From Corporate Into Calling: Career Change, Burnout, Meaningful Work, Find Your Purpose

I'm back after missing an episode last week, and I owe you an explanation. I was away at Groundswell, a regenerative agriculture festival here in the UK with 10,000 people immersed in soil health, biodiversity, and healthy food systems. That, on top of a recent trip to visit new farmers in Cornwall, has brought a lot of acceleration to my new venture. It's time for some changes, and I wanted you t...

You left corporate — or you're on your way out — and right now the path forward isn't clear. Maybe you're months in and nothing has clicked yet. Maybe you're still in the job and exhausted by it. Maybe you've started building something and you keep wondering if it's working. This week I want to tell you something I've had to remind myself of recently: the hardest part is often the part right befor...

You left corporate to find work that actually means something to you. And right now that process feels messy. Uncomfortable. Maybe even a bit lost. Here's a reframe: what if that discomfort isn't a sign you're doing it wrong? What if it's actually the surest sign you're heading in the right direction? It builds well before you ever hand in your notice, peaks once the structure of your old role dis...

You left the corporate job. Changed your title. Stepped away from the sector. But the operating system that defined how you worked, what you produced, and who you had to be to survive... that came with you. Most people trying to build something new after corporate are doing it while still running the old software. Then they wonder why it feels wrong and whether they'll ever find meaning and purpos...

There's a particular kind of discomfort that comes with standing in a room you used to belong to and realising it no longer feels like yours. Not because you're unwelcome, but because something in you has moved on. If you've ever found yourself on the outside of a career, a sector or a version of yourself that once defined you, you'll recognise this feeling. This episode comes from a recent person...

Most of us spend far too much time thinking about the work we want to do and not enough time actually experiencing it. We research, we read, we take course after course, we endlessly tweak the pitch deck. Some of it is necessary. Too much of it distances us from the meaningful work we actually want to do. Recently I've been firmly stuck inside my own head — lost in the complexities and thorny ques...

This week I spent time with a flower farmer, making her a locally-sourced lunch, sitting in her field on a sunny day surrounded by brightly coloured flowers and buzzing bees. It was the perfect antidote to the fear of failure that I seem to be doing battle with every day. Doubt is a natural part of career change or building a business. Loneliness can go hand in hand with doing things differently a...

This week I've been feeling the enormity of what I'm trying to build. I know I'm not alone. Stepping outside of the dominant system and building meaningful work of your own is hard. Overwhelm is an understandable response. But it doesn't help us. It's too easy to get stuck inside your head, wrapped up in story and believing all the internal chatter. Today's episode is about shifting your focus so...

This week I found myself in Dublin for a one-day seminar on conversational hypnosis. It was an idea that made sense months ago when I booked it but seemed completely unrelated to the work I'm now doing. Or so I thought. Turns out the universe had sent me there for a very good reason — to remind me that I have incredible tools for this journey. That the spiral, the panic, the what the hell am I doi...

This week I'm recording from inside my own fork in the road. Two paths with the same values at the core, but asking very different things of me. On one side, glamour — the route I've trodden before, where people sit up and pay attention. On the other, grind — the path of real, tangible work with no attachment that makes it interesting to the ego. What I'm learning, in real time, is that these mome...

How does your to do list make you feel? Stressful, overwhelming? Or maybe it’s make you feel empowered and in control? Right now, my to do list is reasonably small... proportional to the time I have available... and really, really scary. Today I’m going to talk about why that is a really good thing and exactly where I need to be. If you’re building meaningful work for yourself and your to do list...

This week a trusted advisor (my sibling) asked me a powerful question: am I a main character, or a supporting artist? This isn't about ego. It's not about ambition or status or who gets the credit. It's about finding the right energetic fit. I've watched really capable, accomplished people build careers and businesses in the wrong register — doing good work, meaningful work, work they're proud of...

Some weeks the journey toward meaningful work looks like momentum and clarity. And some weeks it looks like stopping dead on the school run and saying out loud: what the **** am I doing? This week was the second kind. In this episode I share what happened when a wobbly week — the investment banker advice I didn't want to hear, the complexity that kept multiplying, the energy dispersing into backup...

The question most people making a career change are already asking themselves — just never out loud. It sits in the background, usually at 3am, shapeless and exhausting. This week I want to change that. Because naming the fear isn't pessimism. It's the thing that makes meaningful work actually possible. When you look directly at the worst case, something shifts — it gets smaller, and it becomes so...

Have you ever had an idea you couldn't stop thinking about — one that kept coming back no matter how many times life got in the way? The gap between that feeling and actually building something real is where most people get stuck. Not because they lack the vision or the talent, but because they don't know how to begin. In this episode I'm sharing five lessons for getting yourself into momentum whe...

What actually keeps you going when you're building something from scratch, before the evidence catches up? In this episode I'm sharing the story of how I stayed the course through 15 years of building a meaningful business, even when self-belief was shaky. We talk about why clarity about your idea matters more than confidence in yourself, and I share the simple framework I use with every client to...

You left corporate consciously and with good reasons. But you still feel things "should" be different and you're scared you won't deliver the purposeful career pivot you want. This episode is here to remind you that you did not float into the messy middle of career change, you chose it. This in-between stage is a stepping stone not a quagmire. Listen in to learn how to reconcile emotions around yo...

If you’re seriously thinking about a career change but you’re afraid that stepping out of corporate might mean becoming less serious, less competent, or less ambitious — this episode is for you. You’ve probably said things like: “I’m good at what I do…but I don’t enjoy it anymore.” “It feels wrong in my body, even if it looks fine on paper.” “I don’t want another job like this — but what else coul...

A layoff isn’t just an income shock. What often hits just as hard is the identity rupture — the future you assumed was unfolding, the loyalty you invested, the structure you relied on. If all that matters right now is replacing income, do that. Stability matters. This episode isn’t here to compete with that. But if you’re questioning whether you want to rebuild your career inside the same structur...

When my son was four months old, he came with me to a notary’s office in Berlin. I was setting up a company during Brexit uncertainty, travelling across Europe, growing fast. At the time, the structure of my life could hold that intensity and the work made sense inside it. Nine years later, everything looks different. In this episode, I explore what it really takes to build work that brings you ba...

So many people want meaningful work that aligns with their values — especially when burnout sets in or a career change starts to feel inevitable. Yet truly values-first organisations remain hard to find. In this episode, I share my experience of working closely with a genuinely values-first business, including time spent on retreat with the team in the Czech mountains. We explore what’s really hap...

This week’s episode is a replay of an interview I recorded with Courtney Holm for the Up Your Impact podcast. We talk about what it really feels like when you’re stuck in corporate — especially when financial fear, responsibility, and the day-to-day reality of your work feel completely out of sync with what you want your life to look like. In the conversation, I share an ecosystem approach to care...

Quitting your corporate job can feel like you’re teetering on the edge of an impossibly high diving board. Everyone’s shouting advice from below. You can’t see how far the drop is. And the idea of leaping — without knowing what comes next — is enough to keep most people frozen exactly where they are. What if you don’t have to leap? What if you can build a bridge instead? In this episode, I talk ab...

What do you do when work stops having meaning for you? When the career you’ve poured years of energy into still looks fine from the outside, but no longer feels aligned? That moment can be hard to name — and even harder to act on — especially when nothing is obviously “wrong.” In this episode, I talk about that early phase that often comes long before burnout. The sinking loss of belief. The naggi...

I’m starting 2026 by sharing the word I’ve chosen for the year, and why it matters more to me than any New Year’s resolution. This episode is a behind-the-scenes look at how I’m thinking about goals, commitment, and what it really takes to build a meaningful work life over time. We talk about why career change and meaningful work aren’t just about clarity or finding your purpose, but about staying...