The Escape Club was born out of a series of conversations Alok Singh and I had in the summer of 2003. We were seeing a lot of our friends bored and uninspired in their work, and we thought there must be some way of helping them "escape" into fulfilling and meaningful work. I think we both came from a place of believing that we all had amazing potential and a unique contribution to make in the world. Many of our friends, however, seemed to be far removed from this realisation.

At the same time we’d also wondered how we could use our facilitation skills more – we both had acquired a lot of knowledge of circle, world café and open space, among other techniques, and we wanted to find a way to use them. Hence the birth of the first Escape Club workshop series. We started with three pilot workshops – Dream… to Escape, Reflect… to Escape and Act… to Escape. After a successful trial we wanted to grow it even more, but soon found that our own energy wasn’t in repeating the same workshops over and over again.

Meanwhile, through conversations with workshop participants, I realised that there were a lot of people that were not going to attend a workshop, but who still wanted to escape. What would help them in their escape, I wondered. One of my beliefs was that real life stories can be powerful in inspiring people that ‘another life is possible’. One plus one became two, and an email-based newsletter, Escape Stories, was born. The purpose of Escape Stories (www.escape-club.org) has been (and continues to be) to slowly cultivate the belief in its readers that they too can escape. I’m happy to say that there are now a few stories of people who successfully have done so. They attribute their motivation to doing so to the monthly reminder they got of the possibilities they had compared to the reality they were living in. The newsletter has evolved and now has over 300 subscribers.

In the Spring of 2004, I joined forces with another coach, Holly Crane, and we started our own workshop series, creating Kickstart Your Career Change (www.kickstartyourcareerchange.com). We run a variety of different workshops that we base on the needs of our coaching clients. Some of our most popular workshops have included Making a Difference and a Living – a concept that I also got to share with some of Europe’s top MBA students at a NetImpact conference in Barcelona earlier this year.

Whilst the idea of having an escape ‘club’ has fizzled out a bit (although it often shows signs of wanting to transpire), the ideas and the motivations behind it still live strongly in my work. It’s my mission to help people figure out what their contribution is and to make fulfilling it an integral part of their working life. So far the growth of my work has been quite organic, and I see no reason to change that. It’s a constant exploration of what works and what doesn’t, and as I grow & develop myself – so will the ways that I can do my work and help others to find their work – exciting stuff!

Satu Kreula
Professional Coach & Facilitator
(www.satukreula.com)
April 2005

Back to Pioneering Ventures