Billy Keels  0:00  

A single executive change or a bad cultural fit one level above you can instantly disrupt years of the hard work you've put in for your corporate role. In this episode, I share a real mentee story on how to navigate corporate fragility, shift from w2 dependency to independent 1099 contracting, and reclaim control of your time. Let's dive in. Let's get you to optionality. Today's episode is sponsored by Billy Keels Advisory Services. If you want to learn more about how to make your 99 optional, just go to makeitoptional.com. Once again, that's makeitoptional.com.

Speaker 1  0:39  

Helping you build freedom without losing your edge. This is the Going Long podcast with Billy Keels.

Billy Keels  0:52  

It's the real world stories that are continue to make the most impact and what is giving you the most value based on what you're telling me. So I want to actually share one of the realities that most are navigating today, and what are perceived as very murky corporate waters, and whether it's synergies happening, or new layoffs happening, or fear of AI taking over roles in the short to near future, all of these types of things. But more importantly, I want to give you a real story of what it means when you're focused and when you continue to take steps, even if they are imperfect steps. And it's not something that I do actively today, but there are a less than a handful of mentees that I continue to talk to, that I continue to at least share my previous experience with, and whether that is around the corporate life or building businesses on the side or personal life, anything that I can do to give to them to help them continue to move forward, that's what I do, and I share the good, the bad, and the ugly because there is no perfect person. I am not a perfect person, and and what I want for you in this episode is that you take something away from this episode that you are able to employ in your own life to help you move forward. Now, this mentee call it happens with this particular person. I'm not going to use their real name, and I'm going to make up a little bit of the detail just because you know a lot of people know each other, and I don't want somebody going right. You may know this person. So, but this particular mentee, we speak usually once every four to six months, and we're checking in on life and how things are going. And you know, this is this is a person. He has managed bigger businesses. They're businesses that have you know hundreds of millions of of dollars equivalent, if you will, and had big teams and has had you know international responsibility, and the thing that I I really find interesting is because there's a specific story, and I'm I'm wondering if you've ever been affected by organizational changes and things like that. But this mentee has constantly climbed the corporate ladder, has been very effective at that, creating strong relationships, being able to move forward, taking on growth opportunities, always knowing that it was because he, in particular, wanted to continue to prove to himself that he could enjoy the work that he was doing while helping to raise others' levels to be able to overachieve consistently. But there was a particular moment in time where this mentee, and we were talking not long ago, which is why what sparked the the idea to talk about it here in the podcast. That you know had recently moved organization and been there not not very long. I'm just say less than two years, and the person that brought him on board actually took and moved a role to another competitive firm and became CEO of that firm. The person that hired him. Now, when that person hired him, well, someone else came in and took the role that was ahead of him. Now, under normal circumstances, it's not really a big deal. He hadn't been there long enough. He wasn't, you know, prepared maybe to go into the next role until they hired somebody from the outside. Of course, there were a lot of other people that were also interested in the job, but they decided to bring somebody from the outside. But here's the thing that starts to get a little bit interesting, and and I want you to bob your head if you can recognize this or be like Billy. Never heard of that. The person that they brought in looked really fantastic on paper. They ready to run the type of organization. They were going to be able to do all of the things that they said. But the challenge is when the new person that came in, that was my mentee was reporting to.

Billy Keels  4:35  

The person came in was ultimately not a cultural fit because they came in and just really were breaking eggs, as we like to say, to prove their worth was really just a wrecking ball, destroying everything that the person that hired my mentee had put in place. And because it was not a cultural fit, what we then found was in a very short time. Well, my mentee was in a very precarious. And so, you know, for one thing or the next, the the mentee was no longer in that organization. That's okay because my mentee, you know, we walked in, talked through that, and has found another role. But here's the interesting part. This is the part that really I find interesting because less than six or seven months later, the wrecking the wrecking ball person who came in was out the door. Now think about this: my mentee moved to an organization because of the person who was there that then moved to become CEO of another company. A new person was placed in over them in the org chart. Was a wrecking ball. Was not a cultural fit. My mentee's out, and all of a sudden, the person that was the wrecking ball is now out of the organization. Are you picking up what I'm putting down? Because this is the thing. What I want you to understand is: yes, there is a constant fragility inside of any multinational company. It is very fragile because corporations are dynamic; they're constantly moving, and the reality is, don't get mad. Be like my mentee to say, okay, well, this is part of the game. This is this is the reality. So, what is it that I do? What's my next move? And so, as he thought through these things, it was really come up with a clear plan and things that were important as he looked to move to the next role. And insurance was one of the things that was really important, and having coverage, and also, and this is key. That's a hard thing to look at from a hard criteria in terms of health insurance, especially depending on where you live in the world. But this was the other thing: was really to surround himself with high quality people in the next type of role that he took on. But at this point, he starts to think about life a little bit differently, and maybe I'm saying some things to him that maybe get his mind also thinking. Because when you've always worked for someone else, there is that dependency on the corporate paycheck, and there's this start of you start to think that there's this safety in the paycheck, and the paychecks are getting there every month, or every two weeks, or every week, depending on where you are in the world, or whatever your pay scale and your pay system is. But there's a consistency and a quote-unquote safety in those paychecks versus the reality of the insecurity of any new personalities coming in and out of your organization. Because once again, organizations are large; they are dynamic, and as I've said many, many times, every corporate relationship will ultimately end. If you want to know and hear and go deep on that, you got to go check out episode 6521 of the soccer footballers that I really learned a lot around soccer, Pep Guardiola did a whole episode on that, so go and check that out. But let me let me not digress too much. It happens every once in a while. But the thing is, is so my mentee now has realized there's this safety in paychecks, or there's this constant change in the dynamics of of personalities that come in and out of big, large multinationals. So he started putting on his thinking cap and saying, "Hey, listen, I really like the corporate game. We talked about this, and it continues to be in the corporate game. However, he's doing it differently because yes, he likes large corporations. Yes, he's amassed massive skills that are extremely attractive to large organizations. But he said, you know what? I want to do things a little bit differently. So he recognizes the safety of the paychecks. He's going to continue to get those, and at the same time, he wants to be able to do it on his own.

Billy Keels  8:20  

So rather than being on a w2, he decided he's going to outsource his work or a 1099. If you're in the in the U S, if you're somewhere else, it's like autonomous or something like that. So the idea though is he's taking control of his ability to earn, his ability to control more of his time. That's just one part of it, but the most important part is he's getting back to the roots of what he really wanted to do, which is truly enjoying his time, truly being able to recognize that he can be more in control of his earning when he is subcontracting his work, or 1099 his work, or autonomous his work, as they say here in Spain. And guess what else is happening? New opportunities are are opening. New investment opportunities that he is now having the time to be influenced by. And of course, we know that many times it's not a matter of not enough opportunities. High achievers run a risk of having too many opportunities, and actually, what do you do when you have too many opportunities? Well, I did an episode recently, and I'll figure out what the what the number was before before we get out of here. I think it was like 676 72, something like that. And being able to focus on not looking at the opportunities, asking three specific questions, so that you can get to your answer and use your energy for the right things, but ultimately he's enjoying his role. He's exploring new opportunities. I mean, he's even got speaking opportunities, and and he's has the opportunity to do and travel internationally and still use the skill set that he built during his corporate career. He's still in corporate, but that's the thing. So if you've ever if you've known any. Body, or if you've suffered from this whole dynamics of corporate because they are large organisms, and you felt like you're stuck, well, there's a lot of different opportunities that you can go out and explore, so that you have more freedom, more control over your time, be able to do the things that you love that give you more energy. And guess what? When you do that, more than likely, lots of new opportunities are also going to come your way, so you have to deal with new problems. If it's not you, if you know somebody who is suffering from this, they consistently get are getting frustrated because there's new changes, there's synergies, there's reorgs, all this kind of stuff. Have them listen to the episode. Just share with them. Four, just push the little button, share, and send it to the person that you care about. Then get on the phone. Then meet them for coffee. Meet them for your favorite cold beverage. Whatever the case may be, because while you're doing that, guess what I'll be doing? I'll be right here preparing for the next episode. So until then, go out and make it a great day, and thank you

‍