Why I Quit My Job

When I joined xibo, the feeling was euphoric. Here I was - fresh out of university, wearing the same blue suit I wore to prom, and ready to start my dream job as a Marketing Manager for a tech startup in Wales; it was literally a dream come true.

But after a while those rose-tinted glasses started to slip, And I’m here to tell you that it’s not because of the company you work for.

It’s because:

You start to notice other people doing amazing things.

If you’re anything like me, you’re the type of person who absorbs the leadership articles on inc.com, and downloads the latest TED talks about organisational structure to watch on your long train journey home. (It’s Holocracy by the way). And if so, you’ll be reading articles about people your age (and hell of a lot younger!) doing amazing things with their lives. People who are going out into the world with nothing but an idea, and creating brand new products and concepts that are fundamentally changing the way our society works.

After a while, their success becomes your failure.

After all, YOU have the exact same talents as them. You did the same degree. You’ve had the same life experience. I mean, you even think the same. So why are your lives so different?

The problem is you start to lose yourself in the monotony of daily life in an organisation. Time flies when you’re working to deadlines every day. Birthdays come and go. And if you track yourself against your heroes like I do (Steve Jobs was a multi-millionaire at my age), birthdays actually start to suck.

The worst part is that this kind of envy (let’s call it what it is), isn’t just limited to the guys in Silicon Valley. Even in my own Monkey Circle, I was seeing glimpses of awesome people setting out to do awesome things. Take, for example, Si Martin - who recently left my company to work full time on “Heads Above the Waves” - a not-for-profit organisation he founded focusing on helping teens get through depression, suicide and self-harm (mad props by the way).

You start asking, why not me?

When people leave the well-trodden path of conformity to do great things, it’s easy to get jealous. It’s easy to pass it off as luck, or convince yourself that they had something you don’t (money, time, better contacts). But once you push past these negative thoughts you often realise there is no difference between you and them - except for the fact that they actually went and did it.

…which is why I quit my job.

As Head of Marketing at xibo I had the opportunity to do great things; I created marketing tools which have been used by prestigious companies such as The Financial Times, IQPC, UpdraftPlus and Informa, and I really, really learned a lot.

However, in leaving this position I have gained one thing a lot of people don’t have in their careers; freedom. The freedom to spend every day building relationships, improving my product range and yes, even writing blogs.

You can have this freedom to build your own empire too, you just need to take that first step.

Join my Army

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to be writing about my own journey to build a startup in Wales. Building on a few initial clients, I’ll walk you through the creation of my web design & social media agency.

Future posts will explain how to:

• Gain your first customer
• Create an inbound marketing strategy from scratch
• Build an automated sales funnel
• Develop viral marketing tools that hit your niche

To follow my adventure into self-employment, make sure to subscribe. Or if you’d like me to help you increase sales at your own startup, get in touch.