Corporate Exit Diaries

Some lessons learned from leaving to make a go of it on "the outside"

This post originally appeared in September 2023 on my parent site emilyburnett.me and is reposted here with my permission :-) It’s wild how even just 8 months later I see parts of this differently, and my own exit dream has evolved so much, but this is an important glimpse into why and how I originally left.

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It’s been one year since I made my corporate exit.

What a year.

It’s been a hard, exhilarating, humbling, worthwhile, year of struggle, stretch and success.

It’s been a year of:

• uncertainty

• travel (dozens of states, 5 countries...so far)

• learning

• wrestling (not literally, unless we're talking about the frequent forcing of things back into a carry-on suitcase and backpack)

• exhilaration in goals reached and new deals

• talking to hundreds of strangers-now-friends

• finally releasing my book (Dear Fellow Spender)

• heartache

• joy and contentment

• discovering how much I deeply love rocks and plants and toast...

But this wasn’t my first time leaving corporate.

Oh no no no...

I left a job 6+ years ago, fully intending for it to be my permanent break-up with the corporate grind.

I charged out of there with a heck-yeah energy:

"I can do what I want now! Brunch dates every day of the week, hikes at 2:00 in the afternoon without telling anyone or checking Slack while on the trail, no commute, no corporate bureaucracy complicating every single decision, no more fluff meetings..."

But I jumped too early for it to last.

Yeah sure, I was debt-free, finally trusted myself with the money in my care, had a savings runway, and a handful of clients for my budgeting coaching practice.

However, my “why” wasn’t meaningful, motivating, or solid enough, my savings and my business vision wasn't big enough, and I ended up playing small and re-entering corporate later that same year...

The first time I left corporate, I played small.

This corporate leap, made a year ago, I've played much bigger and consistently. The reason why? Because it was more about you.

I finally was ready to really risk, take the big chances, make the mistakes, and play on a bigger stage because I want to help you get free to do similar.

This time my corporate exit was motivated by three things:

1. A feeling deep in my soul that it was time to leave the nest.

2. A hunger for the type of growth that doesn’t come for dreamers in corporate.

3. Knowing that in order to show up as the ME that could help YOU the most, I had to leave "safety" and go into the unknown.