“And I would walk 500 miles” - my journey from $2m to basically homeless in just three years

Table topic #7: The corporate turigrino

Hi friends,?

Okay, sorry for the clickbait-y title. I'm only going to be temporarily homeless. I'm taking a month off to tackle the iconic "Camino de Santiago" hike through Spain.

In all the noise of social media and email inboxes filled with newsletters, sales pitches, and 2FA/magic link notifications, you probably didn't even notice that it's been around 3 months since my last "weekly" newsletter.

I feel you. The world is spinning fast.?

Why the radio silence? It's been hard to find the right words. It was not easy to communicate the decision a few weeks ago to shut down my virtual events business. Things like that are never easy to share. Especially when you seem to be soaring on the top of the world.?

Yes, the post below was hard to get out. From the decision to take some time off to find some new direction and walk the almost 500-mile hike through Spain, to the more recent death of my father. I think a lot of us are dealing with some heaviness and uncertainty in our lives right now. But hopefully, the post will provide some perspective to someone out there feeling stuck in a rut.

I hope you enjoy this story of my pandemic experience and where it led me. If you don't read any further, I'll be satisfied if I at least got "I'm gonna be (500 miles)" by the Proclaimers stuck in your head for the foreseeable future. ??

Da d-da da, da d-da da, da d-da da, da d-da da

Da-da-da dun-diddle un-diddle un-diddle a da da,

Alex

AND I WOULD WALK 500 MILES (Seriously, I am.)

In a week I'm traveling with my wife and child to Europe for a vacation to see our overseas friends and family and I'm not coming back. My wife has been really supportive of my desire to check off a bucket list item and do the almost 500-mile hike through the beautiful countryside of Spain -- the Camino de Santiago.

Yes, the post below was hard to get out. From the decision to take some time off to find some new direction and walk the (very) long hike through Spain, to the more recent death of my father. I think a lot of us are dealing with some heaviness and uncertainty in our lives right now. But hopefully, the post will provide some perspective to someone out there feeling stuck in a rut.

A long walk can go a long way

With the world opening back up and business in the virtual events space slowing down dramatically, I had to make some tough calls. I made the decision to stop doing virtual events and put a pause on Lunchpool to figure out which direction I want to take it next.?

I'm a big believer that long walks are a great way to recharge, and I am convinced they also do something magical in your brain. It's meditative. It's how I've had some of my most insightful breakthroughs.?

Over the past 3 years, I've been living and breathing my tagline, which is also the name of this newsletter, "Take a break to connect". But I've also realized how important it is to take a break to disconnect.?

It's not always just a religious experience

Ditching a six-figure job in early 2019 was exhilarating. It was a corporate "slide into the gas station just as you run completely out of fuel" moment for me.??

Finding myself again out of gas earlier this year, I recently decided to take the counterintuitive mission of walking the famous Camino de Santiago.

The walk started as a pilgrimage to visit the shrine where there is a cathedral that houses the remains of a key figure in Christian history, St. James. Throughout the Middle Ages, the Camino de Santiago remained as popular as pilgrimages to Jerusalem or Rome.

Within the Camino community, they have a name for those who aren't Roman Catholic pilgrims, traveling to Santiago as a demonstration of their faith. It's the "Turigrino". The word is a mash-up of the Spanish terms "Turista" and "Peregrino". A "Touring Pilgrim". A turigrino is someone who's traveling for reasons other than demonstrating their religious faith as an act of penance.

Enter the "Corporate Turigrino"

I was what I like to call a "corporate turigrino".?

My reason for joining the ranks of Corporate America was anything but traditional. I was an entrepreneur that found himself inside a company- an "intrapreneur".

Early on, I built a company that gave me a taste of what it's like to work for yourself. Although it crashed and burned and left me financially devastated at 25, it was the experience of a lifetime.?

It was something that would show me that no desk job could give me the rush of creating something that made people feel alive. There's nothing that can compare to taking an idea out of your head and putting in the effort and finesse to make it a real, live business that people buy?into and utilize.?

Liam Neeson had to get his skills from somewhere

But you gotta have certain skills before you can be a successful entrepreneur. We aren't Liam Neesons right out the gate. It's better sometimes to learn these skills on someone else's dime. A stable job helps balance your risk and in return, you get a regular wage and an opportunity to gain skills based on experience.

For me, that was a spark that lit a fire that will never die. I'm convinced that once you are bitten by that entrepreneurial bug, it's damn near impossible to work for someone else. At least not without an escape plan. My escape plan for the world always started with a mid-day escape plan from the desk.

I can't tell you how many times my wife, Annika, has had a mini aneurysm, looking over from the passenger seat and seeing the little needle in my 4Runner dashboard sitting well below the big E.

A gas station analogy - "out of gas, out of road, out of car, I don't know how I'm going to go."

Do you ever feel like your body's check engine light is on but you're like "nah, I'll be fine"?

There are two types of people in this world. There's the "man I only have a quarter tank, better go fill up" camp, and then there are my people. I can't tell you how many times my wife, Annika, has had a mini aneurysm, looking over from the passenger seat and seeing the little needle in my 4Runner dashboard sitting well below the big E.

This is always exacerbated by big digital 0 on the nearby tiny LCD screen that lets you know how many miles your car will go until it *simply can't go any further.

Without fail, I always brush it off with something like, "Oh come on! Everyone knows you've still got a good 20-30 miles once you hit zero."

My wife is going to outlive me by a long stretch

This seems like a perfect analogy for the two groups of people you find in the professional world. There are those in high-stability jobs like accounting, academia, and data management. And there are those others in high-risk jobs- the day traders, Web3 builders, and all sorts of risk-lovin' entrepreneurs.?

I'm obviously in the latter camp. And that alone is probably a good explanation for why both Annika and her car will outlive me by at least 5 years).

Why do we keep making our lives more complex?

The gas tank gamble is just another example of a problem we created for ourselves as a society. Do we really need cars? Maybe. Do we really need to destroy the environment so we can go to Disneyland or move across the country? I guess there is a benefit to amusement and fun, right? One could argue that sitting in place would be a whole lot less stressful and better for the world.

As a society, we've really done a terrible job of "keeping it simple, stupid." For many thousands of years, we hunted, we gathered, we ate, we communed, we procreated, and we either grunted or wrote on the walls of our caves to share our experiences with the people around us.

But no, we had to make the long and arduous journey toward iPhones. Why settle for buffalos and berries when we had the capacity to labor for centuries toward "impossible burgers" and "seedless watermelons"?!

We simply have to keep busy. And this business of "busyness" seems to produce a lot more unnecessary complexity in its quest to improve and simplify our lives.

"Do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life"

Improvement and simplification can be a mirage. Isn't the prospect of a simple life so wonderful? Financial freedom, a healthy retirement, and a life of leisure seem to top most people's "life goals" list.?

The "do what you love" quote is so enchanting. Love horses? Be a horse trainer! Love putting things in boxes? Be a warehouse employee (or an accountant).

Find something you love and labor your way to a happy deathbed. You'll spend your final hours with a feeling of accomplishment for a job well done; A fulfilled life that completely avoided the toils and angsts that many labor through simply to make ends meet.

Me? After an initial crash and burn in entrepreneurship about 15 years ago, followed by a bumpy rise through the ranks of corporate America, I came to love my lunch break.

After getting a good taste of the working world, the work I thought I wanted to do was "none at all".

Have you seen my stapler?

It was like the iconic scene from the now 30 year old satire, "Office Space". The one where the main character Peter is hypnotized into no longer caring what people think. He had this to say to his girlfriend about his career ambitions-

• Peter: “I don’t like my job and I don’t think I’ll go anymore.”
• Joanna: “You’re just not gonna go?”
• Peter: “Yeah.”
• Joanna: “Won’t you get fired?”
• Peter: “I don’t know. But I really don’t like it and, uh, I’m not gonna go.”
• Joanna: “So you’re gonna quit?”
• Peter: "Nu uh. Not really. I'm just going to stop going."

Taking breaks makes you more productive

He didn't quit. He just quit caring. He quit doing his work. Ironically, he got promoted.

I felt this on a soul level. After tuning out in the weeks before I quit my corporate job, building dashboards and staring at spreadsheets all day for a furniture company, I actually got a raise. But it wasn't enough. In that downtime, I got filled up with a vision. I was a man on a mission. I wanted to find a better way. I wanted to, at minimum, show people that you gotta eat. And you gotta take a break.

I even found that the data supported it. Employees that take more breaks are more productive. By huge margins.

It's also the explanation for entrepreneurial success.?A program called "1 Million Cups" is built on the premise that successful entrepreneurs must have about a million coffee meetings to make it big finally. I know first-hand that it takes a lot of caffeine to keep you going.???

Ending the desktop dining epidemic

In 2018, I assembled a team that set out to bring people together and remind people how important it is to stop, smell the flowers (or eat the tacos).?Our early mission "To end the desktop dining epidemic" was penned long before we knew there would be an actual global pandemic.

I feel like we did exactly that. We did over 600 events for our clients and brought over 150,000 people together since 2020.

Am I proud of the last three years? Damn right. But all things must come to an end. I'm going for a 500-mile walk, and when I come back, we're going to lunch.

Where do your feet feel compelled to walk to lately? Let me know! I'd love to hear about it.

This has been Volume 1, Issue 7 of Your Weekly(ish) Break to Connect with Alex Abell. Thanks for reading! Not sure about what you're doing? Get up from your desk and take a long walk to mull it over. I bet you'll get some clarity.