate training kicks in and says, "Okay, we need to manage for this. We need to look at the options. We need to really try to get a sense of can we do anything? Can we do anything about this? Are we are we powerless or have we got options?"
Erica D'Eramo 1:04:40
And I think that there is by setting that, not buffer but like, you know, by kind of playing around beforehand and building some of those muscles and tolerance for failure like learning you know, how to learn by tripping up and and adjusting and all that. I think that when you do eventually make the leap that you you can take more risks you can, you can you're not as bound, you're not bound as tightly by that fear of failure, that really restricts the risks that you're willing to take at that point. And so I know that that's not feasible for everybody, like, especially if the, the transition is not made by choice, and people haven't been planning for it, then it can, you know, it can feel like the stakes are super high, and you got one chance to nail it or, or else. But that type of decision making of like the "Do or die," it really restricts how much you can play with it, and how, how much you can learn with it. So, to whatever extent you can create that environment that allows for a little bit of play, I think that's really important.
Adam Forbes 1:05:57
Yeah, I agree. I mean, I mean, I, again, feel hugely sympathetic for those people that are faced with that shock. And so, but I suppose now, I think you didn't need to be shocked by this, you didn't need to feel that you were so safe. Getting a sec, just because you got a paycheck, a track record of paychecks did not mean that you were going to get that going forward. And, you know, anybody that looks in, you know, the paper or online, they see that, you know, then you have all the great companies that we we think of today are the Googles, and the Facebook's, and everybody, they all doing these big, it's not something that just old industry companies are doing it, so nobody is safe anymore. I mean, I don't want to be like Doom, Doom bearing. But if you are tying your success, and your family success and your, your future success to somebody else, regardless of whether it's a big company or small, you know, you need to wake up, because that is unlikely to be a good strategy for the next 10 or 15-20 years.
Erica D'Eramo 1:07:02
Even if you're really really good at your job, even if you have gotten great performance ratings, like we saw with some of the Google layoffs and similar companies like, it didn't matter, some of the metrics behind the decisions had nothing to do with your performance, it might have been like that entire department was going, it might be you know, you really just you don't know and not to like, put the fear of God and everyone, I just think that by visualizing that and feeling the agency that you have in advance about what that could look like it can make that transition much easier. And how many people do we talk to you where the decision was not theirs? And it might take six months or a year? But they're like, oh, my god, that was the best thing that ever happened to me actually. Right? Because I would have never done it on my own.
Adam Forbes 1:07:51
But of course it was it.
Erica D'Eramo 1:07:52
It opens up the world.
Adam Forbes 1:07:54
Exactly opens up. And I think that key word is agency there because you don't have agency really, when you're in a working for a company or you have limited agency. This is proper agency, right? I can do anything to a degree, what am I going to do that it's going to be the most successful and sensible for that stage of life I'm at. And you know, a really powerful thing that you can be doing, of course, when from within the safety of a salaried income is be building your network outside is be looking at the relationships. I mean, one of the things that I think I failed that I knew this was coming, but probably 75% of my LinkedIn connections were in BP, I mean, we have that thing called the GAL, Outlook, I could contact all these people much more easily on email. But for some reason,
Erica D'Eramo 1:08:42
GAL, for anyone who wasn't internal. what was it? The global access?
Adam Forbes 1:08:48
Yes, basically, yeah, Outlook just opens up. And yet, I still had all these contacts in BP in LinkedIn that you know, that love, they were largely useless. They're not now I suppose. But but you know, investing time and building a network outside is never a bad thing. You don't have to be like a super networker to do all of that stuff. But you just being, again, being very intentional. This is what I'm interested in. Let me go and see if I can find communities of people or people talking about this stuff. Very, very sensible to just be doing that continuously rather than have a big panic that I now need to expand my network, which no one likes. So, you know, just even if it's like, let me see if I can go and connect with five people this week or this ten people this month or something that are outside of the company I work for and just expand my network. I mean, it's a good idea anyway, you could do it for that there may be jobs going in those companies that would be suitable for but it just opens up opportunities.
Erica D'Eramo 1:09:44
And it gives you a chance to like pick people's brains about a day in the life. You know, like, this is what this is what the real world looks like. You want to open a bakery? Okay, this is what it looks like. Go talk to a baker go shadow for a day.
Adam Forbes 1:09:57
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Erica D'Eramo 1:09:59
So for people who want to know more about what you're doing, like what, what are how do they connect with you? How do they engage with your work? If they're considering this? What's the best way for them to like
Adam Forbes 1:10:10
I write a blog - Corporate Escapologist.
Erica D'Eramo 1:10:13
Okay. Yeah, I do know that and I, that's how I found you actually
Adam Forbes 1:10:16
That's how we got to know each other.
Erica D'Eramo 1:10:18
We didn't know each other in BP.
Adam Forbes 1:10:20
No operations people hate marketing people. So,
Erica D'Eramo 1:10:25
Hey, I don't hate anybody. I don't understand them, that's all.
Adam Forbes 1:10:34
Yeah, so the blog is the best thing. So I write that every week. And it's, and it's sort of coalescing into a book. So I'm writing a book, that will definitely happen this year. So I've started the book, which is talking through some of that, those steps really to take to prepare. So getting ready for moving and opening your mind to different ways of working different opportunities may not thought off and helping you sort of critically evaluate your skills and experiences, dealing with the wobbles, all of that kind of stuff. And then, and then yeah, I help people that are, are leaving, you know, or wanting to leave, you know, so coaching, advising whatever you call it, so you can find me on corporateescapology.com
Erica D'Eramo 1:11:20
Dot com. Yes. And, and on LinkedIn you're on LinkedIn. People can connect?
Adam Forbes 1:11:27
Yeah, Instagram is probably coming. It is coming. I did do some
Erica D'Eramo 1:11:32
I'm surprised the marketer isn't all over Insta.
Adam Forbes 1:11:34
Yeah well, it's just a bit of work, isn't it? But I think, again, there's a lot of people that, you know, on LinkedIn that are going through some of these things, and I think, you know, you see people helping, and I think maybe that could be a way to find people I can help.
Erica D'Eramo 1:11:49
Yeah, 100% I agree, reels, TikTok, maybe? Videos, reels. But in reality, though, I think that this is, your messaging. All kidding aside, your messaging really does hit some very, like emotional, you know, internal parts for people. And so I think like seeing your story, hearing you talk can be really an awakening moment for folks who have felt like they're just in the flow, they have to, like, stick with the momentum of their corporate career. They don't have, they don't have any oars in the boat, you know, I think that.
Adam Forbes 1:12:32
Yeah, I hope so. And, you know, I'm going to do a podcast, of course, everyone's going to do a podcast, I am going to do a podcast, because I don't want this just to be Adam Forbes, his story, because that's not that wouldn't inspire many people, I think I want to, I want to hear from other people who've gone through this journey, come out the other side, and have built a life that is more interesting, more fulfilling, or rewarding, whatever it might be
Erica D'Eramo 1:12:57
More value aligned?
Adam Forbes 1:12:59
Exactly more aligned with their values, maybe it's freeing up the time to do something else, that they care about more, because I think that is the way to, again, de-risk this for other people that they see other people are making a success of this. Because of those corporate experiences and skills and knowledge. You know, it's not, oh, yeah, there's these people have just done something amazing. Now, actually, they only did this because they had done what you've done. They've worked in a corporate for 10 or 15 years. And we're always saying what great things that entrepreneurs and startup founders, you know, all the things that they learn really, really rapidly and how they can go on and do X, Y and Zed offers. It's not that different from different skills, but it's not different people who've worked in these big companies, they know stuff, they can do stuff that others can't do, or that you know, they do it better. They do it faster. They can help.
Erica D'Eramo 1:13:49
Yeah, I absolutely agree.
Adam Forbes 1:13:52
I'm holding the placard up for corporate people, which is something I never thought I'd do to be honest. But I see it now. I see. Yeah, I see the I see the I see people, but I can see in them that they doubt that they can do something outside. You know, I see it I asked them, you know, "could you help them with so and so? And or could you speak to this person?" Or do you think, um, do you think they need that? Do you think they'd want that from me, you know, people questioning themselves because they're so used to doing what they do here. They can't imagine it could be useful to someone there and I hate that, I hate seeing people undervalue themselves and, and and stop themselves from doing things that they could do particularly as to help somebody because they feel that they haven't got the skills or the they don't feels self worth.
Erica D'Eramo 1:14:47
Yeah, I guess there are days you know, when I have my wobbles, there are days where I'm just like, what am I doing? And then usually somebody in my network somebody you know, or a client or whatever will say like, "Thank God, you're here. Thank goodness." And I remember, right? This is why I'm doing it. It's because I'm trying to help people, right? Like, I don't want to take that away.
Adam Forbes 1:15:10
It's the big motivator, I think, I think it's the big motivator. And startups get that, because they have this whole focus on giving first, you know, there's a real sort of ethos in the startup community that you give first, and you don't expect to get a return. And corporates it's not always like that, to be honest, there's a bit of more taking that's going on there. And whether it's intentional or not, the effect is a bit more taking. And, and I think it's a really good practice to have. And I think you find business that way you increase your network that way by helping you enrich your life that way by helping, I think it's, you know, it's a strategy for life. And it's not Kumbaya, it's just, it's, it's, it makes sense, as well as being a nice thing to do.
Erica D'Eramo 1:15:54
Yeah, like this podcast, right? Like, I don't have any marketing on this podcast. It's not a revenue stream. It's just a way for people to get access to some resources to some insights from other people. But it's so enriching for me too, because I get to talk to people like you who are just fascinating to talk to. So yeah.
Adam Forbes 1:16:17
I also really enjoyed it. I mean, I yeah, I mean, this. We talked about Brooke Taylor. I mean, I love that Brooke Taylor podcast. anybody listening to this podcast? Now there is anybody listen to that one. That is such a great podcast there but whole idea was...
Erica D'Eramo 1:16:33
The episode. Yeah.
Adam Forbes 1:16:36
Is it called Success Wound or something like that?
Erica D'Eramo 1:16:37
Yeah, the success wound? Yeah. It was.
Adam Forbes 1:16:40
She's basically writing this book for that's gone up the ranks, and as has, you know, has worked hard all her life, just to get the pats on the back. And she said, I'm not happy. And she was drinking and everything, you know, because she was just trying to find some release from the pain that she was going on until she decides to do something different. And I have a lot of people, there are a lot of people like that, that she's a good example of somebody that's like, leveraged what she's got to create something valuable to help others. It's absolutely brilliant. I love that story.
Erica D'Eramo 1:17:13
That's great to hear, actually, because I really thought when we recorded that episode, I was like, "oh, man, this is gonna resonate deeply with a lot of the women that I worked with in corporate." like, I could totally see it. But see, there you go. I had this idea that like it would really resonate with the women in corporate and here we have this dude, who is an entrepreneur, outside of corporate and you enjoyed that episode, too!
Adam Forbes 1:17:39
I really enjoyed it. I thought it was such a it's such an evocative title isn't success wound, because it's slightly things like opposite, but you see it, and I see it in my children, you know, I see him doing it to my children by celebrating all the great successes of school. And, you know, it goes on and on and on perpetuating and corporates are a great vehicle for that. I think, you know, as you come out of that, and you have to define your own success and measure your own success. Yeah, you know, you're liberated from a lot of that.
Erica D'Eramo 1:18:10
It's that internal versus external. Yeah. 100%. Well, this has been such a great conversation. Any final thoughts you want to leave people with?
Adam Forbes 1:18:23
Well, I suppose the main one is about creating options for yourself, I just think that is a sensible way to live. These days, create options, don't, don't give your options to somebody else. Don't believe that you can rely on, I don't want to say rely on anybody apart from yourself, rely on your family, but you know, you, you can't rely on a business to take care of you. And I don't think you need to if you've had 10 or 15 years in a company, you've got some really, really great skills out there, go and use them, build a really happy life using them.
Erica D'Eramo 1:19:00
I love that. I love that final note. And for anyone listening and anyone listening that wants to find more resources, see what we're all about. And maybe is you know, thinking about making some transition and wants a little bit of support, you can find Adam's resources that he mentioned, and Two Piers offers coaching as well. And we offer plenty of coaching for folks who are evaluating their values and their paths and our options. And you can find us at twopiersconsulting.com And you can find Adam's work at corporateescapologist.com And we'll put that link in the show notes. And you can always find us on the socials twopiersconsult. And one day Adam also will be active on social. Thanks for joining us this episode and and, yeah, we look forward to seeing what you're up to.