#63 - Climbing the corporate ladder - IT'S A TRAP!

[00:00:50] What is a successful career? What is the difference between climbing the corporate ladder and being an entrepreneur, which is kind of like climbing the ladder towards freedom? This is an episode that is especially important. If you are someone that is early on in your career and you are trying to decide which of these two ladders should I try to climb.

[00:01:19] And I'm here, as always, with the founder of doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo.

[00:01:24] A very good friend of mine, the founder of Catina Media, a company that had 300 employees.

[00:01:31] Eric Bergman, how are you today? I said about this episode. We didn't plan this episode. And then we just ended up like, hey, this is a good idea. Let's talk about it.

[00:01:43] It's a good idea. It's an idea that you were teaching to my girlfriend today at lunch and I thought it resonated with me a lot. So I want this to be in a podcast.

[00:01:55] Yeah. So it sounds like this is a big concept that I basically applied somewhere, but I think I came up with it over lunch. It's an important either way. Well, you'll get to hear about it. I'm here with my good friend. I mean, the host of the Becoming Great podcast, the first guy joining me in two great dot.

[00:02:14] And how are you today?

[00:02:17] I am feeling terrific, too. It's a podcast day, and that's always enjoyable.

[00:02:23] And if you're new here or a loyal listener, this is becoming great podcast. A podcast for you. Who wants to make the world or just your own life better to entrepreneurship and personal development.

[00:02:39] And this episode is about the corporate ladder and a trap with it.

[00:02:44] So explain to me, what is the trap of the corporate ladder? Okay, so let's let's start by looking at the corporate ladder. It's basically you start the ground level, whatever first job you get in customer support or wherever.

[00:03:01] It's usually not that much responsibility. It's usually not that big of a paycheck. And it's not very prestigious. It's the ground floor. And then you work for a couple of years, maybe six months. If you're. If you're really ambitious or maybe a couple of years and then you take the first step upwards, you usually get a bit higher pay, a bit better title, a bit more responsibility and so on. And the idea of the corporate ladder is that you keep climbing this ladder for your entire career. And with each step, you get a bit higher pay a bit more responsibility, usually a bit more work hours, and you get more and more in to the organization. I believe that the trap with this is that the higher you climb, the more. Locked into this concept, you become the more you're held in to the corporate culture and the further you are away from total freedom. Meaning that. If you're if you're a manager, you're usually getting pretty higher salary. Let's say you've been at a company for five years. What's very common is that you adjust your expenses to your pay grade so you get a more expensive car, you get a more expensive apartment, more expensive clothes. You get tied into a bit more of a title. It becomes a bit more who you are.

[00:04:33] Your other manager friends might have a similar lifestyle.

[00:04:37] Exactly. So you're kind of the trap. Quote unquote. Hair becomes that you lock yourself in to climbing this ladder because you can always see, OK, the next step will be that job. The next step will be jobs. You can keep your kind of eyes on the prize in a sense. And the downside of this is that the higher you climb this ladder, the. The more the less freedom you usually have in the beginning, a ground level job, no one really expects much of you. They don't expect you to pick up the phone and work on a Saturday or Sunday. But if you're on the sixth step of this ladder, maybe you're getting up to a high level, high paying job. Most companies would expect you to work whenever it's needed. And you're just getting further and further away from from freedom. And the difference here would be if you climbed the entrepreneurial ladder, because you can start them at the same time. And it's actually easiest my favors we have starting an entrepreneurial journey is either while you are studying or while you're in a ground level job, because if you're having a ground level job and you're not expected to work Saturdays and Sundays, you're not expected to work evenings. You still want to make some extra money and hopefully you have more energy left because your job isn't that draining. You can use that energy to build a side business, to start something small, maybe five, maybe 10 hours every week and get going. And within a couple of years, that can be something.

[00:06:23] But if you don't start at this stage and you can take higher risks with that time as well, like you can do something. And if it doesn't work out, that's fine. Your livelihood is not dependent on it.

[00:06:32] Exactly. You can take. You can take risks because you don't have to quit your job to try. But if you're in a manager opposition and you're working maybe 50 or 60 hours per week, maybe you're making higher level decisions, you're more tired from it. To start a business, then you might have to actually quit your job to do it. It becomes a higher risk and it's it's trickier. So you're building yourself in the career path. You might be building towards more prestige, more money, more what everyone else around you is looking for.

[00:07:08] And you're already invested so much if you're on step three or four or five. Yeah. Then it's painful to start another ladder.

[00:07:15] Yeah. It becomes a big part of your identity. Like, let's say you're working at Mercedes and you've been there for seven years. Like this pastiches car company. You're no longer Yamhill, the free spirited guy. Your email who works at Mercedes. Mm hmm. And it's a big step to start doing something that I'm Emelda manager. Yes. Your EUM and the manager. You're not Yemen who starts at ground level with a little entrepreneurial side hustle. I'm willing to do whatever it takes to to make a living.

[00:07:50] Yeah. And I guess the final so if I'm ground level and I start a side hustle and then now that makes me somehow two hundred dollars a month, I'm probably super grateful for that. And that's just a super fund plus. But if I were to quit the job that is making me five thousand dollars per month, then those two hundred that I make in the beginning seems like nothing. And that would just create worry and anxiety. But I'm the sensation that I'm always losing out on something that I could have had by doing. Following is actually a good way to put it.

[00:08:23] It's you're suddenly losing out on a lot more because if you're giving up on that, you're starting your side hustle and you're giving up on that small paycheck that you would get from your regular job. It's not that big of a deal. But if you're giving that paycheck is always there as well. Yeah. You can always give back. It can always. It's harder if you worked yourself up. Yeah. Because you don't know if you will get that job again and you don't know what's going to happen. There are less of those opportunities.

[00:08:50] So I think that. This is an important thing to contemplate. And when you're taking your early steps in to the business world, it's easy to see that career path, and especially if you come from.

[00:09:04] Maybe you've studied economics or business or something in university or college, then it's easy to see everyone else starting at Deloitte or KPMG or one of these big financial institutions. And you see these managerial path moving onwards.

[00:09:22] You have a mosquito on your head. I do. I read a great quote about mosquitoes on your forehead. On my forehead. You got it. I got it.

[00:09:34] I read I read a good quote about mosquitoes. It's sad. Fighting with someone on the Internet is.

[00:09:44] Like having a mosquito in it, like trying to kill a mosquito in your face, you might kill someone, but you will definitely punish yourself. Christmas is probably not perfect, but something like it's a quote. It's a quote said by someone who wasn't brilliant. Let's get back into the corporate ladder. Yes. Here. But regardless, then it becomes a bigger and bigger part of your identity. And it's literally like you have climbed higher and higher and higher up on a ladder.

[00:10:17] It becomes more expensive to do what you think is fun as a side house as well, because you would have to stop doing your work. That is high paid. Yeah. And you will you're less likely to have energy for it. And if you have now an expensive lifestyle, I thought you can't even afford it.

[00:10:32] That's it. There's all kinds of things that ties in to. If you start on the corporate ladder and you start seeing yourselves evolving on the corporate ladder, it's easy to get stuck. It's easy to get dependent on those things. That is easy to start identifying as one of these things if you're dreaming about becoming an entrepreneur. I believe it's important to start something as soon as possible. So that becomes a part of who you are. It becomes a part of your DNA. And it's fine if it takes three years to develop a business. It's fine if it takes five years.

[00:11:13] If you've been climbing the corporate ladder for five years and you haven't done anything on the side, it's really hard to start something. But if you've been doing a trap. Yeah, but if you've been doing something small, just taking on one client with your little Web development agency or doing something on the side all the time, it's so much easier to keep that as a part of who you are and where you're going to be.

[00:11:44] Let's say someone is in the corporate ladder than they are one to three years in. Can they use the situation somehow to give them self opportunities for freedom later? How do you mean something that comes to my mind? Could be that could they work? So instead of work in the corporate ladder and having time to spare. Could they work the corporate ladder but save money to maybe take a year off later or something like that? Cadabby A strategy?

[00:12:16] Yeah, I think so. Personally, I believe that it's important to think 10 years into the future. What would I value the most and am I on track to get there? And I believe that more or less everyone would value to have freedom. Ten years from now, to be able to own their own time, to be able to travel or at least be in charge of what they're doing today in the corporate world. It's almost impossible to reach that kind of freedom in most jobs because most companies won't allow you to be in fully charge of your time. And the higher up you get in the hierarchy, the more you are. You need to be a role model to other people. The more you need to be in the office early work late. And so on and so forth. So to answer your question, if you look at yourself and say, OK, 10 years from now, I want freedom. That requires me to take a leap of faith into running a business. Maybe the best case scenario then is, OK, let's let's save up as much money as possible. Right now. Let's say you have climbed a ladder for three years, five years, and you realize, OK, I'm actually quite high up on my expenses now. I don't save up that much. I'm having more expensive apartment than I did if a couple of years ago.

[00:13:38] I'm spending more money than I did spend one year of kind of getting your expenses back down, you know, and save everything else. And then maybe spend one more year saving up as much money as possible to reach a point where you have one year of money in the bank or maybe two years of money in the bank, and then take a leap of faith in yourself and quit. Then you have one year to get something rolling and you could start some side hustle during this time as well. Let's say you're in you're in finance and you're you're working with accounting. You could get some accounting client or something in as well and start working a little bit on the side. Hustle and start doing that while you're at your regular job. Yeah, exactly. Prepare for that. Yeah. Yeah. We're just thinking ahead. If I keep doing what I'm doing now, will I have freedom 10 years from now if freedom is something you value? And I believe everyone values freedom. I don't think most people have considered it because it's not part of the corporate culture. The idea with a corporate culture and the idea with our societies, you start working where you're 18, 19, 20 and you work until you're 65. That's that's the norm.

[00:14:55] And you can enjoy your life in the weekends or when you're 65. And both those times you have less energy. Yeah. You have either got an old or I've spent all your money during the workweeks, your energy.

[00:15:07] Yeah. And I believe it's never been easier to be an entrepreneur than it is right now because. I mean, if we go back 50 years in time, best case scenario, your clients was the people living in your neighborhood. Maybe you were living in a village somewhere. You had to take a big risk to start a business. Today, you have the Internet. Half of the world's population or something like that is connected. So you could get in touch with anyone. You could sell pretty much anything. You could be super niche. Even if you are collecting Superman magazines, you can do a business online from anywhere in the world. Either educating about Superman or selling Superman magazine wherever. That was not an option for pretty much anyone 50 years from now. So there are all of these different angles that you can take. So I believe that freedom is the ultimate goal of being an entrepreneur. And for some people, freedom could look like having a big house, driving a nice car, working 10 hours per week and just making a lot of money that would more or less never happened in the corporate world, because there aren't, as far as I know, no jobs that will allow you to work 10 hours per week and still make a lot of money.

[00:16:26] If you're making a lot of money, you expect and work a lot where you can work 10 hours per week and make enough money to have your basic needs met. And then I was super life with a lot of joy and very little stress.

[00:16:37] Yeah. And a lot of time for your passions. Yeah. And that's the thing when when you're climbing the corporate ladder, it pretty much always comes with a new job, comes with more responsibility and a lot of the times with more work hours and maybe people that you manage, you're responsible for more responsibilities, more everything in the entrepreneurship world. If something goes well, you kind of you're never really getting a promotion. But let's say your business is doing better. A lot of the time you have the option if you want to cash that out as more time or more money.

[00:17:11] Mm hmm. Let's say you get a better paid client. Maybe you want to work a little less and you just want to make the same amount of money so you could choose when you're climbing the entrepreneurial journey. If you want to cash out in time or in money, which is an option you don't have in the corporate world show.

[00:17:36] Some people like you and I, we have a lot of energy, you have a high desire to work. So the corporate ladder structure of working hard. Most of the time wouldn't really hurt me. But I would like to have the option of working less if I wanted to, especially at specific periods in my life. I imagine if I had a kid, for example, I would like to work a little bit less, maybe for five years. So the first year of my child's life, maybe some time, I would like to take a year off. I took a whole year off in 2015 and I imagine I have a dream at least 2025. I would like to do the same thing because I want to live a really long life and I think breaks are healthy. So to have that freedom is super valuable for me.

[00:18:24] Yeah, I think once again, I keep coming back to if you look at your life and you look 10 years into the future and you can think about what is the best case scenario of my job ten years into now, and if that's not where you want to go, then you're not in the right place. And if that's climbing the corporate ladder somewhere and you can see 10 years in the future. Best case scenario, I'm the CEO of this company. That would mean very little freedom. Very high demands a lot of things. Maybe you want that. Maybe you want the prestigious title of CEO. Maybe that's your dream. Then you're in the right place. But if what you're looking for is the opportunity to take a year off, if you're looking for is building your own business and doing that for the rest of your life, then that 10 year thing means that you're not on the right track. And, you know, it's actually I believe it's pretty easy to look at where you are right now and kind of fast forward the movie 10 years into the future. What is a likely place that you will be? And if you don't like where that is, then it's time to do changes.

[00:19:35] I really liked that. I don't know the answer for myself. Yeah. I have an idea. But most likely, unlikely things are going to happen. Yeah, and that's exciting.

[00:19:44] And then that's where you want to be. Yeah. You wanted to be unpredictable. So it it's you know, if you were in a very strict career path, then you would be able to kind of see where this is heading. So then you like that. You don't that you can't see it.

[00:19:59] I love it. Now cures for you. What is a successful life?

[00:20:05] What needs needs to be filled. So to have a really successful life, I believe that freedom is one of the necessary parts. And without freedom, other things will be hard that are important. So, for example, relationships are really important. And the more freedom you have, the easier it is to build good relationships, because the more time you have to work on them. If you were to work 60, 70, 80 hours a week working really hard and career, you would struggle to make time for your loved ones. Time to make those relationship really work. You would struggle to focus on your health because it would take too much time. So for me. A life with freedom and where the freedom is well invested in whatever you value. For me, I value relationships. I value health. So I put a lot of time into that that maybe I would value maybe someone else would value music. Then having freedom to invest in your music is what's important. Regardless of what way, I think freedom is a crucial part because it helps you to make those choices. Mm hmm. And without your choices, it's not your success. Ayman, Aymen, brother, would you add anything to that?

[00:21:23] For me personally, I it's very important to have some kind of spiritual practice. I like to have time for meditation, reflection. Being prescient and not stressed, and I know when I take on too many things, which happens all the time, I, I, I stop prioritizing that and then I feel not at all as I don't enjoy my life at all as much. So to have enough time. And he comes back to freedom, of course for those things becomes very important for me. And one of the most important things of all is to have a lot of time to pursue my natural interests. So I'm a big believer in that. When I follow my passion, what I'm naturally curious about, I learn so quick and I become so good at something. So I would love a life where I can. Make a living doing my natural interests. And they change all the time. But I would like to make a living from them right now. For example, speaking as one of them, podcasting is one of them. And I would like to have a life rest. Follow that red thread of excitement all the time.

[00:22:35] So based on how you taught me. Yeah. Basically freedom. Yeah. That's the fundamental thing. Yeah.

[00:22:42] And I think freedom is such a strong way to be productive as well. Because when I follow my natural interest, I'm so effective and there's not that much resistance. I don't have to force myself to do stuff where it feels like joy.

[00:23:00] So to wrap this up. If you climb the corporate ladder, you can reach freedom, but it's hard. And a good way to do that is to start planning for them safe. If you have a dream of reaching freedom at some point, start by lowering your costs. Start by cutting them down. Get back to if you have the cost base of what you had at your first year in the office. That means that you will save up a lot and take a leap of faith. This is I don't know if I can say that, just identify with whatever it is that you're doing and start creating an identity of an entrepreneur and be okay with this taking a couple of years, because that's the way it does. It's either have money in the bank for it to take a couple of years lowering your expenses or started as a side hustle and aim towards freedom because that's how you get out of the trap of the ladder. Yes.

[00:23:59] At least to climb being the freedom, little of it doesn't have to go fast, but just a little bit. All the time.

[00:24:06] You have the option for it 10 years from now. You might be there. You might be there.

[00:24:10] Now, if you listening to this and you felt like you'd get value out of our conversations, you would love for more entrepreneurial minded people to hear these kinds of ideas being discussed. And maybe you want to help us out somehow because he liked us. Then the best thing you can do to help us is to go into your podcast app and press subscribe. And the reason why that would help us out is that we want to get into different podcasts, top lists and whatever you do that or not, it's not so much dependent on how many listeners you have in total, because we are a relatively small podcast.

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[00:24:57] So thank you for listening. And see you next Wednesday.

[00:25:01] Cheers, cheers, though, throwing elbow.