Three Unexpected Lessons Learned After Leaving Corporate America

On May 31st, 2010, I completed my last day as a corporate employee. My last work day was May 27th. It was a wonderful Friday, and I turned out the lights in the place as the last manager on duty before a nice long 3 day weekend for Memorial Day. I didn’t turn in my company issued BlackBerry or my access card. My e-mail wasn’t shut down. And I knew I’d see everyone in a few weeks when I got back from some work I had already booked out of state, as my former employer wanted me to work on a project for another 90 days as a consultant. The lessons I learned started in earnest three years ago. They’re not the things I expected to learn or that I thought I would need to know in order to be in business. They’re not your typical lessons, but they are my lessons. While my former employer wanted me to be around full-time for 90 days (which would have made my salary nearly 2 times where I was when I left), they didn’t have enough work for me to do, so I worked part-time for 75 days, and then they ended my contract early. They didn’t have enough work for me to do because they didn’t know the scope of the work they were asking me to do, as they’d never done it before. Without a contract, they could just cut off my services at any time – and they did. I also could do whatever I wanted to do, so if I got a better offer from another client, I would work with them and not go in to my former employer that week. That was a verbal agree...
Source: Phil Gerbyshak - Category: Life Coaches Authors: Tags: Small business improvement ideas Source Type: blogs