Before You Leave Corporate: The Financial Conversation Nobody Has With You
Leaving corporate life is often described as taking a leap. And for many people, particularly women and Black professionals who have spent years navigating organisations that were not always built with them in mind, that leap can feel long overdue.
But before you leap, have you actually worked out what you are jumping from and what you are jumping into?
On 11 September I am leading a workshop on exactly this. Not to tell anyone whether they should leave. But to help people make that decision with their eyes open, their numbers understood and a plan for what comes next.
Because when we talk about leaving employment to build something of our own, the conversation tends to focus on the exciting parts. The freedom, the flexibility, being your own boss, building something that is truly yours. All of that is real and all of it matters. But there is another conversation that matters just as much and it rarely happens until after someone has already handed in their notice.
What are you actually giving up?
Not just your salary. Your employer pension contributions, paid leave, sick pay, private healthcare, income protection, death in service cover and National Insurance contributions are all part of what your employment is worth. When you move into consulting, entrepreneurship or self employment, many of those costs become yours. Which means £60,000 in employment is not the same as £60,000 in business revenue. The gap between those two numbers is the conversation most people never have.
Then there is the other side of it. What does your life actually cost? How much do you really need to earn to maintain it? How long is your financial runway? Are you pricing yourself sustainably from day one? What changes the moment you move from employed to self employed and how do you prepare for those changes before they arrive?
And perhaps the question that gets talked about least of all. What is your relationship with money telling you about the decision you are making? Because leaving corporate is not simply a financial calculation. It is often an emotional crossroads between security and freedom, certainty and possibility, identity and reinvention.
I am not here to tell you whether to go. I am here to make sure that if you do, you go prepared.
If this has been on your mind, come and join us on 11 September. Bring your questions, bring your numbers, bring the business idea you have been sitting on. Let us have the conversation together.
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