11 inspiring people from 11 years of Escape: Matt Trinetti

When we first started Escape the City back in 2010, we had no idea how many incredibly inspiring people we'd meet along the way. We set out to help ambitious and talented people to do work that matters to them and the world, and through the years we've encountered thousands of people who demonstrate that it's possible to do something different with your career and make a difference in the process. While it was hard to choose just 11 stories, here we've outlined a few of the people who we come back to regularly when we're looking for a bit of inspiration ourselves.

We hope you enjoy reading their stories and that they can be an inspiration to you, too!

Matt Trinetti - The Escape artist

About Matt:

Matthew Trinetti began his life in the suburbs of Ohio, before landing a job as a consultant at IBM.

Like many people in their mid-twenties and several years out of college, Matt reached a point in his personal life and professional career where he found himself asking: “Is this really the beginning of the rest of my life?” When he looked back, his life situation was the result of going through the motions of life, without truly understanding what he wanted to get out of life.

Instead of continuing to be a passive participant in his own life, he decided to become deliberate. And he realised that in order to live the life he wanted, he needed to begin acting out the life he wanted to live. So Matt started a book club in Chicago with his two roommates and they’d use the book as the vehicle into discussions around what they really wanted to do with their lives and what was missing for them.

Matt would spend many hours searching for the cheapest one way tickets he could find to Europe, dreaming about adventure. One day, his close friend Shannon was killed in an accident. Her death dealt him a hard-earned lesson: Our time is not guaranteed and every single day is a gift. From that moment onward, he decided to commit himself to live fully, following his excitement and spending his time doing things that matter. In other words, being deliberate. 

In the wake of her passing, his unrealised dream of long-term, slow travel came to the forefront. His first order of business was to finally book that one way trip around Europe on his own terms. On June 2, 2012, he left on a one-way ticket to Iceland. And in the process of preparing for that trip, he created his blog GiveLiveExplore.

In 2013 he started a book publishing project with a friend after convincing two friends to come to Iceland on a trip for two weeks. One of them was a writer and ended up writing a book called Tails of Iceland. When Matt quit IBM, publishing that was book was his project. It was an experiment that ended up leading him to work on a whole series of books in Ecuador and beyond. Through his foray into publishing, he got in touch with a couple of Management Consultants trying to do something different in London, the founders of Escape. Dom and Rob managed to convince Matt to come over to London to help them launch the Escape School in 2014, where Matt became an incredibly valued member of the Escape family. 

Matt has led Startup, Career Change and Freelance workshops and programmes at Escape, inspiring thousands of people to do something different with their careers and crucially supporting others to practically make the changes for themselves. He’s written dozens of articles, ebooks and guides for people on the future of work, career transition and living adventurously every day, as well as hosting a Tedx talk about saying Yes to adventure.

Matt made the transition from full-time at Escape to full-time freelancer in 2018, working with Interactive Workshops to deliver workshops in organisational change and development, as well as pursuing his interests in acting and writing. In 2019 Matt teamed up with writing and publishing coach Parul to launch the London Writers Salon, helping aspiring writers to learn and connect with each other and successful authors who have been able to make a successful career from being a writer.

Matt's writing has been featured on Quartz, New York Observer, Huffington Post, Business Insider, Virgin Unite, Brazen Careerist, and Top 10 on Medium.com, and has been shared by Paolo Coehlo, Tim Ferriss, Arianna Huffington, Gary Vaynerchuk, and Chris Guillebeau.

What we love about Matt’s story:

Matt is not only an exceptionally talented and passionate person but also an exceptionally self-aware and thoughtful human.

Matt has been open to his curiosities and interests that have cropped up over the years and has been brave enough to allow himself the space to explore them. He has documented his journey along the way which in turn has inspired others to do the same.

Matt epitomises a true Escape artist, someone who is continually planting seeds for new opportunities to sprout from, and who is open to adapting and changing as the world does. His approach to life, commitment to living each day as if it were his first, and his kind and thoughtful nature make Matt's story an inspiring one for us.