Have you ever done something that makes everyone you know shake their heads in disbelief?

For me the first one that springs to mind was when I put the kettle on the stove and lit the gas.

I only remembered it was an electic kettle made of plastic when it set on fire.  Shake shake.

This is closely followed by my decision to quit my job as a senior manager at Deloitte to start my coaching business.

“What on earth are you thinking about, leaving behind all that security?”

“You’re mad, completely bonkers”

“I know you don’t like it, but really?”

One friend simply burst into tears.

If you’re thinking about leaving behind your safe job that makes you miserable you’ll be worried about the same reaction.

It’s a massive brave step to set off on a new path. 

The team that wrote the How to Find Work You Love Guide all took this massive leap.

Why we did it…

We all had objectively successful jobs at Deloitte, E&Y, E&Y, Yahoo and the LSE.

Yet we all had something in common – we felt there was more to life than work that didn’t feel fulfilling.

In my case I was a forensic accountant, yet I don’t like numbers and really dislike details.  Conversely I love people and helping them to make the most of their potential.

I felt an urge to do work I felt passionate about, that I enjoyed and that served my drive to help others make the most of their lives.

Before I took the leap I spent a lot of time to figure out how to make that happen.  I did a lot of self-reflection, made a long term plan and figured out my first steps.

Having this in place helped me overcome my fear, the incredulity of the people around me and take my bold step with confidence.

I was lucky to have a coach to help me structure my thinking, without that guidance I’d probably still be stuck where I was.

Why we wrote How to Find Work You Love

From experience, everyone makes changes their own way.

If you’re contemplating a new career direction, starting your own business or a new direction, you’ll want to do it your way.

How to Find Work You Love is designed to put the power in your hands to make this change.  It provides you with the tools and structure to successfully make your change.

We’ve boiled down the important steps you might take into a series of powerful exercises and inspiring ideas.

The guide will:

• Support you in figuring out what work will make you tick
• Enable you to create a powerful vision of the life and work you want
• Embolden you to take your first steps (regardless of what anyone else thinks)
• Inspire you by sharing the wisdom of Escapees who have already trodden the path

We’ve all taken this journey and wish that this Guide had existed when we started out.  It might have saved us from a lot of head shaking.

———————————————————————————————–

To join the waiting list for the How to Find Work You Love e-book (and get a discount) – please click here.

Related posts:

1. Advice for ‘Starting Something You Love’ – #36: Phil Bolton
2. Steve Jobs: ‘You’ve Got To Find What You Love’
3. How To Find A Job You Love

Please come to our next Escape Meetup at the Adam Street Entrepreneurs Club in central London after work on Tuesday 24th January.

To attend please click here.

The first Escape meetup of 2012

If you are reading this the chances are that you’re a professional of some sort. The fact that you’re on Esc means that you are probably interesting in exploring exciting options and alternatives outside of the corporate mainstream. Or you might already have made the leap and you keen to meet like-minded people doing entrepreneurial and adventurous things.

Either way – you’re in the right place! Our last meetup in 2011 was a massive success with almost 200 people cramming into the main bar at Adam Street to discuss escaping the city to start-up, to move to a different industry / job / country, or to go on a big adventure.

There is no set structure to this evening but if you are interested in starting a business, changing career, or going on a big adventure and would like to network, mingle and chat with a bunch of people in a similar boat, please come along.

There are always a wide variety of people at Esc events (career changers, entrepreneurs, wannabe entrepreneurs, and adventurers) and the conversations will be about anything related to living life on your own terms.

Don’t be shy… come along!

To attend please click here.

How do these evenings work?

• STRUCTURE: Informal friendly gathering based the concept that there is more to life than doing work that doesn’t matter to you. Escaping the rut is easier and more fun if you can get help, advice and encouragement from people in the same boat.

• DATE & TIMINGS: Tuesday 24th January. From 7 pm onwards (bar open till late).

• HOST: Rob will be hosting the evening (@escroberto) and various other members of The Esc Team will be there too. We’ll be wearing Esc stash – come and say hi.

• LOCATION: Adam Street, 9 Adam Street, The Strand, Charing Cross, London, WC2N 6AA. Nearest Tube/Rail: Charing Cross. Food is available to order from the restaurant menu. Drinks aplenty too.

• RSVP:  Adam Street is a private members club. To get your name on the list please RSVP via our Meetup page (click here) please drop Rob (rob@escapethecity.org) an email if there is something specific you would like to let us know about.

• Other things you can do in advance of attending: On our Meetups page you can add a comment explaining who you are and what you’re looking to get out of the evening - this will enable us to help you make better connections before, during and after the Meetup.

What is an Esc Meetup?

Escape the City Meetups are your opportunity to meet likeminded people in an informal environment - be they corporate professionals looking to do something different or escapees who have already made the big leap away from the corporate world.

Whether you are looking for an exciting job, starting your own business, or going on a big adventure – at our Meetups you’ll meet people in the Esc community who share your enthusiasm for building a career outside the corporate mainstream and who will hopefully be able to help you on your way.

Click here for the global list of all Esc Meetups.

PS. Our Meetups are different from our Esc Wednesdays because they a) are free and b) don’t have a formal speaker. They are your opportunity to meet fellow Esc members in your city in a friendly and relaxed environment.

Related posts:

1. Please come to our October London Meetup (Theme: Start-ups & the Internet)
2. 6 things Adele learnt about the Esc community at Wednesday’s Meetup
3. All these people are willing to help you…

“It is impossible, obviously, to believe that anyone’s life is pre-destined – but who knows what is programmed into an individual’s chromosomes, into their DNA?  Perhaps each of us, irrespective of class and other variables, is born with a propensity towards a certain kind of living.  Each of us has a code which, in the right conditions, will be able to make itself utterly apparent; if an individual’s circumstances are far removed or totally at odds with that initial biological programming, it may hardly be able to make itself felt circumstantially – but all life long that individual will feel the undertow, the tug of a destiny rooted in biology, urging him, only slightly perhaps, away from the life he has.  The dissatisfaction and pointlessness that a rich a successful man feels on contemplating all that he has achieved in life is perhaps the faint echo of an initial code that he has thwarted, evaded, but can never quite silence.  But a certain way of life will enable you to get closer to that initial blurred blueprint.  Perhaps this is what it means to live in truth, even a disappointed truth.”

“Going back to live in England: it was difficult to think of four words more redolent of defeat because what they actually meant was going back to living so deeply within his limitations he would not even be aware that they were limitations: they would pass themselves off as contentment.”

“Paris Trance” by Geoff Dyer

http://www.amazon.com/Paris-Trance-Geoff-Dyer/dp/0374229813

Related posts:

1. What I should be doing with my life?
2. On Not Following A Deferred Life Plan…
3. Esc ‘How-To’ #3: How to work out what to do with your life

5 Things Adele Learned from Last Night’s Esc Wednesday:  ‘How we built our careers around our passions’

Last night deep underground in London’s Adam Street Club, Ben Keene and Dave Cornthwaite, told us their stories.

One of them rented a Fijian island. The other skateboarded from one coast of Australia to another. As you do.

I doubt I was alone in feeling extremely boring in comparison to last night’s awesomely special guest speakers.

[Scroll to the bottom to see details for how to enter the 'Escape List' Adam Street free evening membership life-changing competition!]

Escape the City, Escape Wednesdays from Step One on Vimeo.

So who are these characters?

Ben founded Tribewanted (Fiji and Sierra Leone) – their mission is to build sustainable communities in amazing places that benefit locals and visiting members; inspiring positive change within and far beyond the village. Ben’s website and his Esc Hero profile.

Dave is a world record-breaking adventurer, author, and motivational speaker. He is four journeys into his £1,000,000 Expedition1000 project: 25 x 1000+ mile journeys, each using a different form of non-motorised transport Dave’s website and his Esc Hero profile.

This is what I learnt:

1. You can’t just stumble upon your passion.

Dave talked about how we all have passions. Often, it’s just difficult to figure out what they are. Remaining in the same environment doesn’t bring you different results – you need exposure to the world in order to figure out your place in it. When Dave was 25, he had a house, girlfriend, cat, steady job – but he could help but feel like there was more to life. He had no idea what he was passionate about, but it was travel that changed him.

2. Comfort kills ambition like nothing else.

Dave had studied Maths, gone to university, and was comfortable in his mortgage and with a steady pay cheque – but he soon realised that he had never asked himself what he wanted out of life, what made him happy. Being happy and being comfortable are not the same thing.

3. These things don’t happen overnight.

We all need money to live. Developing your passion and turning it into sustainable revenue is a process that can take years, not months. Dave had been skateboarding for 18 months, from one end to Australia to the other, but had no idea what to do the day after he finished.

Ben: “You can have cool ideas but not know where they’re going… [taking the leap] is the only way you find out. Just by following something and sticking with it… opportunities arise.”

4. Being brave doesn’t protect you from disaster.

Ben had a crazy story about his first three months with Tribewanted – in summary, there was a fire, cyclone, scam accusation, and coup. However, he and the business made it through – and now the episode is a story that he tells at events like last night’s…

I was marvelling at how he just talked about ‘raising finance’ and renting an island’ as if it was as easy as anything else. Then I realised, a lot of things ARE very easy – they’re practical things and can be broken down into steps that need to be taken. It’s emotional fear that gets in our way or makes us think that things are harder than they actually are.

5. Belonging is a human need.

Ben talked about how Tribewanted created a different ‘scene’ in Fiji, one where evenings were spent sitting around the fire, sharing stories and playing guitar and drinking kava. All tourists who came, he said, fell in love with romanticism of belonging to community.

Community – feel like you really belong somewhere and playing your little part. Can live sustainably because you can see it. Idea of belonging was really strong. Different from scene of western definition of Fiji. Real Fiji.

Massive thank you to Ben and Dave for last night’s talk. The Esc team were gutted to have missed it. Looking forward to plenty more in 2012. And thanks to Adele for a great review. Keep an eye on our Events page for 2012′s calendar of events.

How to enter our Escape List competition.

noun - esc·ape list  [esc-ape list, free-dom; Fr. le-escape]

Definition: Product of soul-searching and reflection on personal goals. Separate from ‘bucket list’ concept through the fact that the core objective is to complete tasks on list now, not just before you kick the bucket. An Escape List should be a minimum of ten dreams long, there is no maximum. Thought of each item on list should make list creator smile. Completion of full list should be sufficient to fundamentally shift perspective / make corporate escape a reality.

Each item on list should fall within following categories:

1. Financial: not an amount to earn, but an amount to save to afford item in question. E.g. Ben worked hard and saved enough money to visit a Tribe in Fiji.

2. Physical: opportunity to develop/ continue health and fitness driven by an end goal involving physical challenge. E.g. Dave trained for days in order to skateboard across Australia.

3. Psychological: little to no impact on physical health or financial stability, a psychological item simply offers the list creator a chance to vacate his/her comfort zone. E.g. Seb stayed awake for 72 Hours, just to see if he could.

The rules of the game

UPDATED RULES!! You don’t win by completing your list (although that is the ultimate objective) – post your Escape List below by Friday 9th December and Ben and Dave will decide on the 5 best ones…

1. Post your Escape List in the comments below.
2. Publicly commit to completing the list.
3. Ask for and receive help from the Esc tribe where relevant.
4. Return when list is completed to glory and applause – proof would be nice.
5. Dave & Ben will choose 5 lists to win a year’s free evening membership at Adam Street Club.

A fun way to round off the competition would be to write a guest blog post for Escape the City summarising your experiences in taking on this challenge.

Thanks and good luck! Any questions ping @benkeene, @davecorn or @escthecity on Twitter. Or come leave a message on Facebook. Or comment below.

Related posts:

1. Please come to November’s Esc Wednesday – ‘How we built our careers around our passions’
2. Lessons from Rework
3. Lessons from our speakers – SSYL

Mikey and I went to an awesome talk at General Assemb.ly in New York this week.

Called ‘Building Something People Love’ and given by a hugely impressive, enthusiastic and genuine Alexis Ohanian one of the Reddit founders.

We left buzzing with ideas for how to do things differently, do things that interest people, do things that engage people. A lot of the messages were around having fun with your brand and making the most of the fact that when you’re building a start-up (unlike the big corporate incumbents in your space) you can do whatever the hell you like with your marketing.

So that same evening we came home and Mikey built: My Beautiful Cubicle: http://mybeautifulcubicle.tumblr.com

We want to see where you spend the majority of your waking hours. We want to celebrate (and commiserate) different peoples’ cubicles. And we wanted to see if a random project with no specific motive other than a bit of fun would fly.

So please take 2 minutes to snap a photo of where you’re sitting right now and upload it to My Beautiful Cubicle!

• You can do this here: http://mybeautifulcubicle.tumblr.com/submit
• Or by emailing the image directly to this address (clever eh?): 21kocer@tumblr.com
• Or send it to us and we’ll put it up for you: team@escapethecity.org

Related posts:

1. Your website is the perfect solution to the dreariest winter days in London.
2. Esc Hero #14: ‘Hard is working in a job you don’t enjoy’
3. A Few Things I’ve Learned From Working With Escape the City

Hello and thanks for clicking through to this post. If you’re reading this you’ve probably just joined Escape the City and registered a basic account.

A basic account gives you access to our Opportunities section and (if you subscribed) will also mean that you receive our weekly ‘Top 10 Opportunities’ email newsletter.

You are currently on our blog (where we share ‘our story and some things we’re learning’). Don’t be confused however, the main site looks rather different and is over here: http://escapethecity.org/feed_items

The objective of this post is to introduce you to Escape the City – our concept and our website – in order for you to get as much benefit as possible.

The top few paragraphs provide you with some background and some reasons why we’re doing this. If you want to move straight to the specifics just scroll down to “An introduction to our main stuff”.

And a final introductory word – if you don’t live in the UK you might not be familiar with the term ‘The City’. This is London’s financial centre and where a lot of our UK members work. So our name represents ‘escaping unfulfilling corporate jobs’ (as opposed to ‘escape the physical city itself and fleeing to the countryside’!).

Our concept and our mission

We believe that life is too short to do work that doesn’t matter to you. We started Escape the City when we were looking to transition away from our corporate management consulting jobs. We wanted to do something different but didn’t know where to start. We also knew we wanted to do something entrepreneurial but we didn’t have a good business idea.

And then, eureka!, we realised that the frustrations and challenges we were experiencing were shared by absolutely masses of our friends, colleagues and peers. Most of these people had done the sensible thing after university and got a safe corporate job (promising ‘I’ll do this for a few years and then go and do something else’) – however the principle is true for all working people: we all want to do work that matters to us.

http://gapingvoid.com/

If you’re anything like these people you’re ambitious, qualified, and hard-working. You don’t want to drop-out. You just want to spend your working hours doing something exciting, something that fulfils you more than your current corporate job. But it’s hard, the eternal challenge…

If not this then what?

We know what this feels like… and we’re building Escape the City to help you.

How do we want to help you?

Well if you’re anything like us we reckon you might be looking for:

Tangible opportunities, like-minded people, and genuinely useful information. As well as support and inspiration. Some people know exactly what they’re looking for and are just using us to hunt for it. But other people don’t have a clue and are really at the beginning of their ‘escape my corporate job’ journey. Fortunately we’re building stuff to help both types (and hopefully everyone in between).

What could you do instead of your corporate job? Well we reckon you could find an exciting new job, you could start your own business or you could go on a big adventure. You could take a course, retrain in your spare time, volunteer, build up new skills, network, attend events, read relevant books, expose yourself to new ideas and environments. You could discover organisations, websites, and resources you never knew existed.

And we want you to use the combination of all of this information (that we’re seeking to provide) to make good your corporate escape…

An introduction to our main stuff

Opportunities: For professionals, for graduates and for volunteers. Globally. Browse here: http://escapethecity.org/opportunities

Escape Heroes: Inspirational stories shared by people who have escaped to new jobs, start-ups and adventures: http://escapethecity.org/heroes

Events: Talks, gatherings and events to help you explore new avenues and learn new things: http://escapethecity.org/events

Resources: We’re building up a database of the most relevant and useful information we’ve found: http://escapethecity.org/resources

Connections: This is a kind of classifieds for our community. Offer support and ask for help: http://escapethecity.org/connections

Coaching: For people looking for hands-on support with their escape. One-on-one coaching: http://escapethecity.org/coaching/index

Esc Wednesdays: These are monthly talks in London and New York. Keep an eye on Events for 2012′s schedule: http://escapethecity.org/events

Meetups: We have bases in London and New York but the concept is truly global. We are introducing new countries soon. To meet like-minded Escapees near you please join your nearest Esc Meetup: http://www.meetup.com/EscapetheCity/ (An invitation to start a meetup: http://bit.ly/pvGGWX).

You can also use Escape the City to:

• Post exciting and challenging job opportunities: http://escapethecity.org/pages/employer_zone
• Ask the community for help / offer your support: http://escapethecity.org/connections/new
• Recommend an inspirational escapee story: http://www.escapethecity.org/heroes/new

Coming soon

Currently the site requires you to do a lot of the searching yourself. We’re working on ways of asking you the right questions in order that you can set your preferences and not have to keep returning in order to be exposed to the opportunities, people and information that you’re looking for.

This is a work in progress but we’ve got some really exciting plans so please stick around!

Oh and if you happen to be an awesome Ruby developer drop us a line – team@escapethecity.org

Need a helping hand?

If you have any questions just drop us an email at team@escapethecity.org and you can return to the main site by clicking here: www.escapethecity.org.

Who are we?

You can say hi to the Esc Team in the following places: http://escapethecity.org/pages/team

• Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/EscapetheCity
• Twitter: http://twitter.com/escthecity

• Rob Symington: http://twitter.com/escroberto
• Dom Jackman: http://twitter.com/domjackman
• Mikey Howe: http://twitter.com/escmikey

• Our Manifesto: http://escapethecity.org/pages/manifesto
• Esc Love: http://escapethecity.org/pages/esc_love

Related posts:

1. Escape the City – A Manifesto
2. How to Escape the City – 2 stories
3. Escape The City – Forbes

Related posts:

1. Introducing Adam Street – Escape the City’s London Base
2. Introducing a new (very important) Esc team member
3. An Invitation: Please start an Esc community in your city or town.

We’ve got a really exciting evening planned for November’s Esc Wednesday.

Our special guests are Ben Keene and Dave Cornthwaite.

Both are Esc Heroes, both have spoken at previous Esc events and both single-mindedly live their lives on their own terms.

The title of the evening’s talk is: ‘How we built our careers around our passions’

• WEDNESDAY 30TH NOVEMBER - ADAM STREET CLUB
• Bar opens: 6.30 pm | Talk starts: 7.30 pm
• There are 80 tickets up for grabs – please buy one here.

NB: We run two types of events: Esc Wednesdays (talks) and Esc Meetups (informal gatherings). This is an Esc Wednesday!

Introducing our Speakers:

Ben Keene is the founder of Tribewanted (Fiji and Sierra Leone). Their mission? To build sustainable communities in amazing places that benefit locals and visiting members; inspiring positive change within and far beyond the village.

Read more about Ben here: http://benkeene.com/ and here: http://escapethecity.org/heroes/387-ben-keene

Dave Cornthwaite is a world record-breaking adventurer, author, and motivational speaker. He is four journeys into his £1,000,000 Expedition1000 project: 25 x 1000+ mile journeys, each using a different form of non-motorised transport

Read more about Dave here: http://davecornthwaite.com/ and here: http://escapethecity.org/heroes/353-dave-cornthwaite

‘How we built our careers around our passions.’ 

Together they will be reflecting on what they have learnt from their single-minded determination to build their careers around things they care passionately about.

Without giving too much away, the topics they will to discuss include finding your passion, getting over the start-line, taking-off, learning how to survive, adapting to changes along the way, picking up new opportunities, telling your story and saying yes.

If you are interested, please buy a ticket and come along.

6 good reasons to come… 

1. You would like to know how to rent a tropical island with no budget
2. You want to know what living on the beach in blood diamond country is like
3. You want to know why solving the world’s big issues starts in a village
4. You want some Insight, inspiration and ideas to help you chase a career you’re passionate about
5. You want to learn how to think positively and understand exactly what makes the ‘working you’ tick
6. You want to find out how to plan an adventurous expedition and also make it worthwhile for others too

In any case, if two gingers can inspire, anyone can!

Details, details, details

• We will be meeting at the Adam Street Club – the private members club for entrepreneurs just off the Strand on the evening of Wednesday 30th November.
• Ben and Dave will be giving a talk before we open it up to the room for a Q&A.
• The bar opens 6 pm. Please come for a drink and a chat. The talk will start between 7.30 and 7.45 pm.
• RSVP: www.eventbrite.com (buy ticket, etc).

About Adam Street:

London is our HQ (the city where Escape the City was born) and we are thrilled that our London events take place at the Adam Street Entrepreneurs Club. Adam Street is a home and support network read more about Adam Street here.

Evening Membership: Adam Street now offers a really exciting evening membership scheme. Adam Street will be very extremely generously offering ongoing incentives to Esc members who want to become evening members.

Watch this space for further details.

Related posts:

1. Gingers can inspire too you know. Or 5 lessons from ‘How we built our careers around our passions’.
2. ‘How I built a life around expeditions’ by Levison Wood from Secret Compass
3. 5 things we learnt at ‘How I built a life around expeditions’

On Wednesday night Adele Barlow really kindly hosted our first of a new type of Esc event in London – a Meetup at Adam Street.

Over 240 people RSVP’d and by all accounts it was a really useful, inspirational and fun evening.

• Check out the comments thread!
• Check out the photos.

Our Meetups are different from our Esc Wednesdays in that they don’t have a speaker, are free, and are specifically designed for you to connect with people in a similar boat as you – explanation here.

Quick question: What regularity would you like to see these events take place in London (bearing in mind that we run an Esc Wednesday once a month as well)? Please comment below. Thanks!

So without further ado, 6 things Adele learnt…

1. This is an incredible community and tribe…

This is straight from Adele’s email update to Dom, Mikey and me in New York:

Awesome things: SUCH friendliness. Holy crap. Have never seen anything like it at a networking event. EVERYONE was talking to EVERYONE; people randomly going up to each other and being like, “Hey, I’m X. I do X. What do you do?”

The shy people, confident people, quiet people, EVERYONE – was just randomly introducing themselves, interrupting other conversations… everyone I talked to had met at least 4 or 5 interesting and cool connections.

I’ve honestly never seen a love-in like that without alcohol or drugs involved.

So much mind sex going on in the room – it was like a mind-sex orgy. Everyone was buzzing out on ideas, exchanging cards, arranging to meet up and have coffee at a later date.

You know how buzzing the Meetup board was? Just imagine THAT translated into actual, real-life people situation – such friendliness. Blew my mind.

[Rob: Apart from being disturbed by the mind-sex comment - what an incredible email for us to receive!!]

2. Good networks/tribes are built around a belief or concept

Rob and Dom and Mikey weren’t even in the room, but everyone was self-organising – because meaning was there.

[Rob: From our perspective Esc is all about the tribe / and the belief that we all share. I've said this about 30 times on this blog but read Tribes. Check out our thoughts on making meaning and having a mission.]

3. Your network is what you make it

All about being proactive, introducing yourself to people, making the first move.

4. When building your own network, need to have a mission

… or idea to build that network around.

This also gives you an actual excuse to talk to people – people in room who came with clear ‘mission’ were easy to talk to / connect with others because they knew who they needed / wanted to talk to, what they were trying to build.

5. Having a ‘place’ where people can meet makes a difference

Adam Street Club is a great venue – lots of spin-offs to come, hopefully.

And great to have an off-line ‘home’ for aspiring London-based corporate escapees.

6. You can’t find inspiration in a room, you find it through people

But with right people in the room, you will find it through them!

—————————————-

Massive thank you Adele. If anyone has a missed connection from the Meetup please comment below or on the Meetup thread and we’ll try and get you in touch with the relevant people. Thanks to everyone who attended and helped make it such a fun event.

Watch this space for the next meetups and talks in London – announcing them next week - http://www.meetup.com/EscapetheCity/London-GB/

Related posts:

1. 6 things we learnt from Right To Dream at last night’s event
2. 10 things we learnt at ‘The Answer to the Money Question’
3. 10 things we learnt at last night’s Esc Wednesday – Jon Cousins & UnLtd

My name’s Adele and I run Step One (we make websites for startups), and help organisations with their social media. We blog here.

I’ll be at the Escape the City London Meetup tonight, along with Alex O’Byrne and Chris Mooney – Alex is fantastic to talk to about development, apps, and escaping the city, and Chris is great to talk to about strategy and financing.

I’d love to talk to you about social media and taking an idea to prototype stage using the web (WordPress, Facebook, etc) – below are some things I often find myself talking with clients about.

You want to grow your business, increase your Facebook fans, etc?

Join the club.

When people think about ‘improving how they do social media’, they jump straight to thinking – methods.

Pay per click? SEO? What techniques will lead to growing the fan base?

This is like a high school student asking, “How do I become popular?” Or a guy asking, “How do I get that girl to become my girlfriend?”

The answer is not: wear this, say that, do that – it’s not about changing behavioural techniques.

When you question how to get more blog subscribers or ‘Likes’ on Facebook, what you’re really asking is: how do you change the power dynamic to be more in your favour?

You’re wondering how you get more Net Promoters.

“Promoters” are loyal enthusiasts who keep buying from a company and urge their friends to do the same – the key metric when it comes to gauging the efficiency of a company’s growth engine, as Fred Reichheld talks about in his bestseller published by the Harvard Business School Press.

Improving social media means growing Net Promoters; growing Net Promoters means making your customer’s lives better; making it easy for them to tell their friends about it.

1. Start with Why: ‘the Golden Circle’

Everyone knows what they do. Some know how they do it. Few people know WHY.

Know why you exist as a product or service. You do X.

So, who cares? Why? How are you making peoples’ lives better?

It’s hard to articulate in ten words or less. Simon Sinek’s TED talk on the topic is here.

2. Use that to clarify the brand.

The Brand Gap

• Click the link to view the presentation – or here.
• View more presentations from coolstuff

3. Translate that into a ladder of engagement.

This means that you segment user interest levels down different engagement pathways (e.g. you might have a Vimeo video that the ‘kinda-interested’ can watch.

This leads to people ‘liking’ it on Facebook if they’re really keen. The super-keen can join your email list or drop you a line).

All the touch points need to be integrated.

4. Underpin every interaction with authenticity…

Underpin every interaction with authenticity, transparency, and a narrative that people want to buy into.

Here are 5 social media disasters – here are some Facebook success stories.

Spot the difference.

It’s not about the tools, it’s about how the tools are being used, according to the culture and leadership of the organisation.

5. Do what you can, outsource what you can’t.

Some entrepreneurs think that they’re saving money by trying to build their own website or social media campaign – this depends on your tech skills, but I think opportunity cost in terms of your time is worth considering.

In summary:

Building a Facebook page or website is a fantastic way to gauge whether your business idea has traction.

I’m a big supporter of the Lean Startup movement – which talks about building a Minimum Viable Product.

Your Facebook page or website can be a pre-prototype to gauge early customer interest.

This quote sums it up: “Marketing in the 80s was all about the product, and then it moved into the “new marketing” era which was about “you deserve this car because you are amazing” and now we are in the era of “us marketing”. It’s not enough to just build a community – it’s like organising a party and you don’t have a plan.”

“Successful companies in social media act more like party planners, aggregators, and content providers than traditional advertiser.”

———————————————

If you want ‘better social media’ – throw a better online party. If you don’t know how, brainstorm with friends. If that doesn’t work, consider asking an expert – if you can’t afford to hire them, try approaching them with a revenue-share agreement of some kind.

Most of all, just keep experimenting until you find the results you’re looking for.

———————————————

[Thanks for a fantastic blog post Adele and for all your work in helping make tonight's Meetup at Adam Street be such a success. Sorry we can't be there but looking forward to many more! Rob, Dom and Mikey in New York]

Related posts:

1. Advice for ‘Starting Something You Love’ – #45: Adele Barlow
2. 6 things Adele learnt about the Esc community at Wednesday’s Meetup
3. ‘How to pursue a career in social enterprise’ – with Tom Rippin from On Purpose

Escape the City is a global community but London is where we were born.

Although a lot of Esc activity happens online, you really see the community come to life when we meet up offline.

Adam Street are fantastic hosts for our London-based Esc Meetups and Esc Wednesdays and we wanted to use this post to explain a little bit more about them.

Evening Membership: Adam Street now offers a really exciting evening membership scheme. They are extremely offering ongoing incentives to Esc members who want to become evening members. Watch this space for details…

About Adam Street

Adam Street was conceived in the dotcom boom; a phenomenon that dragged people out of their staid corporate jobs to try their hands at being entrepreneurs.

As such it has been designed as a base to work from during the day providing desk space, a comfortable bar and restaurant to meet and work in and meeting rooms as well as a host of support services from our offices upstairs.

Also as important, it was recognised that the budding entrepreneur also needed a social life to replace his (in those days) Bloomberg terminal and water cooler and a friendly culture of like-minded people was created to fill this yawning gap in any city escapee’s life.

This brings us on to the second bit of the club – whilst being a very professional place to work during the day we also have fabulous food, cocktails and even dancing on here until the wee hours of the morning.

There is a number of events ranging from Mike Lynch giving a speech about Autonomy to comedy, live music nights and Last Tuesday masked balls. Over the last 10 years we have helped many successful companies start and grow as well as helping get a huge number of people together on a more social level…..

Contact Details

9 Adam Street
The Strand
Charing Cross
London
WC2N 6AA
Nearest Tube/Rail: Charing Cross

Email: reception@adamstreet.co.uk

Related posts:

1. Introducing Esc Tel Aviv!
2. Please come to our October London Meetup (Theme: Start-ups & the Internet)
3. Introducing a new (very important) Esc team member

Hello everyone,

As you will know if you have spent any time on the Escape the City website…

… or watched our video…

… or read our manifesto…

… or read our About Us…

Esc’s concept is simple:

1. We believe that there is more to life than doing work that doesn’t matter to you in a big corporation

2. We know that finding exciting alternatives is really hard (we’ve been there).

3. We want to help solve this problem by building a global community of like-minded people who want to ‘do something different’.

Escaping the City is a metaphor for rejecting boring corporate jobs in order to do interesting things with your career.

We launched at the beginning of 2010 and we already have a community of +45,000 corporate professionals worldwide who are using Esc to search for the information, people and opportunities that they should all know about but don’t.

And now we are using this blog post to ask for your help and involvement.

Join (or start) your local Esc community - Here

International expansion

Escape the City has bases in London and New York but (as you know if you live somewhere else) the concept is completely global.

Our vision is to build an international community of professionals who want to ‘do something different’ and we would love it if you wanted to be a part of this.

Please help join / start your local community 

If you are working in the corporate world and looking to do something different what better way to kick-start your escape!?

How?

1. Join (or start) your local Esc community – Here
2. Help organise (or RSVP to) the next Meetup – Here (same link!)

[See below for ‘What is an Esc Meetup?’ - You can also check out London’s upcoming Meetup as an example of what we are inviting you to organise.]

There are already +30 cities registered on our Meetup.com hub and more are being added each day.

Don’t be put off if there aren’t any Escapees yet in your city/country. Get the group started and we’ll make sure we promote it to the right people. They’ll fill up soon enough!

Every month over 2000 people join Escape the City. These people, like you, are based all over the world and we are now in a position to connect them with each other.

Amazing things happen when you get like-minded people together.

Get Involved…

If you would like to organise a Meetup in your area just start the community in Meetup and (if you want some inputs, support or guidance) just email Rob at team@escapethecity.org - he will be happy to help.

We must stress that this isn’t a job opportunity and there is no financial incentive on offer here. It is just an opportunity to organise local gatherings of like-minded people near you – just like all these meetups – there are plenty of non-£$€ based benefits. Trust us!

Thanks so much for your support and we look forward to meeting you (online and hopefully offline!) in due course.

Rob & Dom

Escape the City Co-founders

Find your nearest Meetup: http://www.meetup.com/EscapetheCity/

What is an Esc Meetup?

Esc Meetups are free, they are informal (the antidote to corporate networking events), there is no set structure and no speaker (although there is sometimes a loose theme), they are after work – traditionally on a Wednesday but it doesn’t matter – and they are held in a relaxed environment (bar, museum, cafe) where you can chill out, have a drink, meet new people and generally have exciting conversations about doing something different.

They are democratic, non-hierarchical, and strictly non-judgemental. Anyone can organise one and anyone can attend one.

Escape the City Meetups are your opportunity to meet likeminded people in an informal environment – be they corporate professionals looking to do something different or escapees who have already made the big leap away from the corporate world.

Whether you are looking for an exciting job, starting your own business, or going on a big adventure – at our Meetups you’ll meet people in the Esc community who share your enthusiasm for building a career outside the corporate mainstream and who will hopefully be able to help you on your way.

You can check out London’s upcoming Meetup as an example of what we are inviting you to organise – Here.

New country editions on the website

Our website currently has three editions: UK, US, and International.

The number of new members from different countries is growing really quickly (over half of new members are not UK or US based) and we will be adding new editions as soon as we can.

A quick word on jobs / partnerships

We’re really flattered by the amount of people who are interested in working for Escape the City itself and who want to be Esc’s woman/man-on-the-ground in Hamburg / Paris / Hong Kong / Sydney / Insert big city here. We are a small team and we are planing to keep it that way for now. Sorry!

Related posts:

1. 6 things Adele learnt about the Esc community at Wednesday’s Meetup
2. How to use Escape the City
3. Please come to our October London Meetup (Theme: Start-ups & the Internet)

All our life we jump through hoops.

Often without asking why.

It’s easy to feel stuck – a small cog in a big machine.

It doesn’t have to be like this.

Don’t waste your life living someone else’s.

Don’t wait for permission.

Life is too short to do work that doesn’t matter to you.

Want your memoirs to be worth reading?

Make your choices your own. Be brave. Be inquisitive.

Stop using lack of money or experience as an excuse.

You don’t have to risk it all to explore new options.

You owe it to yourself to find work that makes you tick.

Our world is changing. Careers are changing.

Take advantage or keep your head down. You choose.

The winners are building lives on their own terms.

Take small leaps. Meet people. Ask for help. Save. Plan.

Change jobs. Build businesses. Go on BIG adventures.

Start Something You Love. It’s not easy. Push. Sweat.

No one ever changed the world by toeing the line.

You are capable of more than you realise.

This is no dress rehearsal. Make it count.

There will never be a perfect time.

And the first step is often the hardest.

So Stop Dreaming and Start Planning.

Do Something Different!

————————————

Escape the City

www.escapethecity.org

Related posts:

1. Why have we started Escape the City?
2. How to use Escape the City
3. What ‘Escape the City’ means to me – by “Treading water in the Thames”

Hello everyone. Here is the UK and International version of your Monday newsletter. Below are the Top 10 Opportunities. You can view the full newsletter in your browser by clicking here.

Related posts:

1. Our Newsletter – Learning to keep it simple
2. Interesting career change, start-up and adventure links #1
3. A Conversation with Mike Howe, Escape the City’s USA Pioneer

Please come to our next evening Meetup at the Adam Street Entrepreneurs Club in central London after work on Wednesday 26th October.

All Esc members who attend this Meetup on Wed 26^th October will receive a complimentary year’s free evening membership at Adam Street Club. See below.

To attend please click here.

This month’s theme: Start-ups & the Internet

Many people dreaming of leaving the corporate world are considering starting their own businesses, and many of these businesses will be online.

Getting your business idea started online (even if it’s not a web startup) allows you to develop your concept, test your strategy and collect important information about potential customers before leaving the safety of your corporate job.

There is no set structure to this conversation but if you are interested in starting something online and would like to network, mingle and chat with a bunch of people in a similar boat, please come along.

NB: The theme is just a starting point, if you are interested in other Esc areas we actively encourage you to come along. There are always a wide variety of people at Esc events (career changers, entrepreneurs, wannabe entrepreneurs, and adventurers) and the conversations will be about anything Esc-related.

Don’t be shy… come along!

RSVP

Adam Street is a private members club. To get your name on the guest list please RSVP via our Meetup page (click here) and please drop Adele (adele.barlow@gmail.com) an email if there is something specific you would like to let us know about in advance.

Logistics: How do these evenings work?

• STRUCTURE: Informal friendly gathering loosely based around a particular topic (but open to all Esc members regardless of interest).

• DATE & TIMINGS: Wednesday 26th October. From 6.30 pm onwards (bar open till late).

• HOST: Adele Barlow – read her Esc Hero interview here. If you’re nervous about coming alone just ping her an email – adele.barlow@gmail.com – to introduce yourself. She’s incredibly friendly and helpful!

• SPECIAL GUESTS:
• Alex O’Byrne - ex-Merrill Lynch, co-founder of We Make Websites. Esc Hero interview, LinkedIN profile
• Chris Mooney - Ex-Citigroup &  IBM. Chris left the corporate world to join one of the UK’s fastest growing technology startups and has never looked back. Senior Business Analyst at QuBit Group. LinkedIN profile.
• ADD YOUR NAME – If you know about start-ups and the web and you are in a position to attend and genuinely help Esc members around this topic please drop team@escapethecity.org an email and we’ll happily add you to the list of Special Guests!

• LOCATION: Adam Street, 9 Adam Street, The Strand, Charing Cross, London, WC2N 6AA. Nearest Tube/Rail: Charing Cross. Food is available to order from the restaurant menu. Drinks aplenty too.

• RSVP:  Adam Street is a private members club. To get your name on the guest list please RSVP via our Meetup page (click here) and please drop Adele (adele.barlow@gmail.com) an email if there is something specific you would like to let us know about in advance.

• Other things you can do in advance of attending: On our Meetups page you can add a comment explaining who you are and what you’re looking to get out of the evening – this will enable us to help you make better connections before, during and after the Meetup.

Claim a year’s free evening membership at Adam Street

Kick-start your escape by getting a year’s free evening membership at London’s legendary entrepreneurs club: Adam Street.

All Esc members who attend this Meetup on Wed 26^th October will receive a complimentary year’s free evening membership at Adam Street Club. To claim your free membership please just RSVP via Meetup and request your evening membership pack from Adam Street reception on Wednesday 26th October.

NB: This offer is only open for Esc members who have RSVP’d via Meetup and who actually attend the event. It is also only open for the evening of Wed 26th Oct.

About Adam Street:

London is our HQ (the city where Escape the City was born) and we are thrilled that our London events take place at the Adam Street Entrepreneurs Club. Adam Street is a home and support network for entrepreneurs and businesspeople – read more about Adam Street here.

Evening Membership: Adam Street now offers a really exciting evening membership scheme. Aside from the free offer above, Adam Street will be very extremely generously offering ongoing incentives to Esc members who want to become evening members.

Watch this space for further details.

What is an Esc Meetup?

Escape the City Meetups are your opportunity to meet likeminded people in an informal environment - be they corporate professionals looking to do something different or escapees who have already made the big leap away from the corporate world.

Whether you are looking for an exciting job, starting your own business, or going on a big adventure – at our Meetups you’ll meet people in the Esc community who share your enthusiasm for building a career outside the corporate mainstream and who will hopefully be able to help you on your way.

Click here for the global list of all Esc Meetups.

PS. Our Meetups are different from our Esc Wednesdays because they a) are free and b) don’t have a formal speaker. They are your opportunity to meet fellow Esc members in your city in a friendly and relaxed environment.

Photo credit: www.gapingvoid.com

Related posts:

1. 10 bits of internet start-up advice from the founder of Bed&Fed
2. LONDON TALK: x3 start-up speakers – From Bathtub 2 Boardroom
3. Please come to our January Meetup on Tue 24th (share your Escape Plan & get help from like-minded people).

So we’ve now been in New York for a week. It’s pretty surreal and extremely exciting. We’ll be here until Christmas – helping Mikey grow the US escapee community and working our behinds off on the website.

I thought I would write a quick post reflecting on what it feels like to have started a business from our kitchen table that now sees us living in one of the most exciting cities in the world to launch a new arm of our business.

The first thing that struck Dom and me as we waited for a cab at Newark airport (having braved the scary immigration officials) was that when we started Esc we would never have believed someone if they told us that we would be in a position to run Esc from New York within 2 years.

You can do a lot in a year

I think that we often overestimate what we can achieve in any given week but underestimate what we can achieve in a year. When you’re starting your own business the progress that you make on a daily basis often feels painfully slow, and it’s all too easy for the random and minute tasks to absorb your entire focus (and you can easily lose sight of the bigger picture).

Two years ago today Dom was still working as a management consultant, furiously saving as much of his salary for his impending escape. I was just finishing working the wine harvest in Portugal. Escape the City was nothing more than a free blog with a few posts on it. The newsletter was about to be born.

Even one year ago we were in a very different position to where we are now. We had only 16,000 members (compared to almost 45,000 today) and we were still working from our kitchen table (as opposed to the swanky offices we just vacated in Kings Cross). We were still getting to grips with our business model (selling exciting job listings) and wondering whether Esc had legs for the long-term.

Bravery & Rewards

The last thing Dom, Mikey and I ever want to do is sound smug (and the choices that we’ve made to escape the city mean that often it is our friends and ex-colleagues who are better off than us in terms of security and financial stability) but the fact that we have come to work in New York under our own steam is the direct result of a naïve, brave, idealistic and hopeful decision that we made on a park bench in Wimbledon over two years ago.

There are all sorts of cheesy, inspirational quotes about risk vs reward and a ‘just do it’ mentality that often over-simplify complex decision-making processes. However it is true that you’ve got to be in it to win it and the simple fact is that if we hadn’t made the mad/brave/exciting decision to pursue an unrealistic dream – living a life on our own terms whilst building something that helps other people do the same – we wouldn’t be in New York today.

The goon squad - Mikey & Dom outside our local coffee shop

A business is where you design your perfect world.

Like Mikey, I’ve recently really enjoyed reading ‘Anything You Want’ by Derek Sivers and was struck by this line…

When you make a company, you make a utopia. It’s where you design your perfect world.

It’s true. You get to play and work on your own terms. No more booking in a limited amount of holidays with HR far in advance. No more being held to arbitrary deadlines by senior managers. No more seeing your evenings disappear waiting for a busy partner to ask you to make formatting changes to a PowerPoint deck.

Screenshot - Anything You Want - by Derek Sivers

You get to work on what you want, when you want. You get to say no to some projects and yes to others. You can work till 3 am on a Monday night if you want. But equally you can take a random Wednesday morning off with no guilt. You live life on your own terms.

Make no mistakes – it’s tough.

Don’t get me wrong – while this is the dream, the reality of getting to this point is tough. And we’ve got a long way to go before we have properly finished building our business (and the financial stability that hopefully comes with it).

For all our enthusiastic start-up evangelism… building a business is hard. Really hard. Harder than we realised!

The single biggest challenge with starting your own company is that you accept ultimate responsibility for your income – rather than living under the addictive duvet of a monthly salary.

But all the financial anxiety and hard graft of the past two years is worth it for the prize of living life on our own terms. And moving to New York really feels like a reward at this stage in the journey.

——————————————

All 3 Escape the City team members are now based in New York.

If you feel like helping us out in the Big Apple, or even meeting for a beer, just email us – team@escapethecity.org or let us know via this form.

Going to check out the #occupywallstreet movement this week – blog post to follow.

No related posts.

As those of you who follow Esc will know, we want to explore the ideas around the phenomenon of people ‘escaping the city’ with the aim of helping more corporate professionals to make brave and exciting transitions.

There is certainly no single way of understanding all the various strands related to our concept (jobs, money, career, meaning, work, entrepreneurialism, life, fulfilment, etc, etc!) and we want to encourage as much discussion as possible with the aim of learning more and pushing Esc onwards to greater heights.

So, every week from now on, we are planning on introducing a particular idea / concept / thought with the objective of having a discussion in the comments. If you’ve got something to share, please do get involved!

Oh, and if you’ve got an idea for Escape the City please let us know about it via this form.

Introducing this week’s discussion

We resigned from our corporate jobs because of some really strong ‘pull’ factors (i.e. the prospect of starting a business and working for ourselves doing something we love) but we also left because of some pretty persuasive ‘push’ factors as well.

We want to explore the reasons why people find working for big corporates in professional and financial services unfulfilling. We want to understand what it is that people are looking for but not getting in their corporate jobs (i.e. what important ingredients are missing?).

We’ve always been really keen not to knock the corporate world. For starters the skills that we learnt in ‘The City’ have really helped us start Escape the City – we wouldn’t have been able to get this off the ground without them. Additionally, there are masses of people who really enjoy their corporate jobs.

However, for every person who is clear on why they are in their company and what they’re getting out of the experience, there are masses of others who are thinking ‘I’m not sure this is for me, but what on earth do I do instead?’

Esc is for these people.

So why are jobs in big corporates so often unfulfilling?

• Lack of control, freedom & independence
• Bureaucracy
• Office Politics
• Hierarchy
• Feeling of being institutionalised
• Small cog in a big machine
• Lack of creativity
• Work for work’s sake – too much process!
• Lack of positive social impact
• Hard to be yourself in the corporate environment
• Boring work

We started Esc to help solve a problem. What problem? The fact that thousands of ambitious, passionate, talented graduates and professionals end up feeling frustrated doing work that doesn’t really matter to them. Why? Because the alternative is tough. It is hard to find a really exciting job and even harder to start your own business.

If Escape the City is going to meaningfully contribute to understanding what’s going wrong for so many people… then understanding those ‘push’ factors is really important.

Please share your experiences of working in the corporate world… we would love to have a discussion aimed at getting to the heart of why working in big corporate organisations is often unfulfilling.

Go on, get it off your chest!

Related posts:

1. Join the Discussion: An Esc Manifesto (in draft)
2. We’re hiring! Join us
3. What if it doesn’t work out?

You’ve got an idea you want to put into action – an idea for a business, a mission to change the world, or a vision of making a living doing something you love.

But… it’s BIG. Too big.

It requires you to quit your job. Or it needs a lot of money. Or a whole team of people. Or premises. Or a huge technical build. Or it simply requires masses of time and energy (which you don’t have).

So what do you do?

Has your answer ’til now been to put your idea back in a drawer for another week (or month)? Then you have just got to start doing something different. There are far too many people who have good ideas fading away somewhere at the back at their mind (while someone else has the same idea and goes and makes a success of it).

There’s nothing wrong with having big ideas – a million dollar business, a best-selling book, a national movement, or simply making a full-time living from something you love. It’s a useful skill to be able to take an idea and envision exactly how huge it could become. But… you also need be to able to do the opposite and chunk it down into manageable projects, starting with one you can begin right now.

Sure, you can go ‘big bang’ on your idea; go hell for leather and enlist all the people you need, write a business plan and go search for funding. Or quit your job and bank everything on your first book being a hit. If that’s a style of operating that’s worked for you successfully in the past, and you’re comfortable with the risk involved, it may be right for you.

For the rest of us, the thought of biting it all off in one chunk is overwhelming. And that’s not helpful if it means we end up doing nothing.

Honey, I shrunk my idea

You don’t have to give up on your grand vision of a big business, national fame, or the most common desire – finding a way of making a full time income from something you love doing. You can start small, test it out, improve it, then grow it and scale it towards your original vision.

It just requires you to be willing to think like a player, not a worker. It means being willing to play it out one step at a time – even if you don’t know exactly where it will take you and you can’t yet see how it can make you a full-time income. You’d be surprised how many successful ideas and businesses started out like this! (It’s a lot of fun too)

Here’s how to do it:

1. Design a 30 day ‘Play Project’ that immerses you in making your idea happen (or at least some part of it).
2. Since you’re not trying to create your whole vision yet but just a part of it, choose the project to be centred on the bit that’s most exciting to you. If you want to be a public speaker, go speak, don’t spend the first 30 days building a website for your future speaking career.
3. Make sure the project produces something you can share – some tangible result, not just 30 days of sitting and googling!
4. Set a deadline in 30 days’ time to share your result with others – show it to your friends, put it on your blog, tweet or facebook it. Share photos, recordings, videos on youtube. Write about the experience on a blog.
5. Start doing it – do a little every day if you’re fitting it around your current work, don’t wait for hours of free time to magically open up in your diary
6. When you complete it, look at how you could build on it to take it further. If it didn’t work out the way you’d hoped, adjust your approach to give you more of the results you want and launch your next Play Project. Each one can build on the results of the last and at the end of every one, you’ll have something real to show for it – the kind of stuff that opens doors to even bigger opportunities.

What will you do?

What do you want to do? Here are some example play projects to help make it happen.

• Want to write a book? Write the outline and one chapter. Or… start writing about your topic on a blog. If you want to be a novelist, you might start with a short story. Send it to some friendly readers.
• Want to be a public speaker? Go to Toastmasters, learn some of the basics and set a deadline to give your first talk of 5-10 minutes at one of the meetings.
• Got a business idea? Start blogging about the area or the problem you want to help with. Interview people, experiment with possible solutions. If you’re selling your own services, aim to get your first piece of work within 30 days, even if it’s at a reduced fee for a friend or colleague.
• Got a grand website idea? If it’s based around content you’re creating, create the site first in WordPress. If it’s more interactive than that, see if there’s a commercial system you can use to test the idea out. (Eg if you want to create your own social network, use NING before you custom build a whole system)
• Want to be a declutter consultant or a personal stylist or interior designer? Go and volunteer to do it for a friend first – either for free or for a reduced fee.
• If you want to be a standup comic… don’t just go to see standup shows, do a course where you stand up and perform!
• If you want to launch a national campaign or change the world, create a Facebook group for your cause and then create an event that people can take part in to build a buzz.

Scary stuff huh? Sure it is, so go get some support. Ask some supportive friends to help, or join up with others making ideas happen – like the 200 people in our 30 Day Challenge kicking off very soon.

From idea to reality in 30 days

Related posts:

1. GUEST POST: 10 things we’ve learned since making the leap…
2. Esc ‘How-To’ #1: How to develop your business idea

This is the 15-min talk that I gave last night at the Adam Street Club for Tomax’s ‘From Bathtub to Boardroom’ talk. It was a lot of fun (especially hearing Simon Woodroffe’s story) and I thought I would share my notes with you here. Apparently the guys filmed the evening so I’m sure there’ll be some embarrassing videos being shared in due course.

5 Made-Up ‘Rules’ For Starting A Business With Little Money & No Relevant Experience

Why made-up rules? Because this quote from Al Humphreys is spot on: “Rules are for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise men” - and we’ve learnt that there is no set way for building a business. Do it your own way.

One of the most rewarding things about starting Escape the City are the amazing messages we get from people who like what we’re doing. We got this one yesterday:

“I have been receiving the Monday morning email updates for a few weeks now and find them really helpful; the ever burgeoning resource of the internet can be so difficult to navigate at times that finding pertinent data can take an age. The top 10 email, apart from reminding me that I need to leave this office malarkey, gives that valuable insight from people who have made the leap and taken the risk. This delivers enough of a prod at the beginning of seemingly endless week ahead to ‘keep the faith’  and attempt to navigate away from being any sort of fish in any size of pond, to become a happy individual who doesn’t compare their life to a dank, dark, and murky volume of water. So in short…thanks!”

Sounds really worthy but actually Escape the City started as a much more selfish endeavour. We had had enough of working in the corporate world. That’s a separate – more ranty – talk than this one. But the bottom line was that when we looked at our manager’s job, our director’s job, and the partner’s job we realised that we didn’t want to continue our careers in the corporate mainstream.

So the starting point for Esc was wanting to solve our own problem by escaping our jobs.

It was only when we realised that this was a problem that lots of people shared that we realised were faced with an idea that could become a business… But by building a company aimed at solving a problem (and it being a problem that was shared by masses of people) we knew that if we got the platform and product right – people would like it.

So what is this all about? Esc & Our Story:

Escape the City is the business that I started a year and a half ago with Dom Jackman. Esc is designed as a community for corporate professionals who want to do something different with their careers. What is different? Find an exciting job. Start your own business. Go on a big adventure.

We started with a basic blog and began communicating our idea. No funding, no online experience, no entrepreneurial experience at all. Everyone thought we were mad. This isn’t a business… it won’t work… my dad even asked me if I was trying to start a cult… to which I said ‘that’s an interesting angle – we can use that!’.

18 months after launching, we have 42,000 members, have been in most of the main newspapers in the UK, live on Bloomberg, Reuters TV, and almost every week a German reporter rings up asking us when we’re going to launch in Germany… for some reason they love it out there! We now have a new partner – Mikey – out in New York starting the US community.

So what can I share with you in 15 mins?

If you are anything like me, or me from 2 years ago sitting in my corporate job & dreaming of escape – I figured most people are here this evening because they’ve started their own thing, are planning on starting their own thing, or are dreaming about leaving their jobs to do something else but don’t know where to start and are here to have a think about it.

#1. Solve a problem.

This is the problem we were solving for ourselves (above) – and is the reason we’re so clear on what we want Esc to be – we want it to solve a problem that we experienced so personally ourselves. Some people say any successful new business idea should seek make things easier, cheaper or more fun for people. We say – solve a problem.

You don’t have to invent the next Dyson hoover to come up with a good business idea. Innovate on your brand, your marketing and your message… but your core business model doesn’t have to be new. Escape the City is an exciting idea, but the business model that allows us to keep doing what we’re doing is a jobs board – hardly revolutionary.

Another interesting idea is that your business idea should sit at the intersection of 1. Stuff that you enjoy doing, 2. Stuff that you’re good at, and 3. Stuff that people are prepared to pay you for.

We started Esc on the hunch that people would like it. How did we hope / know people would like it? Because we were our own ideal clients.

Scratch your own itch.

#2. Do it for ‘Love’ and do it for ‘Freedom’.

If you’re sitting there thinking… ‘why should I start a business?’ or ‘should I start a business?’… at the risk of sounding like a hippy – here are our two main reasons for doing it.

The first… which I alluded to before… was freedom. We’re 27 and 28… We’ve spent enough time jumping through hoops through our education and our early careers to realise that we wanted our time to be our own. The only way we could work out how to do this whilst also paying the bills was by starting a business and controlling the means of our own income.

The second… ‘Love’ – you have to love what you do otherwise you would be able to grit your teeth and get through all the tough times involved with building a business, all of the doubt, all of the boring work and all of the ups and downs. What’s more… life is really really short and careers fills up a large part of them – don’t you want to be able to look back with pride on whatever you’ve spent your working life doing?

Yes do it for money (obviously). Yes do it for status and success and a feeling of massive satisfaction. But do it for freedom and do it for love. It’s what it’s all about: loving what you do and being able to do it on your own terms.

Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

STEVE JOBS - http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html

#3. Define Success:

I stand up here speaking at the same event as Simon Woodroffe – Yo! founder – and my first impulise is ‘oh but we haven’t made it yet – good old Imposter Syndrome.

But then I had a good think about what ‘Making It’ means to us. Have we made it? Well, it depends on your definition of success. We have built a sustainable, profitable business in less than 2 years. We can support ourselves (meagrely) and we are reinvesting (massively!) in the business.

No we haven’t made millions and no we haven’t finished building our business (lots still to do). But why did we quit our jobs to do our own thing? What was our original objective or definition of success?  Well 1) we wanted to escape (freedom) and 2) we wanted to do work that matters to us (love).

Yes of course we wanted to earn money to afford a nice lifestyle – and we’re getting there – but based on those first two tests – Freedom and Love – we’re actually there!

When you’re building a business it’s easy to lose sight of the small victories and the progress that you’re making. The more you achieve / build / survive the more your aspirations accelerate away from you. Every now and then you have to remind yourself what your definition of success is and celebrate the small victories along the way.

#4. Have fun because it is going to be a slog:

Starting a business is a massive mission.

No one tells you what an emotional, personal and psychological challenge it is as well as a professional one. There are big ups and downs – often not really relating to the objective progress of your business but more to do with what’s going on inside your head.

We have both survived on very little cash for almost two years. We’ve done a huge amount of scrappy, adminy, boring work to get our business off the ground. A lot of unglamorous manual stuff. Bar programmers have only been two of us building Esc – so if we weren’t going to do it who was?!

But it has also been a massive amount of fun and it’s important to remind ourselves of this fact. For ages our office phone number was the same as the Red Cross’s office in Wimbledon. I often used to pick up the phone (“Escape the City – Rob speaking”) only to be faced with a granny asking the Red Cross for a wheelchair.

People joke that in the early days of starting a business you’ll be so excited to receive emails that you’ll respond to junk mail.

You have to laugh otherwise you might cry!

But here’s the thing – it has to be fun otherwise what is the point? You quit your job in order to enjoy life and work more. Don’t invent just another job when you start your business… do it on your own terms.

Don’t feel like there is any set way to start a business – all the received wisdom is just that: ‘received’ – like these ‘entrepreneurial rules’ – take em or leave em.

You have to have fun if you’re going to put up with all the hard work that is involved with starting a company – and do it in a way that works for you.

#5. Make Meaning – Ideas that spread win:

So you’ve identified the problem that your business is going to solve and you’re progressing with starting up. If you’re like us and have little or no money to spend on marketing and spreading the world – how on earth are you meant to make sure that the right people (your clients) hear about the business?

Make Meaning. ”Ideas that spread, win” – Seth Godin. Be remarkable. Draw a line in the sand (37 Signals – Rework). Pick a fight. Have a point of view.

People don’t care about your business. They care about stories – so tell a story with your business. As people will tell their friends your story if it is interesting and relevant to them.

Check out Tribes, Purple Cow and Tipping Point.

Here are some great examples of businesses that make meaning as well as just selling a product:

• SOCKS – Socks For Happy People – Socks make you happy. - http://twitter.com/Socks4HappyPPL
• SHOES – Toms Shoes – One pair sold = one pair donated – http://www.tomsshoes.co.uk/
• PROJECT MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE – 37 Signals – Rework ‘change the way you work forever’ - http://37signals.com/

People talk about these businesses. It’s how I know about them and now how you know about them. Why do I talk about them? Because they’re about more than just shifting a product.

Everyone knows Innocent’s story about the two bins at the food fair where they asked the people drinking their smoothies to put the empties in ‘Yes start a business’ and ‘No don’t quit the day job’. Innocent are fantastic at sharing the story behind the company and it’s one of the reasons they’re so successful.

We always say to each other that Escape the City would succeed if we started featuring in the type of conversation where people complain about their jobs in the pub after work etc (the kinds of conversations that happen ALL THE TIME!).

What is going to make people talk about your business in the pub? That’s the kind of start-up you want to build.

Conclusion:

Fulfilling work is driven off three main ingredients: Autonomy. Mastery. Purpose.

Check out Drive – The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.

Autonomy for me is the ‘freedom’ that I talked about earlier. Purpose is the ‘love’ – do you love what you do? Does it have meaning for you? And I would say that Mastery comes from working on stuff you care about (Purpose) on your own terms (Autonomy).

Reflecting on my corporate job I think I lacked all three. No wonder I was so demotivated and unfulfilled! The only thing I think I mastered was Powerpoint!

Our own story goes to show what you can achieve with an idea and lots of determination. We started 2 years ago and today have 40,000 subscribers and big ideas for where we can take it. It’s never easy and sometimes feels like you’re pushing a stone up a hill… but man is it worth it. And you progress – professionally and as a person – so much more than you do under the duvet of a corporate job and salary.

So my final thing to share is this… if inside you you have that niggling feeling that you want to do something different and you would like it to be on your own terms… start a business.

You win because – hopefully – you’ll be fulfilled – Freedom & Love.
And we win because we don’t have to hear you complain about how much you dislike your job anymore!

Thanks very much.

Related posts:

1. It’s all about the money
2. 10 things we learnt at ‘The Answer to the Money Question’
3. Tell us what your business does

As those of you who follow Esc will know, we want to explore the ideas around the phenomenon of people ‘escaping the city’ with the aim of helping more corporate professionals to make brave and exciting transitions.

There is certainly no single way of understanding all the various strands related to our concept (jobs, money, career, meaning, work, entrepreneurialism, life, fulfilment, etc, etc!) and we want to encourage as much discussion as possible with the aim of learning more and pushing Esc onwards to greater heights.

So, every week from now on, we are planning on introducing a particular idea / concept / thought with the objective of having a discussion in the comments. If you’ve got something to share, please do get involved!

Oh, and if you’ve got an idea for Escape the City please let us know about it via this form.

Introducing this week’s discussion

Escape the City is a business built around an idea. What is our idea? The fact that we believe there is more to life than doing work that doesn’t matter to you in big corporate companies.

Any concept, movement, or philosophy that has ever achieved anything has a call to action, draws a line in the sand, or has a manifesto. We hope that Esc has a clear definition of what it stands for (our videos also attempt to do that).

But we wanted to take things to the next level with a clear statement of why we’re doing what we’re doing and what we think the solution could be…

Please let us know what you think in the comments. What’s missing? What do you really like about it? What don’t you like?

Escape the City – A Manifesto

All our life we jump through hoops.

Often without asking why.

It’s easy to feel stuck – a small cog in a big machine.

It doesn’t have to be like this.

Don’t waste your life living someone else’s.

Don’t wait for permission.

Life is too short to do work that doesn’t matter to you.

Want your memoirs to be worth reading?

Make your choices your own. Be brave. Be inquisitive.

Stop using lack of money or experience as an excuse.

You don’t have to risk it all to explore new options.

It is possible to find work that really makes you tick.

Our world is changing. Careers are changing.

Take advantage or keep your head down. You choose.

The winners are building lives on their own terms.

Take small leaps. Meet people. Ask for help. Save. Plan.

Change jobs. Build businesses. Go on BIG adventures.

Start something you love. Push. Sweat.

No one ever changed the world by toeing the line.

You are capable of more than you realise.

This is no dress rehearsal – make it count.

There will never be a perfect time.

And the first step is often the hardest.

So stop dreaming, start planning…

…and Do Something Different!

www.escapethecity.org

Related posts:

1. Join the Discussion: Big Corporates & Fulfilling Work
2. We’re hiring! Join us
3. 16 things we believe – Esc’s Team Manifesto