My squiggly career path (and what it taught me)
Photo by Kit (formerly ConvertKit) on Unsplash
I have one pen in my pen jar that stands out from the biros with cracked ends and missing lids - it’s a chunky silver one that was my prize for coming (joint) first in Northern Ireland in secondary school maths.
All through school and uni I was a super conscientious student, where nothing but an A* would do.
Aged 21 and fresh out of uni I landed a spot in the graduate scheme of a big global energy company. I loved the technical aspect of my job, getting to work as part of a motivated team solving complex problems and working with big datasets.
There was also the sense of newness, freedom and independence that came from earning my own pay check, regular travel and working with people from different cultural backgrounds.
But at the same time something niggled and one year in I bought the Financial Times Small Business Start Up Guide (2010 Edition). I had this whisper inside that if I could learn how to do business on a much smaller scale then maybe I could help others to do the same - to access that sense of freedom and independence without the need to be part of a big corporate company.
Over the next ten years I proceeded to run a series of experiments of varying levels of success - blogs, apps, a packed lunch service, learning html to build websites to name a few.
That whisper inside me grew louder, but for the most part my business experiments were only ever hobbies - a side project alongside my main job. Until, I started making artisan granola. It was before granola was really a thing, and within six months I had an award winning company that took off very quickly.
I started to believe that maybe this business thing was something I could actually do.
The company went from strength to strength and I spent my maternity leave trying to make it my full time thing. In the end, it didn’t workout that way (although the business is still going!) because the lifestyle the business required of me (lots of time travelling and baking) wasn’t what I wanted with with a young son.
It was through going back to work part time as a new mum that I came across coaching. Up until that point, I had always focussed on the external path to success and coaching invited me to open up and look at my inner world as well.
I went on to train as a coach myself, prompted by seeing other Mothers experience the same overwhelm and juggling that I then came to know as a new mum with young kids and ambitions for a successful and meaningful career.
During my second maternity leave I was lucky enough to have the opportunity for voluntary redundancy and took it. I launched myself 110% into my own coaching business, supporting other mums in the juggle of work, life and themselves.
Through this work I met countless mums who also wanted to leave their 9-5 for various different reasons, and my work naturally evolved into business coaching.
I’ve now worked with well over 100 people and the themes I see in many of my clients are so similar to my own journey.
For a business (or job) to be fulfilling:
It has to make use of your skill set in a way that lights you up and has you feeling proud of what you do. One of the things that has been most surprising to me is just how transferable my skills have been across what on the outside look like very unrelated roles. These days, I can apply skills that I worked hard to gain early on in my career, just now in a very different context.
There needs to be a strong sense of purpose and making a tangible positive difference to the world in what you are doing. One of the benefits of the work that I do today is seeing first hand the impact that I can impart on the people that I work most closely with.
It needs to support that lifestyle you want, both financially but also in the way you work. There is so much that goes into designing a business that is sustainable for the long run, beyond the finances alone.
These are themes that sound simple and yet are almost always harder to put into practice. If you’d like a framework to build your business around that honours all of these, check out the Regenerative Business Starter Kit as a way to get started. It outlines the approach that I use both in my own work and with my clients and might just be a good starting point for you if you are looking for more fulfilment, space and ease in your work.