What are the signs you've outgrown a corporate job?
For me, the first sign was that I couldn't stop asking why things were done the way they were. I saw waste everywhere, and I wanted to fix it. I started in insurance at 21, with no degree and no experience, in a pretty basic job. Rules like filling out a form so you could fill out another form made no sense to me. I asked a lot of questions the company didn't have answers for. It was a huge company, with over 3,000 employees in Canada alone.
Most of the skilled, talented people around me were there because they had a family and needed the consistency. I used that to move up. I kept asking how we could do something faster, fix it quickly, or make it simpler. Most days I had my work done before 11 a.m., and I made some enemies as the try-hard guy. Looking back, that urge to simplify is the thing that helped me most once I went out on my own.
Why do top performers get frustrated in big companies?
In my case, the reward for doing well was more work. I was a top performer in every role I had, and the company kept handing me the hardest files. After a few years in my first role, I moved up to commercial property claims, like break-ins, damage and fires.
Because I moved through files so fast, I got the cases with lots of parties involved, or ones under investigation. My target stayed the same as everyone else's. For every new claim that opened, I had to close one. That was the same rule as the person handling small petty theft claims.
So I stopped filling out my own performance review. Each year you were supposed to rate yourself, compare notes with your manager, and get a rating that set your bonus. My team thought I was crazy, and I was afraid I'd get in trouble. I told them they couldn't give me the most complicated work and hold me to the same standard as everybody else. Even then, I'd look at something that wasn't done well and ask why there couldn't be any flexibility.
What does it look like to win on paper and still be unhappy?
It looked like the life I was told to want. By my fifth year, I was in a role most people reached in their eighth or tenth. I'd negotiated a home office, a company car, a high five-figure salary and four weeks of vacation. People my age and level didn't get those things. I forced my way into them.
I lived in a posh building on Yonge Street in Toronto. On paper, I had it all. Underneath, my marriage wasn't going well, and my risk assessment job was depressing. All day I talked to people lying about how hurt they were, and to our own clients lying about how much of it was their fault.
I was checking boxes: get married, then take the next step, then the one after that. I was following the storybook version of how life is supposed to go, and I wasn't listening to myself at all. I liked the security and the status. The way I was getting them wasn't serving my soul.
The challenges that we face when we're winning on paper but losing in our soul.
What does burnout feel like before it breaks?
For me, it felt like running on empty while moving as fast as I could. I had nothing left in the tank, and I couldn't fake my way through it anymore. By then I was doing very little at work. I did the things that absolutely had to be done and left deadlines until the last moment. I drank as much caffeine as I could just to find some motivation, and I didn't want to talk to my co-workers or the clients.
I went to the office a couple of days a week just to get out. I did everything in fast-forward mode and bulldozed through each day. I figured that if I kept moving fast enough, the unhappiness couldn't catch me. I wasn't into mindfulness or meditation. Sitting still to breathe was something I rarely did, so the day it all came out started like any other day.
What happened the morning I quit?
I had a panic attack in the office parking lot, and by the end of that morning I'd quit. I drove to work, parked, and for some reason took a moment to sit and breathe. I don't know why I did it. When I did, everything I'd been holding down hit me at once, like a flood.
I thought I was having a heart attack. A co-worker of mine had died of one, so that's where my mind went. Blood rushed to my head, my ears rang, and I got dizzy. I started shaking, my breathing was off, and I couldn't focus my eyes. Then I broke down crying. It started out silent and turned hysterical.
There had been so much build-up for so long, with no way to let it out. It felt like forever, but it was probably 10 to 15 minutes. I couldn't even use my arms to open the car door.
Should you line up another job before you quit?
That's what everyone I called told me to do, and on paper they were right. When I could move again, I called my dad first, then my mom, then my wife. I told each of them I couldn't do this. I didn't like the role or the job, and I wasn't in the right life.
They each said it in their own way, and the message was the same. Stick it out, find another job, and quit once you have that security. I didn't have a lot of money put away. I wasn't great with money at the time, and I wasn't making crazy money either.
People like us, we don't get to just quit.
I knew they were right on paper, and I knew it was the wrong answer for me. In that moment, something in my brain clicked. I decided I would not set foot in that office to work that job for one more day.
How do you quit a job without burning the bridge?
Leave your work in good shape, even if the conversation goes badly. Mine went badly. I got out of the car with my face still red from crying, walked straight into my boss's office and asked if he had a minute. I didn't have a resignation letter. I quit on the spot, and he screamed at me.
Okay, I'm not coming in. I will not set foot in this space. I will not work this job another day.
I don't think it was about me. He was dealing with staffing issues and a new boss of his own. I said okay, went back to my desk and typed up my resignation letter. Then I made notes on where I was leaving everything and where the files were at, so they could take over my work.
Unless someone has done something horribly wrong to you, I don't think you should leave with your middle fingers up. This was me being in the wrong place, and it had nothing to do with them. My boss came to my desk later and apologized. It didn't change my mind.
What happens after you quit with no plan?
For me, the pressure showed up right away, and so did a feeling of peace. I knew I had to figure something out fast. If I was going to be this fancy entrepreneur guy, I had to start something quickly, because my runway wasn't long.
My wife was making six figures at the time, but it wasn't her plan to support our family on her own. Cutting off one of our incomes that suddenly was a shock, and people reacted poorly, including her. I was working again pretty soon after, in a sales role, and I'll save that story for another day.
Even with people disappointed or mad at me, I was so at peace. I was breathing so much easier, and leaving felt so good. It was the right choice for me. I'm sharing this for anyone who looks like they're winning on paper and feels like they're the only one losing in their soul.
What can you do this week?
- Write down what your job looks like on paper, then write down how it feels to live it.
- List the rules and targets at work that make no sense to you, and see which ones you keep fighting.
- Take one quiet minute in the car or at your desk before work, and notice what comes up.
- When people you trust give you advice, ask yourself whether it's right on paper or right for you.
- If you decide to leave, write down where every piece of your work stands so the next person can pick it up.
If you're building something on your own now, this episode with Joe Rando covers how to build a one-person business without burning out.
Episode chapters and transcript
Chapters 12
- Why I'm sharing this story
- Starting in insurance at 21
- Top performer, more work
- Why I stopped doing my performance reviews
- On paper, I had it all
- A job spent spotting lies
- Running on empty
- The breath in the parking lot
- Ten minutes I couldn't move
- What my family told me
- Quitting on the spot
- A short runway and a lot of peace
Full transcript 16:26
From the YouTube captions, lightly cleaned for punctuation and filler words. Timestamps open that moment in the video.
Why I'm sharing this story
Mike: Hey everyone, and welcome to this episode of the podcast. This one is going to be very different from anything that I've ever done. The recording that I'm about to share was not intended to be a podcast episode. In fact, the transcript of it was being used for my book editor. We were just expanding some of the stories in a book that I'm writing, a business book that I'm writing. And he asked me for the whole story, the whole element of one of my origin stories about where my entrepreneurial journey started, and he asked me for quite a bit of detail.
And I wasn't planning on sharing this, because there's a lot of personal stuff and it's a very vulnerable story. I've shared components of this. I've shared parts of this on podcasts before, but this was everything, and it actually got me thinking through elements that I had completely forgotten about. But I'm going to share it, because I think that it helps somebody who's been in this spot, who maybe thinks they're alone. Or maybe it hits someone who's going through this, or you know someone that's going through this and you can share the story with them.
I think it's important. I think it's the human elements, the challenges that we face when we're winning on paper but losing in our soul. So I'm going to share it. I'd love to know if it resonates, or if you have any thoughts or similar experiences. I'd love for you to write me: mike@mikemoll.co. So, with that...
Starting in insurance at 21
Mike: Here's the story of my mild mental breakdown and me quitting my job. Okay, I'm going to walk through the story of the day that I quit that job. So, I was living in Toronto on Yonge Street, in a really posh building, a posh neighborhood. I thought I was making a ton of money. When I was in the insurance world, I ascended at corporate. I came in as a 21-year-old with no experience and no degree, and I worked in a pretty basic level job starting at that point.
But what I realized in that world, that job, is that most people that were there, the most skilled, talented people, they're there because they have a family, they're there because they need the consistency, but they're not of that killer mindset. And so I used that to my advantage, which is the thing I think that helped me in my entrepreneurial journey, where it's, okay, how do we optimize? How do we fix quickly? How do we simplify things as much as possible?
So I just was naturally doing that, because I saw so much inefficiency. These rules about filling out a form to fill out another form was a wild concept to me, and I found myself questioning a lot of things while working in that company that they just didn't have an answer for, because it was such a huge company. The company was Aviva. I think they had over 3,000 employees just in Canada alone, but worldwide it's a much bigger company.
Top performer, more work
Mike: And so I quickly ascended, and created some enemies along the way, because I was that try-hard guy. But the truth is, I'd get my work done before 11:00 a.m. most days. I spent my time messing around online, mostly, once my work ran out. But then I started to lean in and push up the ladder a bit. So I was in my first role for a few years, and then I jumped up into a role managing property.
So if property had been damaged or broken into or had a fire, etc., I'd be the guy that helped assist those things, but normally on the commercial side. And it was an okay job. Dealt with a lot of break-ins. I think every role, honestly, was pain. I kept pushing and pushing with these roles. I just put in, I would even say it was, max effort. I created a lot of efficiencies in what I did, and I was always a top performer within my role.
And one thing that drove me crazy about that company is there was an advantage to being the top performer: they just gave you more work. And I remember when we were doing performance reviews, I actually stopped giving them my performance. So every year you're supposed to submit where you think you're at and how you think you performed, and then meet with your manager, and you'd compare notes, and they would give you a rating that determined your bonus. And I actually stopped doing them.
Why I stopped doing my performance reviews
Mike: A lot of people on my team thought I was crazy, because I would defy company policy, and I was afraid that I would get in trouble. But I didn't want to do it, because number one, it wasn't my job to tell you how I was doing. I was going to skew that data, because we always look at ourselves as doing well, less than how other people perceive us. That's number one.
And number two is that because I was moving through things so fast, they were giving me the more complicated files, but they weren't adjusting my goals. So my KPIs were around, like, a KPI: you get one new claim that's open, you need to close one. But I was getting the really elaborate cases, or really complicated stuff, or things that had a lot of parties involved or were under investigation for something. And so they expected me to close one for every new file that I got.
And they had the same rule and boundary as the person who's getting really basic petty theft claims, or really small fire damage claims, right? And so I stopped doing the performance reviews, and I said to them, you can't give me the most complicated stuff and then hold me to the same standards as everybody else. That was a bit of a defiance.
So that entrepreneurial spirit was coming out of me, where I saw things that were not done well and I just thought, I hate everything about this. What are we doing? Why can't there be any flexibility to accommodate for real differences, real variations in the work? And anyway, so I ended up getting bumped up again.
On paper, I had it all
Mike: And so I was in a role in my fifth year that really people got closer to their eighth, their tenth year in. So I had advanced very quickly. My salary was significantly higher than people with my amount of time in the company. I had negotiated a home office, a company car, a decent salary, like a high five-figure salary, four weeks vacation. These were all things that people my age and my level of experience in the company did not get. I forced my way into them.
And so I was at the peak of where I could be relative to my age and my experience. And so on paper I had it all, right? Four weeks vacation, really good benefits package, good money, company car. I was living the, quote unquote, dream life with that. So I'm living in this apartment in this posh neighborhood in Toronto on Yonge Street, which is a sought-after area.
A job spent spotting lies
Mike: I'm married. Not going well. I'm working in this risk assessment job, and I was going to the office a couple days a week just to get out. I wasn't really doing that much work at home. And to be honest, the role was so depressing, because you were talking to people who were lying about how injured they were, and then talking to your own clients, who were lying about how responsible or how liable they were for the situation.
One interesting thing about that, though, is that your detector gets very strong very fast. I'd be in the middle of interviews, knowing that they're going down a path of lying, and I would pause the interview, the formal way that we used to pause the interviews, because we had to, because our recordings had to go to court. And I would stop them and I would say, "Hey, look, we can keep going down this path, or if you think that your story maybe has gone off the track a little bit, we could start over again."
And sometimes they would keep going, but when I told them that these recordings were potentially going to be admissible in court, a lot of people would stop and go back and start over again, and had a little bit more of a modest version of their story. But I was just so pressed to have my power spiral relationship that we both knew that we shouldn't be in.
Like, married, what's the next step, what's the next step, moving through life through the steps that are check marks on paper. Do this and do this. That storybook, that sitcom, that TV show version of how you're supposed to do everything, and I was following it, and I was not listening to myself at all.
Running on empty
Mike: But then I enjoyed the security and I enjoyed the status. The way I was getting it was not serving my soul. Anyway, the day that it happened was just like any other day. Really struggling, caffeinating as much as possible, just trying to find any semblance of motivation. Go and eat something. And at that point in the job, I was doing very little. I was avoiding work. In my opinion, I was basically taking my foot off the gas.
Little effort, doing all the things that absolutely had to be done, getting things on deadline until the last moment. I just had nothing left in the tank. I could not fake my way through it. And I just didn't want to talk to any of the people that I was talking to, be it my co-workers, this sitting-in-this-office, cookie-cutter water fountain talk stuff. Nobody has a life. Nobody does anything interesting with their time. And then the clients, worse than that.
And I don't know, I just got in the car and I drove to the office. I was sitting in the parking lot, and I would take a slight moment to just sit and breathe, which is not something that I typically do. I was doing everything in fast-forward mode, just bulldozing my way through it, trying to, I guess, forget that I didn't like anything that was going on in my life.
The breath in the parking lot
Mike: And I figured if I kept moving as fast as I was moving, then it couldn't catch me. I remember that morning I took just the slightest moment to take a breath. And I wasn't into any mindfulness or meditation, anything, at that time. It hadn't even ever crossed my mind. So it wasn't a planned thing or something part of a routine of mine. It was just, in that moment, I felt like I'm just going to take a second here.
I don't know why it happened, but when that happened, I just got hit with this flood, this ocean. And I thought I was going to have a heart attack. I remember this surge of blood to my head, almost like ears ringing, almost like this dizziness coming on. And I remember thinking, "Oh, this is what happens." And I had a co-worker who had passed away, actually. He was morbidly obese, did nothing to improve his health, and so he had a heart attack because of that reason.
I felt this thing coming on. It turned out to be a panic attack. At the time I thought, "Oh, I'm going to end up rolling around convulsing. This is it for me." And it was just such an overwhelming and fast thing, where I started shaking. My breathing was off. I was getting my head flooded with blood and energy, and I couldn't focus my eyes. And I thought I was going to collapse. At that moment, I just broke down in tears. And at first it was silence, and it was just uncontrollable, down my face.
Ten minutes I couldn't move
Mike: And then it went to the point of hysterical, because there was so much build-up with no way to get out, with no way to express itself, with no way to release for so long. It felt like an eternity, but it had to have been 10 to 15 minutes where I just couldn't do anything. I was just crying. I was shaking. I couldn't even use my arms to open the door. I couldn't open the windows. I was there and I was lost.
I was lost in my brain. I was lost in my sadness and anger. And then, after what felt like an eternity, but was probably only 10 minutes, I remember calling my dad first. We were very close. He wasn't a great father, but he'd worked in the industry, and maybe he had experienced this before I did. I don't know.
What my family told me
Mike: So I called him and expressed what I could express about it. I can't do this. I don't like this role. I don't like this job. I'm not in the right position. I'm not in the right life. And then I ended up calling my mom. I ended up calling my wife, and I had the same conversation with the three of them. And basically their feedback and the way that they expressed themselves were different, but the message was the same.
The message was: people like us, we don't get to just quit. We don't get to just make that decision. We need to stick it out. We need to find another job. Once we find that job, if you have that security, that's when we pull the plug. That's when we do quit.
Quitting on the spot
Mike: I knew they were right. On paper, I didn't have a lot of money put away. I wasn't great with money at the time, and I wasn't making crazy money at the time. But I knew that they were right on paper, but I knew it was the wrong answer for me. And so, in that moment, my brain clicked and just said, "Okay, I'm not coming in. I will not set foot in this space. I will not work this job another day."
And I got out of the car. My face was probably just red from the crying. I walked in, went straight into my boss's office, asked if he had a minute. I didn't even have a resignation letter. I just quit on the spot. He was very bad. He screamed at me in the moment. He was going through something. There was staffing and some issues with his new boss, and so I don't think it was anything about me. I don't think it was anything special that they couldn't lose or anything like that.
But I remember he screamed at me when I quit. I just said, "Okay," walked away, went back to my desk. I typed up my resignation letter. I was going to do the right thing. I was going to clean some stuff up, make some notes for them on where I was leaving everything and where the files were at. And I never feel like, even with that level of bridge burning, that you should ever really burn it, like, middle fingers up, unless they had done something to horribly wrong you, which in this case they hadn't.
This was me being in the wrong place. It had nothing to do with them, so my intention was to leave and give them some direction on how to take over my stuff. He did come to my desk later to apologize, but it didn't change my mind. He asked to speak with me, and that conversation... It was locked in. I had quit.
A short runway and a lot of peace
Mike: And that decision was so concrete. And from that moment, that's when, number one, I realized, okay, you better figure something out. If you're going to be this fancy entrepreneur guy, you better start something fast, because your runway here is not too long. My wife was making six figures at the time, but it was not her intention to feed our family. She had me working pretty soon after, even though it was a sales role. I'll save that story.
I knew that my runway wasn't good, and I knew that people were going to react poorly, including her, obviously, because cutting off one of our incomes that abruptly was probably a bit of a shock to the system. But it was the right choice. I was breathing so much easier. And even though people were either disappointed or mad or had their opinions, I was so at peace. I was so at peace leaving that job. It felt so good.