Chapter 1: Exit Stage Right

Just what is it that you want to do?

“We wanna be free, we wanna be free to do what we wanna do and we wanna get loaded and we wanna have a good time – and that’s what we’re gonna do”

‘Is life better before, or after, you reach 40?’ I asked of the ‘suits’ at a conference I was doing actually on my big day. I was presenting on my role of overseeing the public relations for what became the website phenomenon, Friends Reunited – which meant the question was very applicable to the room of a thousand plus 30 – 50 year old office execs!

‘After’ shouted someone ‘but only for the first few weeks!’

Right or wrong, I don’t know yet but a lot has happened in the last few months. That day in June '03 was one of the pinnacles of my 'office' career, Rory Bremner and William Hague with me and Steve from Friends Reunited all on the same bill. Now though, I sit here, free, a rat without a race, I feel like David Brent on Comic Relief day.

Twelve years ago I started a marketing agency because I was nearing 30 and was penniless. I had spent my 20’s managing bands, no one famous, no cash incoming but it was a great time and at least I became a vegetarian while on tour with Debbie Harry.

The agency went from my tiny Ladbroke Grove lounge to a ‘work unit’ that got broken into every time anyone locally fancied a new computer. From there it was a first employee, Jamie Theakston, and on to a proper, dividers and all, ‘office’. Ten Years later I sold it. I had played the game and I couldn’t bring myself to pass ‘Go’ and go round one more time….

So, here I am, at forty, starting a new life, its meant to begin now isn’t it? A happy coincidence? Living without the office. What will I do? Why not simply take a pit stop and re-enter the same race?

The final straw was the pointless office politics played by people that have nothing better in their imagination that would enable them to do anything different themselves.

My life has been spent living in this sedated world of consumerism. Its not been real life, its life supposedly fulfilled by inanimate objects that someone else in marketing has convinced me that I want, because it will make me feel better – bollox! And I really fell for it.

So much so, that I did get much satisfaction doing it. I’ve been involved in the marketing of many household name brands and products. Giving bottles of beers, magazines and clothes 'personalities'. Personalities that will make you and me feel better about ourselves by associating with, in short, buying. They will make us feel sportier, trendier, faster, thinner, more knowledgeable, and more fun…more popular even.

But its time to change tact. I've had the enthusiasm kicked out of me.

I now want to find out if there is more to life for me. Can I be happier? Can my marriage get closer? Can the relationship with my 3 kids be better? What can I achieve with my body as well as my brain?

That’s what I really want to find out, what’s it like to truly live?

I want to do the things I’ve always wanted to do. I want to live before I die and attempt to find out what the meaning and purpose is for the rest of my time on this brilliant planet of ours?

Some things I know I HAVE TO try

Improve all my close relationships
Work on something really worthwhile
cement real life-long friendships
Start another business – do I really need to prove to myself it wasn’t a fluke?
Raise loads of money for a charity I believe in
See how the World’s poor have to live and see if I feel compelled enough to do something about it
Inspire my children
Invest time in my local community

And a list of some things I WANT to try.

Visit Muhammad Ali – my hero
Learn to ride a horse – (but not Spanish!!)
Walk to Machu Pichu
Go to Antarctica
Climb to Everest Base Camp
Train with my team (West Ham – Oh dear)
Visit Tibet
March in demos for things I believe in
Cycle from Lands End to John O’Groats
Write a kids book
Create an art exhibition (well I did go to Art college a long time ago)
Enter a cycling race
Learn to mix records
Learn to ski
Take a Football coaching badge

Dare I tell anyone? Isn’t it embarrassing? Shouldn’t I shut up and just find someone else to give me an office?

No, no….

It is very tempting to take that pit stop and re-enter the rat race, not because I want my old life back but because I'm good at it. I’m lucky I sold the company for a fair bit, we’ve got enough to keep going for a while but not forever. My brain tells me that another year of work now I’m worth five times what I will be in 5 or 10 years time. Argh, a mental rat trap, just when I thought I was free.

Ignore it, ignore it….

I’m not educated and I’m certainly no philosopher. There are millions of books out there on this subject, by people who are. You could read those and learn much. There are also now tons of books about downshifting, the move to a new, less frenetic, less costly way of life being taken by hundreds, or maybe thousands of 30 something’s. I think of this as the halfway house to where I want to go. Changing your life to something you really want to. But this is my life, it may be like yours, it may not be. I have one ‘O’ level but I do believe that anyone can achieve anything they want to, so I’m setting myself out on the biggest challenge.

Will I prove myself a fool? It wont be the first time. But if I fail it still might show others how to at least open a few doors and go through themselves. I have deliberately not given myself any time to think of the downsides to all this, next week, given time, I might regret it all and then I’ll look stupid but that’s important. What’s it like from the moment you leave that office, not three weeks later, when you’ve reconsidered or sorted out your immediate opportunities, what’s it like before all that, from the very start of the new chapter?

This wont be like those e-mails you get from your mates that have jetted off to Thailand for 3 months and tell you how brilliant the sun, sea and especially sex is. This is real life.

I’m not looking before I jump. I’m just thankful I’m not wearing an ostrich outfit!





Say Hello, Wave Goodbye

Hi,

I hope you are well.

This is just to let you know I have recently left both Firstmovies and Beatwax (after 12 great years!). I am now taking some time out to get to know my wife and three kids! And consider all new ideas, offers and opportunities.

Please note this new e-mail address for me - and don't forget to write!

I've had a great time founding, running and working with everyone, at both companies but am now considering what's in-store for the next chapter!

Keep in touch!

Thanks a lot

Chris

Press ‘send’ and off goes the e-mail to 800 of the people I have shared my office life with. There’s now more history in my in-box than there is in the cardboard box I take away with all my belongings in. Substantiated by my wife, already a little ‘merry’ by the time I got home, slurring ‘is that it? One cardboard box after 12 years?’ She has struggled with all this far more than I have. But that is it, one box, you’re allowed back what you came in with and nothing more and believe me, when you get to the point of leaving, that’s all you want.

Therefore the worst I suffered was when I found my office e-mail switched off, the link to my past gone, almost before I had a chance to say goodbye. Can you face worse abuse anywhere? I would hate to think so.

So its end of part one. ‘Office life’; sending e-mails to people sitting 6 feet away, discussing brand awareness for brands no ones heard of, holding brainstorms for clients that don’t give us any work, brand ‘custodians’ telling us they want the brand to be ‘fun and irreverent’ (all of them), pitching for work against anything up to a dozen other agencies, all at least as good as us and some even better!, being the last to hear the gossip down the pub after work, looking at West Ham gossip on newsnow.co.uk and wandering why there aren’t any other websites that I find of any use…..it’s been great, no really it has!

‘Today is the first day of the rest of my life!’ Well actually, that’s not quite strictly true. The actual day was last Saturday but I’ve been mopping around for the last 10 days and its been an especially really hard time as I’ve been trying to live without e-mail, really, God forbid – you try it, it’s not easy. So I haven’t felt like writing that line down for a little while, I knew it was just a matter of time though.

The immediate impact? The first thing I notice after leaving the sanctity of the 10’ x 8’ womb of my office is that I am fit and healthy, I am alive, I am ME! I have lost my crutch of work, I have to stand on my own two feet. I am learning to walk on my own again.

For 12 years I have relied on the crutch of being chris@work. Apparently successful, in charge of a company of 30 odd good people, making good money. I haven’t needed to make as much effort outside work as I should. I could always rely on my company. I’m the boss, I have 35 people to talk to at work, 35 people who have to do what I ask (within limits!). Outside work, I’ve not made enough effort. I’ve forgotten how to walk on my own and was relying on the crutch. Now its all gone though and it feels good to be able to ‘walk’ on my own for the first time in a dozen years!

Rule number one – don’t let that happen again.

It’s not easy learning to be on your own after years of relying on work though. I have to learn to be myself again. I’ve almost forgotten what day-to-day real conversation is like. As the boss, hardly any of my conversations with staff, clients and bosses are real. There was almost always another agenda. They wanted something from me, they would be nice and apparently interested in me and the kids. If they were pissed off with me, I never knew, as they didn’t want to argue or complain as bitterly as perhaps they should have done. So how many ‘real’ conversations have I had at work in the last twelve years? How many people genuinely like or dislike me? How many of them are my friends? The honest answer is, I don’t know.

So, I’m struggling to come to terms with talking to people for real and also for longer than 5 minutes. I’m suddenly struggling with the fact that I’ve got no reason to wrap up a conversation. I’ve got nothing else to go to, no excuses. Suddenly I’m talking to people beyond the point when all basic information has been exchanged.

Be it on the phone, face-to-face or even by e-mail around five minutes is it, that’s about the maximum time it takes to impart all relevant information, pleasantries, information and arranging of social life, then what? It means making an effort, it means committing time to that person and really finding out about them. I have always wanted to do that all the time but I’ve always had the excuses. Now I don’t.

Wanting to have ‘real’ conversations means I’ve always disliked small talk though, which when you’re someone who is as introverted as I am anyway, it becomes a crippling trait. It means I’m not brilliant at mixing with other people. And then for the last ten years I’ve relied on that crutch made up of the 35 people who talk to me. So outside work I have loads of acquententices but not too many close friends. That’s my fault, can I change it?

I do think I’m missing the office more than I thought I would. I might be fit and healthy but it’s hard without that crutch. Having to do everything on my own, absolutely nothing will happen unless I make it. Every minute of every day I’ve got to be self-motivated, keep going, don’t look back and don’t expect the phone to ring. I’ve only been at this for a week or so and it’s hard.

So its resulted in me having a few completed wasted days or I feel they are wasted. Maybe in the long term I will find they are serving a purpose, maybe clearing my mind of the last twelve years? When you are at work it doesn’t matter so much if you have an off day, you are still justified, still useful, still needed, all wrapped up in that term ‘work’. ‘What have you done all day?’ ‘work’. It’s a term thats covered all multitude of sins and skives. From doing the hardest days work in your life, really achieving something, right down to nothing. Nothing at all. You can do nothing and in a job you really find unfulfilling but you can still kid yourself that you are living a fulfilling life. It’s difficult without that to rely on. Now if I have an off day that’s it, it means I feel useless, unneeded, unvalued…crap!

But at the same time this new life feels right, it feels like a huge release. I was too quick to say I could now walk without crutches, I’m still learning….it’s early days.




(Just Like) Starting Over

I have just read the autobiography of Lance Armstrong, cancer survivor and 6 times winner of the Tour De France. He feels fortunate, one of the lucky few to survive a footstep from deaths door and come to realise what life is all about for him. He has a second chance and he intends to live life to the full.

Ideally though, I want to cheat. I want to find out what the purpose and meaning for the rest of my life is and to realise how lucky I am, to realise what consumer crap we contend with and to manage to break through all that but I don’t want to be at deaths door first. Is that possible?

Is it really our genuine calling to work in an office 9-5? To feel needed by the staff, boss and shareholders? If we were paid a bit more than the minimum required to make us stay year after year, would we? Are we moving to a new way of working that fits as part of life rather than as all of life?

As we are paid the minimum though, there seems little way out of the consumer trap. We generally don’t earn enough to do anything other than try to buy some instant gratification through the purchase of the products with the personalities we want to be associated with. I have spent many a lunch hour over the years looking for ways to spend the cash I have earnt on ‘stuff’, DVD’s I may watch once, books I could borrow from a friend, clothes I may wear half a dozen times before they go out of fashion, its been an endless treadmill. I’m a millionaire but money certainly hasn’t bought the happiness I was led to believe it would.

Over the last decade I have now managed to contain most of these urges but I did worry that when I wasn’t in work and couldn’t afford those things, suddenly I would want them and feel I was missing out, that I wouldn’t feel complete somehow. Believe me, its not like that at all, there’s no struggle, you realise most of it is rubblish. ‘If you don’t need it, don’t buy it’ or 'buy what you need, not what you want', good mantras for when consumer land is beckoning you.

I felt a loner as a child – so I’ve been trying to prove myself to anybody who will listen for the last 30 years. This has caused me more problems than anything, as outside work it has led me to be boastful about my achievements.

I know I’ve pissed off more than my share of people, fed up with listening to my achievements and how much I’ve made over the years. It never felt like I was being big headed at the time. When you come from feeling lonely as a child, you feel you have to constantly prove yourself worthy even of your place at the table, worthy enough for your friends to spend time with you…to like you.

Therefore I have been ambitious and worked hard for years. I put off friendships. I believed I would finally reach a time when I felt I had succeeded and that I should focus on that and then make friends when I was finished, complete and…able to show off. But then I realised its impossible, you can’t reach the edge of your circle because it just gets bigger and what’s there anyway? When you aim for something, it’s often not as impressive as you hope when you reach it and anyway, you are already focusing on the next target, the boundaries of the ever-increasing circle you never reach.

It’s worse for celebrities, this ‘full and meaningful’ life that we are constantly being sold and to which many spend their life striving to join. When we reach a target at least we have secured some things along the way, with celebrity though, there is nothing. There is nothing tangible to hold on to, the only thing that keeps them there is seeing their name in today’s paper…tomorrows chip wrapping.

Luckily I know I’m not alone with these thoughts. I’m at the top age of a new generation. One unwittingly founded by Margaret Thatcher. The marketers in our office and other ‘trendy’ agencies in town call us ‘Middle Youth’. We are people who were too young to be Thatcher’s yuppies. We only watched as they crashed and burned in the negative equity that we weren’t quite old enough to ‘afford’. So we learnt the lesson early and luckily we learnt it for free, there’s more to life than this. There’s more to life than simply earning a ‘living’ that consists of mortgage, family and TV dinners because completely out of your control, it can disappear faster than you made it. So now we are supposedly a generation that helps the kids with their homework, while we’re downloading and burning the latest Muse CD or going to the garden centre in the morning, four hours after we left a club, trying to live life to the full. Wanting experiences, rather than products.

So have the downshifters found the answer? Is it that simple? Or is it just a short-term glow? That feels deeper, purely because of the severity of the change they’ve made in their circumstances? After a while will they find themselves back where they started, too much stress with not enough hours or cash to relieve it?

But hardly any of us have actually acted on the way we feel we want to at all, at least downshifters have left the office, others stay although they know it isn’t fulfilling. And if I hadn’t managed to sell the company, who knows, I may still be there. But I’m not and I have a chance, an opportunity to see life from another side.

The company paid for me to be a member of a private club (a perk not used hardly as much as the daily shower following my bike ride into work!). I went there the other day and overheard a scarily familiar conversation about ‘brand awareness’ and ‘cutting edge youth design’. In my business of marketing and public relations we are meant to be individuals, producing original creativity. I actually think we make up the biggest flock of sheep there is. I have always thought that supposedly ‘trendy’, cutting edge marketing execs are the easiest people in the World to market to. They (we?!) are so desperate not to miss out on the latest ‘thing’ that they would be first to the shrine of simply anything they had never heard of before.

My teenage hero, I should have recognised the signs even then, Reginald Perrin, a true champion for these times. An anti-capitalist who mistakenly became a consumer success with his chain of ‘Grot’ shops. Brilliantly written and now available on DVD, watch & learn.

Why do we spend all our social time reading, watching, listening and admiring people that don’t work in offices? actors, musicians, vicars, authors, comedians, DJ’s but don’t try it ourselves? Or do but give up easily, content to watch from the sidelines, maybe dreaming of what might have been. Every weekend we look at the listings, looking for work we admire, respect and enjoy enough to commit time to become an observer of. None of these professions are based in offices. Have these people got something? Have they found an answer?

But what about my reality? I have been here for three weeks and I love every moment. But what is the reality of doing something about it? What can I do now with a wife and three kids in tow? At least Helen has now stopped saying ‘You treat me like one of your staff’. She’s now accusing me of turning into a ‘student’, God forbid!

Reminders everywhere though that office life certainly is not all bad, there is a social life that I am definitely missing. On Saturday night I had a panic attack, I hadn’t been out for the last two evenings and was keen to do so. So I suggested we go to the cinema, but separately. Both watching the same film, one after the other, taking turns to babysit. It sort of worked, apart from that by the time Helen came back from the later showing I was fast asleep on the sofa!

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