The Truth About Leaving Corporate: You're Still Playing a Game (Just a Different One)
There's something nobody really tells you when you decide to leave corporate life. Everyone frames it as this liberation. The escape. You're finally out of the system, finally free, finally done playing by rules that were never yours to begin with. And then about a year or two in, if you're honest with yourself, you realize you're still playing a game. Just a different one.
That realization hit me pretty hard a little while ago during a conversation with a friend. A fellow former corporate queen, someone I really trust, and we were just sharing our experiences of working in big corporations and what it was actually like in there. And partway through that conversation, something shifted. I started seeing my career, both as an employee and as a business owner, in a completely new light.
So instead of doing the "five things I learned in my first three years of business" episode I'd been kicking around, I want to share something that I think is a lot more useful. Something I genuinely wish someone had said to me earlier. Because this is really what sovereignty looks like in practice. It's not just a concept, it's a daily choice about which games you're willing to play and which ones you're not.
UNDERSTANDING The Corporate Game
So my friend and I were talking about two big themes that had shown up again and again throughout our corporate careers. The first one is this: no one really wants to change anything.
Both of us had tried, at different times and in different companies, to initiate changes that would genuinely improve things. And I'm not talking about radical overhauls here. I mean workflows, team dynamics, brand consistency, efficiency, sales, literally anything. And every single time, we were met with resistance from management.
My friend had climbed really high in her previous roles. And she had this idea, this hope really, that the higher you got in the ranks, the more you could actually start moving things. But that wasn't what she found. Not even at the top did anyone actually want to make real change. Which matched my experience too. Because what I eventually understood is that management in big corporations doesn't usually want things to improve, they want things to keep working. For them. Quietly, predictably, without anyone rocking the boat. Because rocking the boat means uncertainty, and uncertainty might affect them personally.
I've worked in industries where technology genuinely forced change, and I think if that external pressure hadn't happened, those companies would have happily been doing things the exact same way they'd always done them for another twenty years. Change only happens when it's unavoidable. That's just the reality.
And the second theme, which connects to the first: it's a game. Working in corporate means you need to play the game because it is one.
Every corporate environment I've been in, whether it's been in the US, the UK, or Sweden, all had the same hierarchies, the same unwritten rules, the same things you had to do to fit in and adapt and be what they wanted you to be. Same game, different office.
And honestly? If that works for you, great. Play it. See it as a job or a stepping stone or whatever it needs to be for your life. There is genuinely no shame in that. But you have to accept that it is a game. Consciously. Because the people I saw doing really well at it were the ones who knew exactly what they were doing.
I was always awful at the corporate game. Like, genuinely bad at it. I hate following rules that feel outdated and pointless. I love improving things. I had opinions. I asked questions. I suggested different ways of doing things, even when nobody asked me to. And unsurprisingly, I was always the uncomfortable one for management.
Here's where it gets interesting, because I've only understood this retrospectively through Human Design. I'm a Projector. And the strategy for a Projector is to wait for an invitation before sharing your guidance and insights. To be recognized before you start offering your perspective.
I did not wait for the invitation. Not once. I just... shared. Suggested. Pushed. And without that invitation, I wasn't listened to. Which created exactly what Human Design calls the not-self theme for Projectors: bitterness. And I felt that bitterness, I just didn't have a name for it at the time.
Maybe things would've looked different if I'd known about Human Design back then. But honestly, I think I knew even without the framework that my path was never to create change inside big corporations. My path has always been to work with individuals.
The Plot Twist: Entrepreneurship Has Its Own Game
So here's the part that landed hard during that conversation with my friend.
You think you don't need to play the game once you leave corporate. But you do. You just start playing a new one.
When I started Carrysdotter, I had no experience running a business and no experience in the industry I was entering. So I did what a lot of new entrepreneurs do: I looked at what everyone else was doing. Especially when it came to marketing, offers, business models, content. And I followed along. And that was probably the biggest mistake I made in those first years.
I'm not saying you shouldn't adapt when your industry changes. You absolutely have to if you want to stay relevant. That's just part of running a business, and it's a game you do need to play.
What I am saying is you don't have to play every game.
You don't have to squeeze yourself into a particular business model because it works for someone else. You don't have to copy someone's offer or their pricing structure or their launch strategy just because you've seen it succeed. You don't have to be on a certain platform, or show up a certain way, or create a certain type of content, just because it seems like everyone's doing it.
You left one box. Be careful not to step into a new one.
The Instagram Spiral (A Case Study in Playing Other People's Games)
Let me give you a very specific, very real example. Instagram.
When I started out, everyone was on Instagram, so I decided on Instagram. No real reflection about what I was actually good at, what felt natural, what might actually work for me. I just did what everyone else was doing.
And then I started taking in all the advice about how to do Instagram correctly. And over the years, here's what I've been told:
Post consistently
Post every day
Actually, post several times a day
Let your stories expire before you post new ones or the algorithm will punish you
Use hashtags
No wait, don't use hashtags
You need a hook to capture attention in the first line
Use your authentic voice
Do carousels. Carousels are dead. Actually carousels are back
Only Reels. Reels are everything. Only Reels.
Share value. Share education. Educational content is dead, share inspiration
Use ManyChat
Put your hashtags in the caption. No, put them in the first comment
Don't post and ghost. Engage with other people's content after you post or the algorithm won't reward you
Use trending audio
Don't reshare directly to stories without a few original stories first or your content won't be shown
Don't use too many links in stories
I. Am. Exhausted. I’m exhausted just reading that back.
I am not willing to play that game. I made the decision a while ago that I'm not, and it's one of the better decisions I've made for my business and honestly for my sanity.
The podcast is another good example. I realized pretty early on that releasing one episode per week was too much for my capacity. I have other things going on in my business and other things I genuinely want to pursue. So I release biweekly, and sometimes even less often than that. Which, in the podcasting world, goes completely against the rule of consistency. And I'm okay with that.
The Importance of Authenticity in Business (Playing Your Own Game)
Here's the distinction I've landed on, and it's one I keep coming back to.
There are games you do need to play. If consumer behavior shifts, you need to pay attention. If your industry is moving in a particular direction, you need to understand why and decide what that means for you. If something in the way you work genuinely stops serving your clients, you adapt. That's just running a real business.
But then there's a whole other category. Games where someone else decided the rules and everyone started following them without really questioning why. And those you don't owe anything to.
You don't have to build your business the way someone else built theirs just because it worked for them. You don't have to market on a platform that doesn't suit you. You don't have to create a certain kind of offer because it's what the market seems to expect. You don't have to show up in ways that feel fundamentally wrong for how you're wired.
And I'll be honest with you: not playing along does come with a little fear. The fear that I'm doing it wrong, that I'm missing out, that I'll fail because I'm not following the playbook everyone else seems to be using.
However. My integrity outweighs that fear. It always has. If I can't do this in a way that actually feels like me, it's not worth doing.
Because here's the thing I keep coming back to: the rules change anyway.
When I started posting about my work on Instagram, it was still the pandemic. People were more open to buying things online, especially anything that helped them understand themselves better. Then the recession hit and spending slowed down. Now, almost five years in, I hear people talking about feeling constantly sold to on social media. The mood has shifted completely.
We're seeing a movement from short-form to long-form content. Collaborations are becoming a real client-acquisition strategy. Community is the word everyone's using right now, and honestly that trend isn't wrong, it does reflect something real about what people are looking for. But what comes after that? Something else will. There is always a next thing.
Finding Your Unique Path in Entrepreneurship
So if you're going to build something that's actually yours, you can't build it on rules that are going to keep changing. You have to build it on something more stable than that. And the most stable thing available to you is who you actually are.
I'm not claiming I have all the answers here. I'm genuinely still figuring things out. But the most important thing I've learned in my first years as an entrepreneur is that I wish I had trusted myself more and looked at what everyone else was doing a lot less.
As I talked about in episode 3, we're in a collective shift away from conformity. The era of copying what works for someone else and expecting it to work for you too is genuinely coming to an end. People can feel the difference now between something that's real and something that's been manufactured to fit a mold.
What makes you stand out in a sea of coaches, consultants, and online business owners who are all basically packaging the same things? Your individuality. Your specific perspective. The way you think and talk and show up that nobody else can replicate.
You may need to adapt to how your industry or your clients evolve. That's fine, that's smart. But you don't have to change who you are to try to fit into a box that was never designed for you. So play your own game. Dare to do it your way. And if you don't know yet what your way is, that's actually a perfect place to start.
If what I've been talking about today is resonating and you're in that place of wanting to figure out what your game actually looks like, that's exactly the kind of work I love doing in my 1:1 sessions. Whether you're still in corporate and starting to feel the pull toward something different, or you're already out and realizing you've just been playing a new version of the same old game, we can dig into what sovereignty actually looks like for you specifically. Your design, your strengths, your non-negotiables. You can have a look and book. session if it feels like a fit.
Thanks so much for being here for this one. If it landed for you, I'd genuinely love to know, so feel free to leave a comment or a review. It means a lot.
I'll see you next time.