The second of my Escapology Live cohorts finished up this week and, just as with the first, there was a whole lot of interest in the experiments that I’ve run since leaving my corporate job.
I listed out eleven for them – including applying for BA pilot training – and to be honest I’d be surprised if this was even 10% of things I’ve tried.
My first year of leaving BP I grandly titled “My year of experimentation”, partly to commit to try lots of things and partly to draw a very clear contrast with what came before.
The experiments are of course important. They are where I learned (mostly) what did not work. And by ‘not work’ I also mean what didn’t feel right, what I didn’t enjoy, as much as what didn’t make money.
But it was also building an experimental mindset that was important.
I don’t think I properly knew myself leaving my corporate career. And it was difficult to trust myself.
I was carrying a lot of baggage: old and bad thinking, wrong assumptions about the outside world, small views of myself.
The experiments made me braver – and push myself more.
They put me in uncomfortable places – where I wasn’t that good; where I was having to learn on-the-fly and pretend that I had more experience or skill than I really had.
And, of course, sometimes I landed flat on my face.
Yesterday, I was talking on a webinar about mentoring. I talked about my first foray into startup mentoring, which backfired badly when the startup founder said “I think I’ve had enough of this” and hung up.
Mortifying.
But I learnt then that good mentoring is an awful lot more about listening than telling; the mentor’s own agenda is always less important than what the startup needs.
The great thing about experiments, however, is that you can change a variable and repeat the experiment.
But experiments can require some humility.
One of the people in the Escapology Live cohort, quite reasonably, asked, “Don’t you worry about your reputation if you’re always trying things out in the open?”
It’s a fair question. Of course I do. I told them I worry every week writing this blog, posting something on LinkedIn, telling you about my new venture More to Give, emailing someone for the fifth time to say I’d like to work with them and I have some availability.
It was all MUCH easier in a job, with a clearly defined role, identity, some (borrowed) status…
But I also have much more fun making myself vulnerable. That sounds strange I know. But I think I make much stronger connections faster with people than I ever did before.
I couldn’t have dreamed four years ago that I would have run four separate group programmes with super-smart corporate people and they would send me the feedback they do.
I couldn’t dream that I’d still be writing a blog every week and having so many of you message me with how it made you feel.
I would like a few more of you to CLICK ‘LIKE’ BELOW so that Substack shares it with more people, but I would never want to trade a ‘like’ for the emails and whatsapps you send!
My whole working life still feels like one big experiment. And at 50 that feels a pretty decent way to live it. I’m glad I don’t always know what’s going to appear in my inbox because I’ve kicked so many things off over the past six months or so.
Maybe it will be a Roman Candle that fizzles out to nothing – or blows up in my face. Or maybe it’ll be a show like New Year on the Thames.
That lack of predictability (counterbalanced by the anchor client that pays the bills) reminds me every day how lucky I am to have escaped.
Quick note on More to Give. This is the mentoring platform I mentioned last week. Thanks so much to those of you who have signed up to join my waitlist. I’ve decided I’m going to run a three-month pilot and test the concept. A proper experiment to test demand from both corporate mentors and expertise-hungry startups, as well as my own competence.
If you’re interested, you can read more here – and sign up.
We’ll start with a quick phone call just to check you’re right – and the pilot’s right for you.
Talking of pilots, there’s a small update on the BA pilot training – somewhat incredibly with a fuzzy head on Sunday morning I managed to pass the Maths test. I do not know how I did it – all those distance over time and speed or whatever it was. And then a ‘Detail’ test, another test of my weakness. I am quickly gaining the read of the ideal candidate, and it’s not false modesty to say it probably aint me. But it’s fun experimenting.