Speaker #0It would still have been absolutely worth it for the time that I got to spend, the people that I got to meet, the things that I learned about myself, the myriad, myriad hilarious stories that are just popping up in my head as I'm talking about this. I wouldn't have changed it for the world and that wasn't accidental. If your career looks great on paper but feels wrong in your bones, you're not alone. Welcome to From Corporate to Calling, your lifeline into meaningful work. I'm Alyssa Murphy, a regenerative business mentor and former startup CEO who walked away from corporate systems to create work that brings life. Each week I share stories, reflections and provocations to help you recognize the signs of burnout and make a career change with purpose. If work looks good but feels wrong, this is your invitation to get out of corporate and into your calling. A few days ago I had to visit a flower farm. It was a beautiful sunny day and I'd promised to bring lunch so I spent quite a bit of time in the morning. carefully choosing as many locally sourced ingredients as I can because it felt like it would be a bit of a contradiction to turn up with something from Tesco's or Waitrose when I was going out to meet regenerative land workers. So I used vegetables from our local community supported agriculture scheme and eggs from a farmer that actually turns out to be the landlord. for this flower farmer and yeah lots of yummy ingredients from local area and I even went as I was out on my dog walk that morning I tried to see if I could forage a few things to include and I found some dogwood rose petals just to garnish the salad which probably all sounds pretty whimsical but that's kind of the point of today's episode because I really enjoyed making that lunch. I loved the whole process, I loved how it forced me to think about the food that I was using and its sustainability and the local sources and the farmers who had created that food for us and it was a joy to take it to this flower farmer and to sit with her on her little plastic chairs, looking out. at all the rows of colourful and diverse flowers that she's growing and the wildlife buzzing around and the kestrel overhead and just soaking up the atmosphere and I loved talking to her about her experience of outgrowing her allotment and how she came by sort of lucky chance to find this parcel of land that she could work how hard it was in the beginning and how much work she'd had to do to get the land to a condition where she could actually work on it and what her hopes and dreams for the future were and how I could bring my experience with kind of running commercial businesses and helping startups and getting people to be investor ready getting businesses to be investor ready and yeah bringing that weaving that all together. It was just, you know, what better possible way to spend a couple of working hours and when I left she kindly, kindly snipped me a beautiful bouquet of flowers that I could take with me and the reason I'm sharing all of this is because in recent weeks as I have been continuing to refine the concept for my new venture and doing a lot of kind of quite heavy work in terms of designing the structure and working out how the financial vehicle is going to work and a lot of really quite complex questions that i'm i'm trying to kind of get into this jigsaw puzzle and make work the kind of overriding theme has been this I don't know, kind of internal battle with the fear that I just can't do this, that it's just too big, it's too ambitious, that I'm not the right person to do it. All of that kind of stuff that kind of plays as this kind of background music in my head. And frankly, I think in the backgrounds of the heads of almost anyone who is stepping out of a conventional path of work, trying something new, designing something for themselves, you know, building a novel idea or project or business, trying to get something off the ground. There's this ongoing struggle with our own confidence, with our own logic, with the shoulds in our head, with the voices of others, however well-meaning, telling us that we're on the wrong path. And I think The ideal kind of antidote to that is to engineer a really great worst case scenario. And that's the core of the episode that I want to share with you today, because since I landed on this concept for myself of building a great worst case scenario, it just feels to me like it's the answer to so many things. during the challenging and unpredictable and destabilizing journey of building meaningful work. So let's get into exactly what I mean by engineering a great worst case scenario. So look, I'll come back to my personal example. I am developing an investment platform for regenerative agriculture. in my region of the UK and I'm bringing together a lot of different strands that exist elsewhere into one integrated offer which makes it very complex and I'm dealing with agriculture which is super kind of unpredictable and you know spiky kind of business to model financially and I'm creating quite a complex investment vehicle which is really challenging my sort of limited experience within. venture capital world that I understand but this is moving me into whole new territories of kind of philanthropy and evergreen capital and impact investment all of which is to say there it's quite understandable that a lot of the time I have this feeling of it's just too big or you know it's and I talked about this in in last week's episode that what do you do when everything just feels too big when what you're building feels too big and I talked about how important it is to break everything down into bite-sized chunks. So that's definitely a part of it. And I recommend going back and listening to last week's episode. But also there is, you know, one of the questions that's going around in our head is like, what if it doesn't work? What if it fails? What if I put in all of this time and this effort and this energy and I just fall flat on my face? I've heard that so many times from different people of like what if I'm just messing around here, what if I'm just kidding myself, what if I'm delusional, what if I'm not good enough. All of those what ifs end in some kind of perceived failure scenario. So let's just pause for a moment and accept that failure is a real possibility. It would be ridiculous of me as an entrepreneur, as someone who has worked in the startup world Not to be honest about the possibility of failure. It would be ridiculous for me to look at my own venture and not see that there is a reasonably high risk that it won't all come together in the way I want. And probably not from my own personal failings, probably because of a lot of externalities that I can't control. So what can I control? What will make it worthwhile even if it doesn't work in the way that I hoped? the experience of doing it. If I can engineer a great experience in trying, in the journey of trying to make it work, if I can have fun, if I can have a good time, if I can experience joy on a daily basis, it will have been worth it regardless. And I really feel this from my previous experience as an entrepreneur so You may know back when I was 25 I set up a company with my sibling. We were young and audacious and ambitious and naive and it was amazing and I often wish that I could tap into quite that level of, I don't know, fierce determination that I had in my mid-20s and also the kind of carefree attitude in some ways, but I kept building that. company for years to come and I built it even after my sibling exited the business. I, you know, I built it when it looked very different from when we had started. I built it through all kinds of economic challenges. I built it through two pregnancies and I stuck with it not because I was fixated on an idea of success, not because there was an end goal. And yes, as it turned out, I had the opportunity to sell my company to my team and I, you know, made a really good exit. I hate that word, but, you know, I made an exit that felt really good to me, that left a legacy for my team, that I felt really shared the benefits among us all but that was never the goal i was never you know, it particularly in the early days, I had no idea where the company was going to go. Really, I had ambitions for it. But, you know, it was very open ended. It was a big question. And the fact is, you couldn't have paid me enough money to stop it and go somewhere else. Like, even when I was paying myself, you know, minimum wage, and anyone that I hired was being paid more than I was. Like, I just loved it. I loved. the work that we were doing, I loved the mission that we were on, I loved the sector climate tech that we were in, but I loved the daily experience we had. I cannot express to you so much fun. I was talking with a friend and former employee of mine who was there in the reasonably early days and we were just like laughing and reminiscing about like just how much fun we had on a daily basis. every day showing up to the office there would be some kind of hilarious situation that came up there would be some sort of like bizarre initiative that we were doing like the day that my co-founder um set themselves a challenge not to use plastic and like couldn't brush their teeth or get on the tube and wear shoes um you know there was just always something like that going on we had you So many good stories. We had like really amazing relationships with our clients. We threw these crazy, crazy parties. We once turned our office into this Arctic landscape because we were working with a polar explorer who was raising awareness of climate change. It was really hard at times. It was really challenging. You know, if you'd sort of asked me what I felt my, you know, the percentage chance of success was, I don't know what I would have answered you. but It was fun and I was along for the ride as long as I could do it and there is no other way that I would have want to have spent my late 20s and early 30s because it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. And that is what I mean by engineering a worst-case scenario because let's just say that that company had failed. That at some point, you know, the financials just weren't working. the market crashed, you know, a major client pulled and we couldn't get things back together, it would still have been absolutely worth it for the time that I got to spend, the people that I got to meet, the things that I learned about myself, the myriad, myriad hilarious stories that are just popping up in my head as I'm talking about this. I wouldn't have changed it for the world and that wasn't accidental. Perhaps it didn't need to be engineered as much as I think we may need to if we are coming to these kind of building experiences slightly later in our lives when perhaps we're carrying a little bit more weight, we don't have quite that same energy, our self-confidence may have taken some hits, perhaps we've experienced some burnout, then I think perhaps we have to be that bit more conscious in actively engineering. But I... always knew running the company that that culture that we had that sort of the sense of humour the priority on doing things in a fun and different way that it really mattered and I look back now and I know that that was like the lifeblood of our company it's what it was what made people want to work for us when we couldn't pay very competitive salaries you know it's what made clients want to work with us when they could have absolutely gone with far more experienced agencies It's what kept me. In that company, like working my socks off for, you know, I guess 14 years before I sold the company. It was an amazing experience. So that's what I personally need to learn as I set out on my next venture. Nearly, but not quite, about 17 or 18 years after I did my first, nearly 20 years after my first venture. I know that I need to consciously engineer an amazing worst case scenario. And for me, that means having these incredible connections with the farmers and the land workers that I am building this vehicle to serve. Putting in the effort of making them, you know, little gifts of lunch or cake or tea as a thank you for their time in talking to me, you know, making sure that I'm actually savouring the experience of getting to go. and visit these farms and learn about these farmers lives and their dreams and their challenges, feeling that connection to the land, to community, to being part of a movement that is doing something differently and really building a kind of very essential kind of resilience. I get to choose to have fun doing this and that doesn't happen if I'm you know primarily here sat on my desk maybe trying to work things out with AI or getting super bogged down in all the financial modeling or you know just sitting thinking feeling like I should be doing these things or doing back-to-back zooms where I'm not actually meeting people in person. It means for me to to prioritize like getting my hands dirty, being in a space with someone, you know traveling even if I don't have to so that we can have that face-to-face time, like being on the land and just taking it all a little bit more lightly than, you know, than the kind of scale of what I'm building naturally lends itself to, you know, it's almost like the scale demands to be taken seriously and naturally sort of triggers overwhelm and I just have to keep choosing, no, I am going to have fun doing this. It's a very different kind of fun than I had in my mid-20s like I don't need to pull all-nighters after awards shows or take electrical engineers to gay bars in Soho. I had that experience. I loved it. Like now fun for me is being in nature, like enjoying produce from these farms, like really savouring these conversations, going to regenerative agriculture festivals, like letting myself enjoy this. new identity and learning about this new field, pun intended. So my question to you today is how can you engineer a great worst case scenario for yourself? Let's break it down a little bit. The first thing is acknowledge that there is a worst case scenario out there because that is what's driving the doubts. That's what's driving the hesitation, the procrastination. If you can have the courage to just look at that worst case scenario in the face, it immediately loses some of its power. So yes, there is a possibility of failure. And depending on what you're building and how you're choosing to build it, that risk may be higher or lower, but it is out there. Okay. And that is all right. That is just absolutely part and parcel of building your own thing and that may not have been your experience within the perceived safety of full-time employment or you know in a corporate environment where I suspect it can feel as though you know everything is kind of taking care of you for you and there's daily up and down kind of politics but generally it's feeling there is a stronger sense of stability even though I think we're increasingly seeing. that that is a bit of a fallacy really but when you go out on your own it can feel like your risk profile has just skyrocketed so look at it you know what is the worst case scenario it's going to be some kind of version of you fail you know people don't want what you have to offer you can't find the clients you run out of money um you know it feels uncomfortable saying these things but you know that that's what's going on in the backs of our heads so let's bring it out into the open and look at it and then when you have stated to yourself that worst case scenario so for me it's that you know i put in all of this time all of this energy i'm not really focused on making money somewhere else and i get a year or maybe two years down the road and it's just not gonna happen you know, or it's just still in that idea stage and it hasn't really become a reality. That's the worst case scenario for me. So then the more exciting question becomes, how do you engineer the experience such that it will have been worthwhile whether or not you succeed? Because when you can do that, when you can create an amazing experience for yourself, you can only succeed. And so this might mean doing things a bit differently, like putting the effort into certain things that perhaps feel like an extravagance to you. It definitely doesn't mean primarily working on your own, you know, developing King. pitch decks or collateral or material or going round and round in circles with AI, you know, working on your business plan or being super stuck in the research stage. I am not saying that those things are not valid and necessary, but I think there are very few people out there for whom that brings joy. I want you to think about which aspect of building, whatever it is that you are building brings you joy. Is it doing the actual work? then find a way to do the work even if you're not getting paid so that you are experiencing that joy is it being in a room with other incredible people or find a way to get in those rooms is it travel and new experiences then put the effort into doing those things even if you feel like you can't fully justify them maybe it's just even little things about how you set up your working space or where you choose to work what your daily rhythm looks like who you surround yourself with, these things really, really matter. There is a version of my entrepreneurial journey that looks very, very different, where we went down a very kind of professionalised, safe route, you know, where we had sort of, I don't know, these sort of soulless offices where we, you know, we showed up in suits every day, where we just focused completely on efficiency, where we made all of our decisions based on what would get us to the highest profit margin as quickly as possible, where we didn't make space for people to be full human beings or to make mistakes because we were just laser focused on, I don't know, beating the competition, getting to the top of the market. Well, you know what? We did get to the top of the market. We did it by having so much fun. You know, we invested. in parties. We created little office rituals. You know, we created a little snug area in the office where we could read books or have a nap. We bought in snacks. We made each other laugh. You know, we went for park runs at lunchtime. Like we were human in that journey. We prioritised the journey actually over the destination. and then you know what like the destination followed so i think i've said enough about this because really at its heart it's a very simple concept and i just hope that you can internalize that you can engineer this experience to be amazing regardless of where it ends up and that i believe and i have seen from my own experience that when you put your focus on the journey, on the experience, the destination will very likely follow of its own accord. So I hope this concept resonates. I hope it's something that you can put into practice. If you didn't hear last week's episode about what to do when the thing you're building just feels too big and how to break that down into manageable chunks, then I think they're a really good pairing. So go back and listen to that episode as well. And a reminder that if you are resonating with some of the challenges that I've spoken about here, if you're on your own journey of shifting your career, of designing self-directed work, of building your own meaningful business, then that is something that I can support you with if that would feel helpful to you. There is a link in the show notes where you can book a discovery call and we can talk about what it is that you want to build, the kind of help that you're looking for and whether or not it'll be a right fit for us to work together. So I would love to speak to you. Thank you as always for listening. I was sharing with someone on a discovery call just this morning what a pleasure it is to me when I get to connect with people who are listening to the podcast and most of the time most of the people who are listening to this podcast are invisible to me but I know that you're out there. I know that you know you're taking me I'm on your dog walk or I'm here when you're washing up or even when you're falling asleep and it's an honour that you let me in in that way and that you listen to my journey and the invitations that I have to share. So thank you so much for being here and I'll be right here back again next week. If this episode of From Corporate to Calling was helpful or inspiring, Follow the show so you don't miss an episode. And if you know someone who's questioning their career, send them this podcast. Lifelines are meant to be shared. Remember, you don't have to tolerate burnout or misalignment. You can redirect your skills into meaningful work that brings back life to you and to the world around you.
