The Freedom Project

The results are good and the strategies are in place, but you sit at your desk feeling nothing for the work you once loved. I tell the story of the honeymoon that ended my first business, and the autopsy I carried out on it in the frightening weeks after I shut it down. Then I share a conversation over pizza in Portugal with three driven founders that changed what I believe a business is for. It h...

Mike Samuels spent two years on a business plateau. Revenue was steadily creeping up, he was working 30 to 35 hours a week, and on paper everything was fine. Underneath, he was wrestling with self-doubt and a real values conflict, because the next level meant becoming someone he didn’t want to be: hiring someone to do his job, chasing corporate pitches and living on Zoom calls. So he didn’t go big...

You’ve had a good year, and if you look at the accounts, the clients you’ve helped and the business you’ve built, you’d have to admit it. But there’s no real joy in it. The satisfaction you used to get from a great result has faded, your mornings start slower than they used to, and you find yourself putting off the work you know matters most. You know you’re capable of more and you want to give mo...

Last year my accountant sent me a message to congratulate me. He meant it kindly. It sat in my stomach for weeks. The business was fine. Good months, okay months. From the outside it looked like I was pushing hard. On the inside I’d started asking a question I would never have said out loud: am I getting lazy? I’d already done everything you’re supposed to do. Mentors, books, podcasts, new offers,...

You've hired the mentors, read the right books and you're still working incredibly hard. The business is good, but it isn't growing, and you aren't building a life you love. This episode is for the business owner who wants to finish the year strongly but has lost the drive they had in the early days. I explain what's happening in your brain when you plateau: why you can't grow despite wanting to,...

You're with your kids, but your head's at work. You're at work, but you're thinking about home. Then something tips you over, you snap at the people you love, and the guilt sits with you all evening. This is a real coaching session with a driven business owner and dad of a young family who wanted to separate his work brain from his family brain. What we found underneath wasn't a focus problem at a...

This is how to handle the next stage of growth in your business. The greatest challenge you'll face comes from within and this is a story about how to handle that.

If you keep doing what you're doing you're only going to get more of what you've already got. This is how to change your mental state so you can perform at a higher level

This is how I teach my clients to master their mental weaknesses, and how you can do the same

If you're a business owner who knows they've got more in the tank, this is what you need to be a part of

Today I share 5 quotes that will radically improve the quality of your life if you implement them (plus 2 bonus quotes that came into my head whilst recording)

For twenty years I picked the hardest thing in the room and made sure people could see me do it. I called it ambition. It was an eight year old who didn't feel like he mattered, running every decision I made, and I never once heard it. There's a line usually put on Jung. Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will determine your life, and you'll call it fate. This one is about the thing driv...

A client of mine works sixteen hour days. Up at four, in the office by seven, laptop still open at eleven at night. I asked him to rate the quality of that work out of a hundred. He said fifty. Maybe sixty. So we did the arithmetic together. Fifty percent of sixteen hours is eight hours. He's producing one working day and paying for two. Every endurance athlete already understands this pattern. Yo...

A client showed up early to do a job that wasn't his anymore. Nobody asked him to. He couldn't stop himself. In this episode I break down what was running underneath that habit: busyness as identity, the quiet competitiveness that creeps in between a leader and their own team, and the four-word framework I now use for saying a hard thing without softening it into nothing. If you've ever done someo...

For about a month, Tom Foxley's tongue felt like it was housing a  small mammal.   He knew from the start he should go to the dentist. But she's  expensive and her waiting room has a specific combination of clinical  smell and Radio 2 that he finds miserable. So he went to his GP  instead — easier, more accessible, felt like doing something.   The GP prescribed medication and a mouthwash. His tong...

2am on a Tuesday. Daughter sick. Bathroom dark. Boxers. Wet stuffed  giraffe. 18-month-old supervising from the doorway with the expression  of a senior consultant reviewing a deliverable. In the middle of it, Tom had a very clear view of his month. Product  launch. Upcoming heart surgery. Ultra marathon training. The business.  Being present at home. None of it relevant. This was the job. In this...

Last weekend Tom Foxley had dinner with the most successful man he  knows. Not just commercially — though the numbers are serious. What made him  different was the combination: the external success and a genuine  internal ease. Good health. A marriage that works. In his 60s and  moving through life in a way that's rare enough that you notice it  immediately when you're in the room. After dinner he...

This morning Tom Foxley sat in the garden watching his daughter look  at something in the grass. Just there. Fully. Nothing lost. That sounds unremarkable. For a long time, it would have been  impossible — because Tom is by default a distracted person. Anxious  head, always moving, obsessive about progress in a way that doesn't  switch off when he leaves the desk. For years he told himself it was ...

A few years ago, lying in a tent in the Hindu Kush with destroyed legs  and altitude-split lips, Tom Foxley found himself in a conversation  about Everest.   Why it pulls at people. And why, despite that pull, he realised he  didn't want to climb it — not the way most people climb it. Fixed  ropes from base to summit. Guided queues. Infrastructure rebuilt every  season so that people reach the top...

Last weekend Tom paid a Michelin Star bill without flinching. That sounds completely unremarkable. For a long time, it wouldn't  have been — because he knew exactly what his body would do when the  bill arrived. Stomach tightening before he'd seen the number. Low-grade  dread that followed him home and bled into the next morning. He'd told himself that was just being sensible. Knowing where he'd ...

You hired a business mentor to shortcut your path to growth.   Now you've got a generic to-do list, a sales system that makes you  feel fake, content bringing in the wrong leads, and advice that doesn't  account for the complexity of your life, your model, your clients, or  your strengths.   In this episode, Tom Foxley makes the case that most business coaching  doesn't work — not because the stra...

One of his employees slept with his most profitable client. Less than a month into the job.   That was years ago. But he was still running his business.   In this episode, Tom Foxley breaks down a real client case — a business owner who couldn't step back from the day-to-day, couldn't delegate,  couldn't trust his team to do the right thing without him watching.  He micromanaged constantly, hated...

Tom Foxley is having heart surgery. Fully awake. No sedation.   A cardiologist will thread a wire through his groin, navigate it to  his heart, and burn a small section of tissue — while he lies there  conscious for two hours. And there's a small but real chance things  could go wrong.   He's a little bit terrified.   In this episode he shares what that experience has surfaced — and  specifically,...

This week Tom Foxley took a group of business owners to the Brecon  Beacons — one of the most demanding environments in the UK, and the  place where the SAS run a significant portion of their initial training.   23 kilometres. 1,500 metres of elevation. Winds that knocked people  off their feet. Hail that made it necessary to walk backwards. A wild  camp at minus five degrees. And at the end of th...