52: Finding Purpose - How Clare Left Corporate Agencies to Build Meaningful Work for Changemakers | From Corporate Into Calling: Career Change, Burnout, Meaningful Work, Find Your Purpose

Description

“I remember one Christmas Eve… instead of being with my husband and not-yet-two-year-old, I was finishing a project because that felt more important.” If your career looks great on paper but feels wrong in your bones, Clare’s story will resonate.

This is the first episode in my Finding Purpose series—monthly conversations with clients and other brave souls who’ve left corporate, done the inner and outer work, and built regenerative careers on their own terms. These episodes are about real transitions, not highlight reels: the fears, the false starts, and the choices that lead to meaningful work.

Clare spent years in London’s creative agencies, living the long-hours rhythm that corporate culture normalises. Then life forced a rethink—pregnancy, twins, a move out of London, and the dawning realisation that the “fun had stopped.” We talk about how burnout drains the imagination you need for career change, and how the fear of slipping back into burnout can keep you in limbo even after you’ve left. Together we reframe work from the ground up: start with how you want life to feel (family first, balance, a sense of craft) and only then design the work around it.

What’s powerful about Clare’s path is that nothing was wasted. She turned years of brand/communications experience and a master’s in sustainability into Story Labs—participatory, community-led sessions that surface lived experience and weave it into collective narratives for places, projects and changemakers.

Listen for:

How corporate conditioning leads us to over-work—and why we double down on it ourselves.
Why burnout doesn’t end when you quit, and how to move despite the fear of repeating old patterns.
The mindset shifts that unlocked momentum: slowing down, committing, and building something to last.

If Clare’s journey resonates and you’re ready to reimagine your relationship with work, let’s talk. The Meaningful Business Incubator is my six-month intensive coaching program where we will design, test, and launch your regenerative business or offering.

Book a call with me and we’ll talk about what the Meaningful Business Incubator can unlock for you.

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Transcription

Speaker #0
I remember one Christmas Eve, this is how ridiculous things get, that rather than being with my husband and my not even two year old son, I was trying to finish off work on Christmas Eve because that to me felt so important that I got this particular project sort of wrapped up before Christmas. At that time, that felt... completely normal. Like that wasn't, I can't say that my boss was necessarily standing over me and telling me to do that, but there was me, I was also doing that. I was there thinking, honestly at some level thinking that the more important thing in my life was to finish that project than it was to spend time with my family.
Speaker #1
If your career looks great on paper but feels wrong in your bones, you're not alone. Welcome to From Corporate to Calling, your lifeline into meaningful work. I'm Alyssa Murphy, a regenerative business mentor and former startup CEO who walked away from corporate systems to create work that brings life. Each week I share stories, reflections and provocations to help you recognize the signs of burnout and make a career change with purpose. If work looks good but feels wrong, this is your invitation to get out of corporate and into your calling. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm your host, Alyssa Murphy, and this is from Corporate Into Calling. This week, I'm excited to share with you the first in my Finding Purpose series. This is going to be a series of conversations where I'm speaking to clients and other amazing people who have taken that leap out of the corporate world of work, done the inner work, done the outer work and created their own meaningful careers and businesses. Today you're going to be hearing from my client Claire who worked with me inside of the Meaningful Business Incubator. Claire is going to tell you her story right back from the days when she worked in creative agencies in London working incredibly long hours, really all-consuming commitment to her work in corporate sustainability, what finally made things click for her and made her decide to step out of that world, and how after a long pause raising her babies, she found the courage to pursue her passions and the learning that she'd done in her master's and create a really exciting and unique regenerative offering that aligned with her values and allowed her to create a work life that put family first. If Claire's journey resonates with you and you are ready to take that leap all the way out of corporate, if you are ready to reimagine your relationship with work and if you want to build a meaningful business that brings life to you and to those around you, come and have a chat with me about the Meaningful Business Incubator. It's a six month intensive coaching program where we will design, test and launch your regenerative business or offering. Just send me an email, Alyssa, A-L-I-S-A at lifesizemedia.com or use the link in the show notes to book a call with me and we'll talk about what the Meaningful Business Incubator can unlock for you. Now, without further ado, it's over to Claire. Hi Claire, welcome to the podcast. It's very exciting because you are the first guest I've had on the podcast that's actually been here in the office with me. We are in the same room, we can actually touch each other. And so Claire is the only client I've ever had who is actually here in the same space as me. We live in the same town and we've had the joy of being able to do all of our coaching work. together in person, often out in the wild. We'll come on to that. But Claire has agreed to come to talk with us today and Claire what I would love to share with people is kind of your story in terms of how your work life has changed. So perhaps going right back to what your kind of conventional work life looked like, why you chose to step out of that where you were when we started working together and then we can take it up to where you are now which spoiler alert involves launching a really exciting regenerative offering so does that sound okay yeah all right so take us take us right back to the beginning in terms of where you were at this sort of peak of what would be considered your successful career so the peak of my career i was
Speaker #0
Well from the age of 24, actually even prior to that really, until I left, I worked for creative agencies in London, so predominantly on brand strategy and corporate communications. And when I left I was client partner, I think was the term. I was working on Multiple projects. I had clients in Germany, so I was regularly flying over there. And I had young children, actually young child, sorry, and I was working very long hours. Dylan was two and I would, we'd drop off at nursery. My husband would do the drop off at eight o'clock in the morning, then I would have to get to him, to my son, on the other side of London by six. And some nights that was a challenge, the tubes weren't working or something. I remember one day... Ringing my husband and saying I'm on trying to get on the train there's no tubes and I can't I think I've been a meeting and he He said well I can't get there And I got to the nursery and Dylan was in his coat and they'd actually switched the lights off so he had like a little coat on and they were just sat there And it was you know those kind of things are actually really difficult in the end And I think for a long time I'd also been feeling like when I did that job in my 20s I loved it. I thought I worked with really a lot of autonomy. I worked with designers and strategists and we would create our own projects essentially with lots of different clients and my clients were like the who's who we had actually BP was one of them at one point but we there's L'Oreal and we'd go to Paris and it felt like quite an exciting time but I think there was something sort of starting to make me feel uneasy about not perhaps just the work that we were doing which was a lot of it was around sustainability communications in one particular agency so there was something kind of maybe something to maybe make me question what we were doing but more than that i think it was the lifestyle it was the it was long hours i mean it was just long hours like agencies are quick and that's fun to a certain degree but then at a certain point the fun stops and so I, but I don't think I would have stopped so I, so though there was little bits of me that was thinking maybe this isn't quite right for me, there was a money thing as well because I earned, I earned as much as my husband earned so we, you know, I had to keep working. But then I got, I got pregnant with twins and that really did change everything and I was very sick during my pregnancy but I didn't take a single day off work and I kept working until I was taken to hospital and they basically said you have got nothing left in your body you need to we need to stop now basically I don't think you've ever just listeners may know
Speaker #1
I also had twins my twins are two years younger than yours I think and I was also really sick through my pregnancy I found extremely physically hard and I cannot imagine how you went to work every day because I mean at the time I was running a company but I had sort of more flexibility I suppose but I would lie in bed until I had to like literally drag myself out for like super critical meetings and then go back I mean it's just it's quite astonishing what we ask for ourselves and what work it like that kind of conventional work asks of us as well.
Speaker #0
I used to, and this is a bit graphic, but I'd get a bus down the Auckland road and on the way home there was a I knew where the bus, the bin, the bins were because I would get off the bus to be sick because I was so, I was sick. I think between pregnancies, just to say, oh, they do make you more sick. And they do actually bring that with them. Yeah.
Speaker #1
And it really strikes me that story that you shared as well about like picking up little Dylan, like them sort of waiting with the lights off, that there's, there's a real lack of kind of humanity in that model that requires long hours. sort of unwavering contribution that for me like part of thinking of regenerative work is like Just making space for the human stuff that happens to us, that like we need to go and get our kid or somebody gets sick or our parents are aging or we're growing two humans inside of us, like that there's just so little space in kind of conventional work for just... being a human and all the things that happen to us in life.
Speaker #0
Yeah, but also in our own heads I think that's the other thing. There was a need for me to work. I was living in London, I had to pay a mortgage to pay. I didn't really have... and that's my job, that was my job and so it sort of had to. But there is another, I think, the latter jobs I had I actually caught a relatively understanding boss, he had a family, but I think there was something within me as well that had come from that world or within me, who knows what happens. But I remember one Christmas Eve, this is how ridiculous things get that rather than being with my husband and my not even two year old son I was trying to finish off work on Christmas Eve because that to me felt so important that I got this particular project sort of wrapped up before Christmas. At that time, that felt completely normal. Like that wasn't, I can't say that my boss was necessarily standing over me and telling me to do that. And what would I, maybe if I'd have not done it, the consequences, I don't know what would have been. But there was me, I was also doing that. I was there. thinking honestly at some level thinking that the more important thing in my life was to finish that project than it was to spend time with my family where do you think that compulsion came from I think I don't I mean it's really hard to say what's the chicken and the egg isn't it where does it come from it's a kind of well I mean I worked I think you've talked about it as well and and so you had your own business. It's a slightly different results as well. But I worked with somebody. else I worked so hard for so many years I literally did nothing but work I just worked I had a getting early in the mornings I'd work long hours I mean rarely in my twenties I think before nine the weekends were very quite hedonistic it was it was just this constant like cycle and I'm having one job within an agency where I finished at five and I got to the train station at five o'clock one day or again I these things are really popping in my head because I can remember being... clearly London Bridge and like seeing all the pictures and I thought what am I gonna do it's five o'clock so what do people do with it I had literally I don't have hobbies but I don't have anything other and then I always knew I wanted a family but then I had Dylan and then I was like and actually I left my job and I didn't have a job and I won't at that point I was thinking about do you want to do something different but again money i felt like they were reason I needed to keep going but yeah I I was like he got went back to nursery at 10 months and at that point went back for three days and I was like there's no way I can do this work in three days I need to do four days obviously maybe that's it and then I used to work on a Sunday to catch up from the Friday that I had off my
Speaker #1
I mean I obviously yeah we have very different experiences because I as an entrepreneur so I worked for myself but I do I recognize that compulsion to work and that feeling of like what will I possibly do if it's not there. I remember when I got married and I was pregnant at the time and I took ten days off to go to New York to get married and sort of have a honeymoon at the same time and it was the first time in what I'm trying to work out the dates now like close close to ten years that I had switched off from work like in that period of time. So I really recognise that. but I find it very interesting to think about where it comes from. And for me, my sort of working hypothesis is that it's, you say about the chicken and egg, I think it's that the system asks so much of us. So the expectation on you was that you work long hours, that the project gets done no matter what, that you don't let something like getting pregnant or being sick or having a young child in any way get in the way of your ability to perform. And that's a real demand. And because that is asked for us, we sort of respond. by almost doubling down on that because it is unnatural to kind of make that bargain where we like and to say yes I can give you that much and so we kind of give it all of us because it's like the only way we can actually kind of make sense of how much is being asked of us is that we're like we invest our self-worth and our kind of meaning and our value into that exchange for work and then it becomes really quite frightening to think well who am I outside of this? So take us to that point for you because that did happen for you where it reached the point where like you said that the fun, well it sounded like the fun had stopped for a while but it was it reached the point where you needed to change
Speaker #0
things. Yeah I mean it was my hand was slightly forced but I so I wrote I woke up one night in the middle of the night and wrote this letter and I said that I will never work like this again to my unborn children and then I and then everything changed so we so when the twins were like five months old we left London and we moved to Villanhoe which is where we are now and that meant financially things changed because suddenly we weren't paying those kind of everything just it meant that I didn't have to I didn't have to work to pay the mortgage that's essentially what it meant where prior to I had to work post-mortgage. This meant I didn't. And also just having that you know having three young children under three under two at one point because they were in two and the girls were born so everything just switched for me like it was suddenly like oh but i wanted it to switch like there was if i'd have really been invested in that job as a career perhaps maybe i would have maybe i wouldn't but either way that everything sort of changed that point. And for two years I'd say that I was just so immersed in children that I didn't particularly have time to think. Although there was always this nagging sense of, I need to get back to work. So there was this kind of dual thing, there was a little bit in the back of my head that was going, well this is fine for now, it's fine for now, but obviously it's not fine forever, for multiple reasons. And then I did one of the girls with... two or three I started a master's and that coincided with lockdown I'm trying to get all my dates mixed up but yeah lockdown obviously happened as well I did my master's in sustainability and behavior change which I loved but again I really threw myself into that too so there was another part of me that was still really not yeah really wanting to to do something and then at that that same point a lot of people sort of saying what are you doing? As if it was never perhaps enough just to be a mother, like that's quite hard thing to say but I think and then I've been from Masters that's when I think we kind of met and I think I just felt very we as you know very very lost I couldn't conceive of work I knew I wanted to go back to work and not what why I can't maybe the why is an interesting one but as I knew I wanted to do that but I couldn't conceive of work as being anything other than what it had been. So for me, work is associated with everything. Like it was like long hours, it was my whole identity, it was it was just what I did and I couldn't see how that would ever be compatible with children.
Speaker #1
Yeah and I remember that was a really big part of our work at the beginning, our work together, was that you that kind of overshadowed everything for you because it was like you thought of anything that you might want to try or explore or even research came with this sort of baggage of but it's going to mean going back to that way of existing it's going to mean sacrificing time with my family it's going to mean really long hours getting burnt out and it took quite a while didn't it for that to kind of shift and i think one of the really powerful things that we did at the beginning was kind of setting this vision do you remember of this balance that that you wanted to have like long before you knew any specifics about the kind of work that you were doing it was these sort of foundational pieces of like my family must be part of this it has to be balanced and and i remember this sort of there was like a peacefulness that you were looking for in work which clearly we can hear from your story wasn't wasn't there for you before yeah
Speaker #0
yeah it's actually we've got the when we first did our first session together in the wild we we had this image didn't we that well whose head it came from my head probably but you shared the image somehow of that sort of standing by the sea with a cup of tea in a warm jumper and and that and that was what I wanted in my life and how could work be part of that.
Speaker #1
That's right and it's so it's so interesting because I think most people actually live kind of their whole professional lives thinking what is work going to be and how do I fit in the life around that and what we did was kind of kind of turn that around to like I want that experience of that kind of yeah you know it's a it's a kind of metaphor but like being being by the sea being on the coast being cozy and and then like let's work from there and I think so many people miss that even when they have had a similar experience to you of you know taking a big leap out of what seemed to everyone else to be a really successful career and but the next question is always what what do I do next what is the work that I'm going to do and we miss that step of like how is work going to feel like and I think that is such an important starting point yeah Yeah.
Speaker #0
Yeah, it's the main work, I think. I don't know for other people, but certainly for me. It's reimagining what work can be and then thinking that it can be something different because I think the image at the sea was a kind of... cup and we have been talking about this about being cosy but what that means essentially but I think for me what it meant and this came out through our coaching was I I wanted something that was a craft and meaningful like I wanted something that I was doing like it was sort of like being sort of physical or but I wanted something I'd done a long lots of my career was spent doing things that really at the bottom when it really came down to it they weren't they won't be doing anything sometimes sometimes it was being busy for being busy it was like going to meet lots of meetings and and a lot of spreadsheets and a lot of it was just it was yeah there wasn't creative industry which is kind of ironic isn't it say that but I wanted something that was that I could build I think I think that was kind of what I was searching for like and I say it as a craft and then all of my kind of imagery that we that kind of came about was often about people that had a craft and it was like an artist or a carpenter or something that was this like I had this or creating but that's not my where my we're not actually where my love is either but not where my skill set is certainly so i kind of bit like well so the only people I could really see that were doing anything that really that kind of work that I was drawn to were people that were very much not in that corporate office environment so that was one thing that was very clear when I looked at where I was where those images were kind of coming from it was always people that were quite well I mean interesting solo but that isn't necessarily necessarily what i want but it was like people that are that i doing something that they really believe in. Like that kept, that was quite a strong feeling. And so it was trying to, but then it was like, well, that's not the work that I know. That's the people that are artists or carpenters, or I'm trying to think of other examples or have a, or have a farm or, or run retreats or, laser that, or yoga, yoga teacher, that was one that kept coming up, was there, yoga teacher. I'm not looking on to be a yoga teacher, but I think it was something that just wasn't from that world. world.
Speaker #1
Yeah, yeah and exactly and allowing yourself to think, I thought there was a couple of episodes ago, like to start thinking of yourself as an artist I think is a really big leap actually for a lot of people but it's something I really believe in because fundamentally what is an artist? Someone who is creating something and something like you say that they really believe in and something that will have some kind of impact. impact on others that will make some kind of lasting change.
Speaker #0
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker #1
And how did you talk us through how those kind of threads started coming together? So once you had the sort of once you were more connected with the feeling of how you wanted work to be and shifting your ideas about what work meant and from this kind of sort of corporate experience that you turned into this more craftsmanship kind of
Speaker #0
thinking how did this sort of thread start to come together into what you were going to do next well you know over time and with a lot of help from you I mean as it was as we both noticed it was these threads were there but it took a while it took there was a there was a kind of a couple of breakthrough moments weren't there but it took it took time and actually I think in the sense I wish that I listened a little bit more about having that time because I think it I wanted to get on and do stuff quite quickly didn't I and so And in the end... Yeah, having a bit more time, allowing myself a bit more time just to be like in that space would have probably been quite helpful. But in terms of your question, what things that, one, I think there's a couple of reasons that stood out for me. One was I had to be at my age. too old to do anything this was a big thing for me I was like I'm in my 40s mid 40s you know I'm just past it that was a really big thing and you really helped with that because you had this you made me think about other people I could look at that were doing really exciting things in their 50s and 60s and 70s and 80s so suddenly so this was a big thing I wanted this period of of like trying to work out what this next thing was has been it's been a very very difficult thing it's been very hard and I've had you to help me and I just honestly don't think I would have done because It's just been hard. It's hard to reinvent yourself. It is. It's much easier just to go back to doing what you were doing, isn't it?
Speaker #1
This is hard work. But I think the mindset shift that you're talking about there is, and the thing of slowing down, because I think a lot of people feel like, I can't afford to slow down. I don't have, I'm getting older and I can't, it needs to be done now, or I've already had a career break and like I need to solve this. I think a real shift that you had was, but if I'm trying to create something
Speaker #0
work that I can do into my 70s yeah okay if this takes a year that's nothing if this serves me for the next 30 years yeah that was the shift that was the and we had this conversation to me and I think you've actually said it on the podcast before but it again things take in my mind we had to come know exactly where we were we had a conversation we talked about your auntie I think and my nan your nan yeah and her nail hit her ankle yes i can't remember what podcast i think it's in the one where i talk about age and regenerative work but yeah
Speaker #1
But yeah, my nan had kind of like shattered her ankle in, I think even in her late 40s and just never really sorted it out and never took the time to get proper physio or get the surgery that she needed. And it's, she's now in her late 80s and it's like affected her whole life. And I often think like, like if she could have her time back, would she not have wanted to invest? Like I'm sure at the time she was just busy or it just felt like, oh, it's going to take too long, like working with a physio or whatever it might be. but I'm sure if she could have had her time back, she would, yeah, would have invested that time because actually what she would be giving herself was like so much more mobility for decades to come of her life. Yeah.
Speaker #0
So that was, that's what the shift was. And I remember it clearly. It was a bit like, so what I've been thinking, well, I need to decide what I need to do. I need to go on and do it because the time's running out, time's running out, time's running out. and then the shift came and it was like oh but I want to do this for the next 20 20, 30 years. So now actually, it's about doing something that's going to last. Change happens, things happen, maybe I won't want to. But in terms of this real, like, more intentional change of direction, you can't do that many times in your life because of the energy it takes you to change direction. And so maybe there'll be some more and more organic shifts, but I definitely thought, right, I want something, I want to now, I was like, we looked forward, didn't we, to what I would be like at, say, six, seven. and how I would look back and what I wanted my work to be and how so that was a that was a big shift yeah that was one of the threads that shifted so I had that that I knew I had I knew I wanted to craft and I'm talking about in the widest sense of the word craft I knew that I wanted something that would fit with family life I knew I didn't have the energy to work those hours anymore. So there were these little threads that were coming through.
Speaker #1
quite strongly and then there was a fourth one like I'm curious I'm sure people will be curious because you know we've talked a lot about how the mindset shift and we haven't even got into like more of the kind of personal dimensions that you can keep for yourself but there was a lot of inner work as well that you had to do on kind of self-confidence self-worth all of this kind of thing and like anyone who's making these kind of shifts like all of that stuff is going to come up And it takes, that takes time, it takes work. but I think yeah it's also really inspiring people to hear like the practical side because I think what you've done with what you're you're now putting out into the world is you've you've taken all the experience that you had for your corporate life like it's not like that was wasted or that was thrown away you've you've used that as a sort of foundation you've used everything that you learned in your masters that's that's all all in there and then you've kind of that you've combined that with where you are in your life now with what you're really really passionate about and like you say with like something that can be a craft for you going on and i think like that's what so many people are longing to do and yeah so maybe you can just talk why don't you tell us about what you're doing now and maybe take it yeah we can see how those threads came together yeah yeah we should talk about the purpose for for the income part because that actually was a big change as well.
Speaker #0
So what I'm doing now, so... I'm building a business as a story facilitator in the climate and community space and at the core of my offer is something that I've called story labs which are essentially like participatory workshops or experiences that bring teams or multiple teams or communities together to share stories or experiences or perspectives. and then to kind of look at what the common threads are within those stories and create collective narratives from them that can be used to shape communications or place-based initiatives or research. So essentially it's bringing ultimately what the aim is is to bring kind of slightly different voices into conversations into stories to start shifting narratives So that's like a bigger ambition. But there is some quite practical kind of outputs from that as well. And it's quite, in a way, you know, Storyloves is quite, in a sense, it's quite a simple offer. But it combines both the brand communications world that I was in for so long with social sciences. So how you kind of create more inclusive spaces and elevate voices that aren't often heard. and there isn't quite practical reason for wanting to do that in the sense that stories that tend to be shaped by people tend to then also resonate with people so there's this kind of quite practical thing that's exactly it and it's such like it's such exciting work and it's
Speaker #1
also interesting like exactly they say like it goes back to the foundations that you have in your career and it's like probably on paper doesn't seem like a dramatically different thing and i think often people sort of feel like When they feel called to meaningful regenerative work, that it's going to be this completely new start, that they're going to have to go and completely re-skill in a different area and they'll often there's this sort of feeling of like I'll just be nowhere because I'm like whatever age like you're in my mid-40s and then I'm starting a totally new career and I don't think that's actually necessary for most of us because I think so many people are bringing with them a wealth of experience and connections and education and all of this kind of stuff but the real shift is like how you're expressing that like who you're doing that work for the way that you say your relationship with that work it's a totally different thing like you doing that kind of work for yeah huge huge brands that like in many cases sustainability is a kind of sticking plaster or an excuse for business as usual and doing that within like a big corporate system that then filters down to you being required to sort of give it so many hours of your life to you doing an expression of that work that feels like a craft that allows for like genuine balance and integration with your family and where you get to choose who you do that work for and really feel like the contribution that that work can make yeah exactly that
Speaker #0
Yeah, I suppose it's about doing something on my own terms for things that I believe in and using many of the tools in a sense that I, because I think creative communications and advertising and branding, all those things I was kind of connected to, they've got some really great, there is great stuff that comes out of there. They own like a lot of, a lot of my friends work in that sector still but most of my friends and i think that they have the the like this look that i'm thinking of the web like almost like the lion's share on creativity from like the brightest minds in terms of creative output and the way but i just stopped believing in what it was being used for i didn't necessarily stop believing in the tools i've never been in performance marketing for example where i didn't i wasn't on that size i was always on the side of like story and and that creation bit which i loved i mean i love writing i love and the other thing we've always talked about so I don't being with people so I knew I didn't want to do something that was That was purely online, I did know that, that was another quite big thing for me, I wanted to be with people. And so it was trying to look at those different bits. And I did my research in a community where I got to hear people's stories. I'd been working in an academic setting, again, where I got to hear people's stories and interpret those. with quite a lot of rigor like not just in terrapist than i mean off the hammer but actually really been thinking what is going on here what is the meaning behind them what people saying what what's the collective story what can we learn from this this is really interesting because it's not we're not we're not hearing from the same people that we normally hear from because that's the other thing in a brand and advertising setting we obviously do the research undoubtedly but ultimately really everything going down to the amazing minds of strategists at the end of the day to interpret that and then you go into meeting they'd be like ta-da here you are this is what you've done but and that's works but it's not really hearing from anything new I don't think because tends to be quite similar people that you're interviewing and they tend to be quite similar people that are dissecting those interviews and so I think this is so there was some there was lots of elements that that fed into this particular yeah and I love what you say about like not
Speaker #1
necessarily maybe falling out of love with who the work was done for and a lot the way that it was done but that the foundations of it like were still things that you wanted to hold onto and you absolutely have in terms of where you've now taken your work. I think that's, yeah, I think that's really comforting as well for people to hear that there's, and that's why, that's why I do what I do because I think there are so many incredibly talented people who are just capable of making stuff happen, like you, you know, who can do extraordinarily things and I think, I just feel, and I think many of them feel, that they're doing it for the wrong purposes and for the wrong people. and how incredibly exciting it is to think when we can harness all of that towards building a better future for everyone yeah i think that's it yeah taking those bits and taking the good bits out and okay so i have a few final questions let's let's do a quick fire round yeah to finish up what was the hardest moment of coaching together the bit before the breakthrough was that i just wasn't it So I had this,
Speaker #0
it was... I think I'd got to a place and I was thinking I'm quite happy with that and something wasn't quite right, something wasn't quite right and then I was like right I'm gonna go and work in a bookshop. I'm trying to get into a bookshop and didn't have any availability. I need to work in a bookshop. This is just the only way to do this work is to do something that literally I can just go and do and I don't think about again. I remember and then we had the crying on the beach day and I was like I just broke out. cannot do this anymore like what is wrong with my mind and then sat on the beach and was suddenly just like oh okay maybe this is what I want to do I've been making everything just really hard for a long long time so I think the hardest part with that was the it's just it's not linear is it nothing's linear so you kind of have these break moments when you think but I think you always know yeah what didn't i suddenly i knew like and again it was
Speaker #1
there was not there wasn't like a little it feels so silly at the end because at the end I'm probably quite where I was when I started but it was and yeah I think it was from from my perspective it was like the point where you were very tempted to quit on yourself yeah you know and and I don't mean that like there's nothing wrong with working in a bookshop I often have fantasies about how lovely it would be to work in a bookshop but I also don't think that is your path and I yeah And I think it's very often, it's so interesting at those moments when we're kind of almost ready to walk away is actually when we're so close. Like you say, it was right before you sort of had a breakthrough and I remember like very quickly all the ideas kind of came together after that point.
Speaker #0
Yeah.
Speaker #1
What was your favourite part of coaching together?
Speaker #0
What's my favourite part of the coaching? Well, I mean, personally, we also get, we got to spend time together that's actually really lovely lovely. I think the thing though that I would never have got without coaching, which I couldn't have done by myself, was someone that believed in me. That was like the best thing because I suddenly had someone that didn't see me as that internal dialogue going in, your head going, I'll never do this, you know, you're too old, who do you think you are? And that and each week there was someone that didn't see that person. They saw someone entirely different and that was... there was no... I don't... I honestly don't think that I would have... I wouldn't have believed I could do something by myself I don't think. So I think that was the the best bit having... and some weeks you were tough though for me. You know, it's tough, tough, tough love.
Speaker #1
Unless I can be quite. I think. Yeah. But what you just said about belief, I feel like that is the most important job that I have as a coach is that my belief in. my clients and what they're going to build is like so far ahead of where they are and then what's so gorgeous for me is the moment when it catches up and I can distinctly remember those moments when I was like oh like Claire's belief has caught up with mine and like we're both in that shared belief of this now because it's real and it's happening and and it comes it does take time and I you know I think it's something really important for anyone who might be listening thinking about making this kind of shift like it it does take time and I know you were just sharing with me before we started recording you're now in that you know the very early stages of launching a business but I think it's really it's really great to hear that you I feel like you've you've slowed your pace down and you're now approaching this with the mindset that you're building something to last and I think that to me is like what successful regenerative entrepreneurship looks like.
Speaker #0
And also, you talked about before, and I'm sorry to be a quick fire, but I think it's really important to say about the difference between me now and the difference between when we first met and now is huge. And, you know, I'm still in the very early stages. So in some ways, not like huge amounts have changed. But one thing that has changed, which is the biggest thing, is that I'm committed to something. That was the hardest thing, wasn't it? getting you know starting an idea coming out of it this one and actually you probably need to do that because you need to find the thing that feels right but there's such a different energy and suddenly having something to do to actually really okay right this is what I'm doing and now I need to do this I need to do this and it's hard you know you have to get rejection you know you're not it's not it's not gonna I'm not gonna suddenly be you know earning a 100,000 this year, it's still building up but suddenly it's
Speaker #1
feels more doable because I'm on the path that's the huge change that happened like actually having come in to commit to every day yeah and actually you mentioned to me this is a good case for us to think about the purposeful income path which is interesting because I created that like sort of towards the end of us coaching together and in some ways I sort of thought that I shared it with you before I shared it with anyone else that I don't know you might have been past that stage but you found it really helpful.
Speaker #0
to go through that framework yeah it was two things I think that really did help and they were quite late in because obviously with me we had a lot of the mindset work I don't know if that's necessarily the case for everyone but for me it was like that was a big thing but then on like the practical fronts mini business that one term you said to me one day really shifted it because I was like okay you can help build a business within the within yeah I'm not 20 so I'm I'm not gonna be like can't do it every second of the day I've got three children so I have to do it in these hours so it's a mini business it's not the only thing in my life it is one element of my life and that really has changed things like I stop at you know half past two and I pick my kids up and I don't start again until the morning and I look forward to start again in the morning so I'm like oh exciting I get to start again in the morning and the purpose for income path because it's good to have a goal and it's good to have you know it's like a little goal isn't it so I've I've got this goal I want to earn so much money. and by net end of next march to pay for us gone holiday so it's a it's a really tangible goal it's not it's not ludicrous and it's still relatively ambitious and it means that i'm quite focused on story labs so i'm not focused on like whereas before i was a bit like i would do bits of freelance work and i'd be like a bit of i'll do anything almost now i'm like oh no i just do this now yeah and it and it reinforces that commitment which is i think yeah
Speaker #1
a theme that has kind of been running through our whole conversation isn't it like making that commitment to yourself making your commitment to this journey to you know to building something that's going to serve you for however long into the future and then also committing to your idea and i think that's where like yeah the purposeful income path can be really helpful because it is so tempting to move to the next idea or to be influenced by what other people have to say about your idea or think oh so many people that i work with are like well but maybe i just need to go back and have a job or here's a contract maybe i should just do that contract and like there'll be times when that's the right choice but i think the heart of that it has to be that you really are committing to this thing that you build and you take that one step at a time so yeah Yeah, it's really lovely to hear. that that was helpful to you as well as the concept of yeah creating powerful mini business which is also how I think about my business being in a very kind of similar stage of life to you it's totally different when I was 25 and had a wild idea to set up a business and just gave it gave it everything for 13 years I'm not in that place anymore but I think we can still create really powerful mini businesses that bring us life and bring life to all those around us Yes. Oh thank you Claire, this has been such a lovely conversation. It was such a joy to work with you over those months as well out in the woods by the beach.
Speaker #0
I know! I miss it. But it's good to, like I said at the end, it's good to kind of take flight and not be there. I felt ready at the end, it was like, yes, this is, you know, I don't need Listerine anymore.
Speaker #1
Well and that is what I know my work has done. Yes. Thank you. If this episode of From Corporate to Calling was helpful or inspiring, follow the show so you don't miss an episode. And if you know someone who's questioning their career, send them this podcast. Lifelines are meant to be shared. Remember, you don't have to tolerate burnout or misalignment. You can redirect your skills into meaningful work that brings back life to you and to the world around you.

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

Does your career look good on paper but feel wrong in your bones?

If you’re stuck in corporate — exhausted by burnout, questioning your work life balance, or secretly wondering “is this really it?” — you’re not alone. And you don’t have to tolerate it.

From Corporate Into Calling is your lifeline. I’m Alisa Murphy, a regenerative business mentor and former CEO who walked away from corporate systems to build meaningful work of my own. Now I help others do the same: leave behind burnout and misalignment, and create careers — often businesses or consultancies — that bring life back, to you and to the world.

This isn’t about polishing your CV or slotting into another misaligned role. It’s about career change with purpose. Together, we’ll explore what it takes to find your purpose, build your own business, and create work that matters.

Each week, I’ll share stories, provocations, and practical guidance to help you:

Recognise the signs of burnout and know when it’s time to quit
Redesign your relationship with work
Find your purpose and create meaningful work
Build a career or business that brings life back

If your career looks good but feels wrong — this is your invitation to step out of corporate, and into your calling.

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

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

Does your career look good on paper but feel wrong in your bones?

Each week, I’ll share stories, provocations, and practical guidance to help you:

Recognise the signs of burnout and know when it’s time to quit
Redesign your relationship with work
Find your purpose and create meaningful work
Build a career or business that brings life back

If your career looks good but feels wrong — this is your invitation to step out of corporate, and into your calling.

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Description

Listen for:

How corporate conditioning leads us to over-work—and why we double down on it ourselves.
Why burnout doesn’t end when you quit, and how to move despite the fear of repeating old patterns.
The mindset shifts that unlocked momentum: slowing down, committing, and building something to last.

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Transcription

Speaker #0
I remember one Christmas Eve, this is how ridiculous things get, that rather than being with my husband and my not even two year old son, I was trying to finish off work on Christmas Eve because that to me felt so important that I got this particular project sort of wrapped up before Christmas. At that time, that felt... completely normal. Like that wasn't, I can't say that my boss was necessarily standing over me and telling me to do that, but there was me, I was also doing that. I was there thinking, honestly at some level thinking that the more important thing in my life was to finish that project than it was to spend time with my family.
Speaker #1
If your career looks great on paper but feels wrong in your bones, you're not alone. Welcome to From Corporate to Calling, your lifeline into meaningful work. I'm Alyssa Murphy, a regenerative business mentor and former startup CEO who walked away from corporate systems to create work that brings life. Each week I share stories, reflections and provocations to help you recognize the signs of burnout and make a career change with purpose. If work looks good but feels wrong, this is your invitation to get out of corporate and into your calling. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm your host, Alyssa Murphy, and this is from Corporate Into Calling. This week, I'm excited to share with you the first in my Finding Purpose series. This is going to be a series of conversations where I'm speaking to clients and other amazing people who have taken that leap out of the corporate world of work, done the inner work, done the outer work and created their own meaningful careers and businesses. Today you're going to be hearing from my client Claire who worked with me inside of the Meaningful Business Incubator. Claire is going to tell you her story right back from the days when she worked in creative agencies in London working incredibly long hours, really all-consuming commitment to her work in corporate sustainability, what finally made things click for her and made her decide to step out of that world, and how after a long pause raising her babies, she found the courage to pursue her passions and the learning that she'd done in her master's and create a really exciting and unique regenerative offering that aligned with her values and allowed her to create a work life that put family first. If Claire's journey resonates with you and you are ready to take that leap all the way out of corporate, if you are ready to reimagine your relationship with work and if you want to build a meaningful business that brings life to you and to those around you, come and have a chat with me about the Meaningful Business Incubator. It's a six month intensive coaching program where we will design, test and launch your regenerative business or offering. Just send me an email, Alyssa, A-L-I-S-A at lifesizemedia.com or use the link in the show notes to book a call with me and we'll talk about what the Meaningful Business Incubator can unlock for you. Now, without further ado, it's over to Claire. Hi Claire, welcome to the podcast. It's very exciting because you are the first guest I've had on the podcast that's actually been here in the office with me. We are in the same room, we can actually touch each other. And so Claire is the only client I've ever had who is actually here in the same space as me. We live in the same town and we've had the joy of being able to do all of our coaching work. together in person, often out in the wild. We'll come on to that. But Claire has agreed to come to talk with us today and Claire what I would love to share with people is kind of your story in terms of how your work life has changed. So perhaps going right back to what your kind of conventional work life looked like, why you chose to step out of that where you were when we started working together and then we can take it up to where you are now which spoiler alert involves launching a really exciting regenerative offering so does that sound okay yeah all right so take us take us right back to the beginning in terms of where you were at this sort of peak of what would be considered your successful career so the peak of my career i was
Speaker #0
Well from the age of 24, actually even prior to that really, until I left, I worked for creative agencies in London, so predominantly on brand strategy and corporate communications. And when I left I was client partner, I think was the term. I was working on Multiple projects. I had clients in Germany, so I was regularly flying over there. And I had young children, actually young child, sorry, and I was working very long hours. Dylan was two and I would, we'd drop off at nursery. My husband would do the drop off at eight o'clock in the morning, then I would have to get to him, to my son, on the other side of London by six. And some nights that was a challenge, the tubes weren't working or something. I remember one day... Ringing my husband and saying I'm on trying to get on the train there's no tubes and I can't I think I've been a meeting and he He said well I can't get there And I got to the nursery and Dylan was in his coat and they'd actually switched the lights off so he had like a little coat on and they were just sat there And it was you know those kind of things are actually really difficult in the end And I think for a long time I'd also been feeling like when I did that job in my 20s I loved it. I thought I worked with really a lot of autonomy. I worked with designers and strategists and we would create our own projects essentially with lots of different clients and my clients were like the who's who we had actually BP was one of them at one point but we there's L'Oreal and we'd go to Paris and it felt like quite an exciting time but I think there was something sort of starting to make me feel uneasy about not perhaps just the work that we were doing which was a lot of it was around sustainability communications in one particular agency so there was something kind of maybe something to maybe make me question what we were doing but more than that i think it was the lifestyle it was the it was long hours i mean it was just long hours like agencies are quick and that's fun to a certain degree but then at a certain point the fun stops and so I, but I don't think I would have stopped so I, so though there was little bits of me that was thinking maybe this isn't quite right for me, there was a money thing as well because I earned, I earned as much as my husband earned so we, you know, I had to keep working. But then I got, I got pregnant with twins and that really did change everything and I was very sick during my pregnancy but I didn't take a single day off work and I kept working until I was taken to hospital and they basically said you have got nothing left in your body you need to we need to stop now basically I don't think you've ever just listeners may know
Speaker #1
I also had twins my twins are two years younger than yours I think and I was also really sick through my pregnancy I found extremely physically hard and I cannot imagine how you went to work every day because I mean at the time I was running a company but I had sort of more flexibility I suppose but I would lie in bed until I had to like literally drag myself out for like super critical meetings and then go back I mean it's just it's quite astonishing what we ask for ourselves and what work it like that kind of conventional work asks of us as well.
Speaker #0
I used to, and this is a bit graphic, but I'd get a bus down the Auckland road and on the way home there was a I knew where the bus, the bin, the bins were because I would get off the bus to be sick because I was so, I was sick. I think between pregnancies, just to say, oh, they do make you more sick. And they do actually bring that with them. Yeah.
Speaker #1
And it really strikes me that story that you shared as well about like picking up little Dylan, like them sort of waiting with the lights off, that there's, there's a real lack of kind of humanity in that model that requires long hours. sort of unwavering contribution that for me like part of thinking of regenerative work is like Just making space for the human stuff that happens to us, that like we need to go and get our kid or somebody gets sick or our parents are aging or we're growing two humans inside of us, like that there's just so little space in kind of conventional work for just... being a human and all the things that happen to us in life.
Speaker #0
Yeah, but also in our own heads I think that's the other thing. There was a need for me to work. I was living in London, I had to pay a mortgage to pay. I didn't really have... and that's my job, that was my job and so it sort of had to. But there is another, I think, the latter jobs I had I actually caught a relatively understanding boss, he had a family, but I think there was something within me as well that had come from that world or within me, who knows what happens. But I remember one Christmas Eve, this is how ridiculous things get that rather than being with my husband and my not even two year old son I was trying to finish off work on Christmas Eve because that to me felt so important that I got this particular project sort of wrapped up before Christmas. At that time, that felt completely normal. Like that wasn't, I can't say that my boss was necessarily standing over me and telling me to do that. And what would I, maybe if I'd have not done it, the consequences, I don't know what would have been. But there was me, I was also doing that. I was there. thinking honestly at some level thinking that the more important thing in my life was to finish that project than it was to spend time with my family where do you think that compulsion came from I think I don't I mean it's really hard to say what's the chicken and the egg isn't it where does it come from it's a kind of well I mean I worked I think you've talked about it as well and and so you had your own business. It's a slightly different results as well. But I worked with somebody. else I worked so hard for so many years I literally did nothing but work I just worked I had a getting early in the mornings I'd work long hours I mean rarely in my twenties I think before nine the weekends were very quite hedonistic it was it was just this constant like cycle and I'm having one job within an agency where I finished at five and I got to the train station at five o'clock one day or again I these things are really popping in my head because I can remember being... clearly London Bridge and like seeing all the pictures and I thought what am I gonna do it's five o'clock so what do people do with it I had literally I don't have hobbies but I don't have anything other and then I always knew I wanted a family but then I had Dylan and then I was like and actually I left my job and I didn't have a job and I won't at that point I was thinking about do you want to do something different but again money i felt like they were reason I needed to keep going but yeah I I was like he got went back to nursery at 10 months and at that point went back for three days and I was like there's no way I can do this work in three days I need to do four days obviously maybe that's it and then I used to work on a Sunday to catch up from the Friday that I had off my
Speaker #1
I mean I obviously yeah we have very different experiences because I as an entrepreneur so I worked for myself but I do I recognize that compulsion to work and that feeling of like what will I possibly do if it's not there. I remember when I got married and I was pregnant at the time and I took ten days off to go to New York to get married and sort of have a honeymoon at the same time and it was the first time in what I'm trying to work out the dates now like close close to ten years that I had switched off from work like in that period of time. So I really recognise that. but I find it very interesting to think about where it comes from. And for me, my sort of working hypothesis is that it's, you say about the chicken and egg, I think it's that the system asks so much of us. So the expectation on you was that you work long hours, that the project gets done no matter what, that you don't let something like getting pregnant or being sick or having a young child in any way get in the way of your ability to perform. And that's a real demand. And because that is asked for us, we sort of respond. by almost doubling down on that because it is unnatural to kind of make that bargain where we like and to say yes I can give you that much and so we kind of give it all of us because it's like the only way we can actually kind of make sense of how much is being asked of us is that we're like we invest our self-worth and our kind of meaning and our value into that exchange for work and then it becomes really quite frightening to think well who am I outside of this? So take us to that point for you because that did happen for you where it reached the point where like you said that the fun, well it sounded like the fun had stopped for a while but it was it reached the point where you needed to change
Speaker #0
things. Yeah I mean it was my hand was slightly forced but I so I wrote I woke up one night in the middle of the night and wrote this letter and I said that I will never work like this again to my unborn children and then I and then everything changed so we so when the twins were like five months old we left London and we moved to Villanhoe which is where we are now and that meant financially things changed because suddenly we weren't paying those kind of everything just it meant that I didn't have to I didn't have to work to pay the mortgage that's essentially what it meant where prior to I had to work post-mortgage. This meant I didn't. And also just having that you know having three young children under three under two at one point because they were in two and the girls were born so everything just switched for me like it was suddenly like oh but i wanted it to switch like there was if i'd have really been invested in that job as a career perhaps maybe i would have maybe i wouldn't but either way that everything sort of changed that point. And for two years I'd say that I was just so immersed in children that I didn't particularly have time to think. Although there was always this nagging sense of, I need to get back to work. So there was this kind of dual thing, there was a little bit in the back of my head that was going, well this is fine for now, it's fine for now, but obviously it's not fine forever, for multiple reasons. And then I did one of the girls with... two or three I started a master's and that coincided with lockdown I'm trying to get all my dates mixed up but yeah lockdown obviously happened as well I did my master's in sustainability and behavior change which I loved but again I really threw myself into that too so there was another part of me that was still really not yeah really wanting to to do something and then at that that same point a lot of people sort of saying what are you doing? As if it was never perhaps enough just to be a mother, like that's quite hard thing to say but I think and then I've been from Masters that's when I think we kind of met and I think I just felt very we as you know very very lost I couldn't conceive of work I knew I wanted to go back to work and not what why I can't maybe the why is an interesting one but as I knew I wanted to do that but I couldn't conceive of work as being anything other than what it had been. So for me, work is associated with everything. Like it was like long hours, it was my whole identity, it was it was just what I did and I couldn't see how that would ever be compatible with children.
Speaker #1
Yeah and I remember that was a really big part of our work at the beginning, our work together, was that you that kind of overshadowed everything for you because it was like you thought of anything that you might want to try or explore or even research came with this sort of baggage of but it's going to mean going back to that way of existing it's going to mean sacrificing time with my family it's going to mean really long hours getting burnt out and it took quite a while didn't it for that to kind of shift and i think one of the really powerful things that we did at the beginning was kind of setting this vision do you remember of this balance that that you wanted to have like long before you knew any specifics about the kind of work that you were doing it was these sort of foundational pieces of like my family must be part of this it has to be balanced and and i remember this sort of there was like a peacefulness that you were looking for in work which clearly we can hear from your story wasn't wasn't there for you before yeah
Speaker #0
yeah it's actually we've got the when we first did our first session together in the wild we we had this image didn't we that well whose head it came from my head probably but you shared the image somehow of that sort of standing by the sea with a cup of tea in a warm jumper and and that and that was what I wanted in my life and how could work be part of that.
Speaker #1
That's right and it's so it's so interesting because I think most people actually live kind of their whole professional lives thinking what is work going to be and how do I fit in the life around that and what we did was kind of kind of turn that around to like I want that experience of that kind of yeah you know it's a it's a kind of metaphor but like being being by the sea being on the coast being cozy and and then like let's work from there and I think so many people miss that even when they have had a similar experience to you of you know taking a big leap out of what seemed to everyone else to be a really successful career and but the next question is always what what do I do next what is the work that I'm going to do and we miss that step of like how is work going to feel like and I think that is such an important starting point yeah Yeah.
Speaker #0
Yeah, it's the main work, I think. I don't know for other people, but certainly for me. It's reimagining what work can be and then thinking that it can be something different because I think the image at the sea was a kind of... cup and we have been talking about this about being cosy but what that means essentially but I think for me what it meant and this came out through our coaching was I I wanted something that was a craft and meaningful like I wanted something that I was doing like it was sort of like being sort of physical or but I wanted something I'd done a long lots of my career was spent doing things that really at the bottom when it really came down to it they weren't they won't be doing anything sometimes sometimes it was being busy for being busy it was like going to meet lots of meetings and and a lot of spreadsheets and a lot of it was just it was yeah there wasn't creative industry which is kind of ironic isn't it say that but I wanted something that was that I could build I think I think that was kind of what I was searching for like and I say it as a craft and then all of my kind of imagery that we that kind of came about was often about people that had a craft and it was like an artist or a carpenter or something that was this like I had this or creating but that's not my where my we're not actually where my love is either but not where my skill set is certainly so i kind of bit like well so the only people I could really see that were doing anything that really that kind of work that I was drawn to were people that were very much not in that corporate office environment so that was one thing that was very clear when I looked at where I was where those images were kind of coming from it was always people that were quite well I mean interesting solo but that isn't necessarily necessarily what i want but it was like people that are that i doing something that they really believe in. Like that kept, that was quite a strong feeling. And so it was trying to, but then it was like, well, that's not the work that I know. That's the people that are artists or carpenters, or I'm trying to think of other examples or have a, or have a farm or, or run retreats or, laser that, or yoga, yoga teacher, that was one that kept coming up, was there, yoga teacher. I'm not looking on to be a yoga teacher, but I think it was something that just wasn't from that world. world.
Speaker #1
Yeah, yeah and exactly and allowing yourself to think, I thought there was a couple of episodes ago, like to start thinking of yourself as an artist I think is a really big leap actually for a lot of people but it's something I really believe in because fundamentally what is an artist? Someone who is creating something and something like you say that they really believe in and something that will have some kind of impact. impact on others that will make some kind of lasting change.
Speaker #0
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker #1
And how did you talk us through how those kind of threads started coming together? So once you had the sort of once you were more connected with the feeling of how you wanted work to be and shifting your ideas about what work meant and from this kind of sort of corporate experience that you turned into this more craftsmanship kind of
Speaker #0
thinking how did this sort of thread start to come together into what you were going to do next well you know over time and with a lot of help from you I mean as it was as we both noticed it was these threads were there but it took a while it took there was a there was a kind of a couple of breakthrough moments weren't there but it took it took time and actually I think in the sense I wish that I listened a little bit more about having that time because I think it I wanted to get on and do stuff quite quickly didn't I and so And in the end... Yeah, having a bit more time, allowing myself a bit more time just to be like in that space would have probably been quite helpful. But in terms of your question, what things that, one, I think there's a couple of reasons that stood out for me. One was I had to be at my age. too old to do anything this was a big thing for me I was like I'm in my 40s mid 40s you know I'm just past it that was a really big thing and you really helped with that because you had this you made me think about other people I could look at that were doing really exciting things in their 50s and 60s and 70s and 80s so suddenly so this was a big thing I wanted this period of of like trying to work out what this next thing was has been it's been a very very difficult thing it's been very hard and I've had you to help me and I just honestly don't think I would have done because It's just been hard. It's hard to reinvent yourself. It is. It's much easier just to go back to doing what you were doing, isn't it?
Speaker #1
This is hard work. But I think the mindset shift that you're talking about there is, and the thing of slowing down, because I think a lot of people feel like, I can't afford to slow down. I don't have, I'm getting older and I can't, it needs to be done now, or I've already had a career break and like I need to solve this. I think a real shift that you had was, but if I'm trying to create something
Speaker #0
work that I can do into my 70s yeah okay if this takes a year that's nothing if this serves me for the next 30 years yeah that was the shift that was the and we had this conversation to me and I think you've actually said it on the podcast before but it again things take in my mind we had to come know exactly where we were we had a conversation we talked about your auntie I think and my nan your nan yeah and her nail hit her ankle yes i can't remember what podcast i think it's in the one where i talk about age and regenerative work but yeah
Speaker #1
But yeah, my nan had kind of like shattered her ankle in, I think even in her late 40s and just never really sorted it out and never took the time to get proper physio or get the surgery that she needed. And it's, she's now in her late 80s and it's like affected her whole life. And I often think like, like if she could have her time back, would she not have wanted to invest? Like I'm sure at the time she was just busy or it just felt like, oh, it's going to take too long, like working with a physio or whatever it might be. but I'm sure if she could have had her time back, she would, yeah, would have invested that time because actually what she would be giving herself was like so much more mobility for decades to come of her life. Yeah.
Speaker #0
So that was, that's what the shift was. And I remember it clearly. It was a bit like, so what I've been thinking, well, I need to decide what I need to do. I need to go on and do it because the time's running out, time's running out, time's running out. and then the shift came and it was like oh but I want to do this for the next 20 20, 30 years. So now actually, it's about doing something that's going to last. Change happens, things happen, maybe I won't want to. But in terms of this real, like, more intentional change of direction, you can't do that many times in your life because of the energy it takes you to change direction. And so maybe there'll be some more and more organic shifts, but I definitely thought, right, I want something, I want to now, I was like, we looked forward, didn't we, to what I would be like at, say, six, seven. and how I would look back and what I wanted my work to be and how so that was a that was a big shift yeah that was one of the threads that shifted so I had that that I knew I had I knew I wanted to craft and I'm talking about in the widest sense of the word craft I knew that I wanted something that would fit with family life I knew I didn't have the energy to work those hours anymore. So there were these little threads that were coming through.
Speaker #1
quite strongly and then there was a fourth one like I'm curious I'm sure people will be curious because you know we've talked a lot about how the mindset shift and we haven't even got into like more of the kind of personal dimensions that you can keep for yourself but there was a lot of inner work as well that you had to do on kind of self-confidence self-worth all of this kind of thing and like anyone who's making these kind of shifts like all of that stuff is going to come up And it takes, that takes time, it takes work. but I think yeah it's also really inspiring people to hear like the practical side because I think what you've done with what you're you're now putting out into the world is you've you've taken all the experience that you had for your corporate life like it's not like that was wasted or that was thrown away you've you've used that as a sort of foundation you've used everything that you learned in your masters that's that's all all in there and then you've kind of that you've combined that with where you are in your life now with what you're really really passionate about and like you say with like something that can be a craft for you going on and i think like that's what so many people are longing to do and yeah so maybe you can just talk why don't you tell us about what you're doing now and maybe take it yeah we can see how those threads came together yeah yeah we should talk about the purpose for for the income part because that actually was a big change as well.
Speaker #0
So what I'm doing now, so... I'm building a business as a story facilitator in the climate and community space and at the core of my offer is something that I've called story labs which are essentially like participatory workshops or experiences that bring teams or multiple teams or communities together to share stories or experiences or perspectives. and then to kind of look at what the common threads are within those stories and create collective narratives from them that can be used to shape communications or place-based initiatives or research. So essentially it's bringing ultimately what the aim is is to bring kind of slightly different voices into conversations into stories to start shifting narratives So that's like a bigger ambition. But there is some quite practical kind of outputs from that as well. And it's quite, in a way, you know, Storyloves is quite, in a sense, it's quite a simple offer. But it combines both the brand communications world that I was in for so long with social sciences. So how you kind of create more inclusive spaces and elevate voices that aren't often heard. and there isn't quite practical reason for wanting to do that in the sense that stories that tend to be shaped by people tend to then also resonate with people so there's this kind of quite practical thing that's exactly it and it's such like it's such exciting work and it's
Speaker #1
also interesting like exactly they say like it goes back to the foundations that you have in your career and it's like probably on paper doesn't seem like a dramatically different thing and i think often people sort of feel like When they feel called to meaningful regenerative work, that it's going to be this completely new start, that they're going to have to go and completely re-skill in a different area and they'll often there's this sort of feeling of like I'll just be nowhere because I'm like whatever age like you're in my mid-40s and then I'm starting a totally new career and I don't think that's actually necessary for most of us because I think so many people are bringing with them a wealth of experience and connections and education and all of this kind of stuff but the real shift is like how you're expressing that like who you're doing that work for the way that you say your relationship with that work it's a totally different thing like you doing that kind of work for yeah huge huge brands that like in many cases sustainability is a kind of sticking plaster or an excuse for business as usual and doing that within like a big corporate system that then filters down to you being required to sort of give it so many hours of your life to you doing an expression of that work that feels like a craft that allows for like genuine balance and integration with your family and where you get to choose who you do that work for and really feel like the contribution that that work can make yeah exactly that
Speaker #0
Yeah, I suppose it's about doing something on my own terms for things that I believe in and using many of the tools in a sense that I, because I think creative communications and advertising and branding, all those things I was kind of connected to, they've got some really great, there is great stuff that comes out of there. They own like a lot of, a lot of my friends work in that sector still but most of my friends and i think that they have the the like this look that i'm thinking of the web like almost like the lion's share on creativity from like the brightest minds in terms of creative output and the way but i just stopped believing in what it was being used for i didn't necessarily stop believing in the tools i've never been in performance marketing for example where i didn't i wasn't on that size i was always on the side of like story and and that creation bit which i loved i mean i love writing i love and the other thing we've always talked about so I don't being with people so I knew I didn't want to do something that was That was purely online, I did know that, that was another quite big thing for me, I wanted to be with people. And so it was trying to look at those different bits. And I did my research in a community where I got to hear people's stories. I'd been working in an academic setting, again, where I got to hear people's stories and interpret those. with quite a lot of rigor like not just in terrapist than i mean off the hammer but actually really been thinking what is going on here what is the meaning behind them what people saying what what's the collective story what can we learn from this this is really interesting because it's not we're not we're not hearing from the same people that we normally hear from because that's the other thing in a brand and advertising setting we obviously do the research undoubtedly but ultimately really everything going down to the amazing minds of strategists at the end of the day to interpret that and then you go into meeting they'd be like ta-da here you are this is what you've done but and that's works but it's not really hearing from anything new I don't think because tends to be quite similar people that you're interviewing and they tend to be quite similar people that are dissecting those interviews and so I think this is so there was some there was lots of elements that that fed into this particular yeah and I love what you say about like not
Speaker #1
necessarily maybe falling out of love with who the work was done for and a lot the way that it was done but that the foundations of it like were still things that you wanted to hold onto and you absolutely have in terms of where you've now taken your work. I think that's, yeah, I think that's really comforting as well for people to hear that there's, and that's why, that's why I do what I do because I think there are so many incredibly talented people who are just capable of making stuff happen, like you, you know, who can do extraordinarily things and I think, I just feel, and I think many of them feel, that they're doing it for the wrong purposes and for the wrong people. and how incredibly exciting it is to think when we can harness all of that towards building a better future for everyone yeah i think that's it yeah taking those bits and taking the good bits out and okay so i have a few final questions let's let's do a quick fire round yeah to finish up what was the hardest moment of coaching together the bit before the breakthrough was that i just wasn't it So I had this,
Speaker #0
it was... I think I'd got to a place and I was thinking I'm quite happy with that and something wasn't quite right, something wasn't quite right and then I was like right I'm gonna go and work in a bookshop. I'm trying to get into a bookshop and didn't have any availability. I need to work in a bookshop. This is just the only way to do this work is to do something that literally I can just go and do and I don't think about again. I remember and then we had the crying on the beach day and I was like I just broke out. cannot do this anymore like what is wrong with my mind and then sat on the beach and was suddenly just like oh okay maybe this is what I want to do I've been making everything just really hard for a long long time so I think the hardest part with that was the it's just it's not linear is it nothing's linear so you kind of have these break moments when you think but I think you always know yeah what didn't i suddenly i knew like and again it was
Speaker #1
there was not there wasn't like a little it feels so silly at the end because at the end I'm probably quite where I was when I started but it was and yeah I think it was from from my perspective it was like the point where you were very tempted to quit on yourself yeah you know and and I don't mean that like there's nothing wrong with working in a bookshop I often have fantasies about how lovely it would be to work in a bookshop but I also don't think that is your path and I yeah And I think it's very often, it's so interesting at those moments when we're kind of almost ready to walk away is actually when we're so close. Like you say, it was right before you sort of had a breakthrough and I remember like very quickly all the ideas kind of came together after that point.
Speaker #0
Yeah.
Speaker #1
What was your favourite part of coaching together?
Speaker #0
What's my favourite part of the coaching? Well, I mean, personally, we also get, we got to spend time together that's actually really lovely lovely. I think the thing though that I would never have got without coaching, which I couldn't have done by myself, was someone that believed in me. That was like the best thing because I suddenly had someone that didn't see me as that internal dialogue going in, your head going, I'll never do this, you know, you're too old, who do you think you are? And that and each week there was someone that didn't see that person. They saw someone entirely different and that was... there was no... I don't... I honestly don't think that I would have... I wouldn't have believed I could do something by myself I don't think. So I think that was the the best bit having... and some weeks you were tough though for me. You know, it's tough, tough, tough love.
Speaker #1
Unless I can be quite. I think. Yeah. But what you just said about belief, I feel like that is the most important job that I have as a coach is that my belief in. my clients and what they're going to build is like so far ahead of where they are and then what's so gorgeous for me is the moment when it catches up and I can distinctly remember those moments when I was like oh like Claire's belief has caught up with mine and like we're both in that shared belief of this now because it's real and it's happening and and it comes it does take time and I you know I think it's something really important for anyone who might be listening thinking about making this kind of shift like it it does take time and I know you were just sharing with me before we started recording you're now in that you know the very early stages of launching a business but I think it's really it's really great to hear that you I feel like you've you've slowed your pace down and you're now approaching this with the mindset that you're building something to last and I think that to me is like what successful regenerative entrepreneurship looks like.
Speaker #0
And also, you talked about before, and I'm sorry to be a quick fire, but I think it's really important to say about the difference between me now and the difference between when we first met and now is huge. And, you know, I'm still in the very early stages. So in some ways, not like huge amounts have changed. But one thing that has changed, which is the biggest thing, is that I'm committed to something. That was the hardest thing, wasn't it? getting you know starting an idea coming out of it this one and actually you probably need to do that because you need to find the thing that feels right but there's such a different energy and suddenly having something to do to actually really okay right this is what I'm doing and now I need to do this I need to do this and it's hard you know you have to get rejection you know you're not it's not it's not gonna I'm not gonna suddenly be you know earning a 100,000 this year, it's still building up but suddenly it's
Speaker #1
feels more doable because I'm on the path that's the huge change that happened like actually having come in to commit to every day yeah and actually you mentioned to me this is a good case for us to think about the purposeful income path which is interesting because I created that like sort of towards the end of us coaching together and in some ways I sort of thought that I shared it with you before I shared it with anyone else that I don't know you might have been past that stage but you found it really helpful.
Speaker #0
to go through that framework yeah it was two things I think that really did help and they were quite late in because obviously with me we had a lot of the mindset work I don't know if that's necessarily the case for everyone but for me it was like that was a big thing but then on like the practical fronts mini business that one term you said to me one day really shifted it because I was like okay you can help build a business within the within yeah I'm not 20 so I'm I'm not gonna be like can't do it every second of the day I've got three children so I have to do it in these hours so it's a mini business it's not the only thing in my life it is one element of my life and that really has changed things like I stop at you know half past two and I pick my kids up and I don't start again until the morning and I look forward to start again in the morning so I'm like oh exciting I get to start again in the morning and the purpose for income path because it's good to have a goal and it's good to have you know it's like a little goal isn't it so I've I've got this goal I want to earn so much money. and by net end of next march to pay for us gone holiday so it's a it's a really tangible goal it's not it's not ludicrous and it's still relatively ambitious and it means that i'm quite focused on story labs so i'm not focused on like whereas before i was a bit like i would do bits of freelance work and i'd be like a bit of i'll do anything almost now i'm like oh no i just do this now yeah and it and it reinforces that commitment which is i think yeah
Speaker #1
a theme that has kind of been running through our whole conversation isn't it like making that commitment to yourself making your commitment to this journey to you know to building something that's going to serve you for however long into the future and then also committing to your idea and i think that's where like yeah the purposeful income path can be really helpful because it is so tempting to move to the next idea or to be influenced by what other people have to say about your idea or think oh so many people that i work with are like well but maybe i just need to go back and have a job or here's a contract maybe i should just do that contract and like there'll be times when that's the right choice but i think the heart of that it has to be that you really are committing to this thing that you build and you take that one step at a time so yeah Yeah, it's really lovely to hear. that that was helpful to you as well as the concept of yeah creating powerful mini business which is also how I think about my business being in a very kind of similar stage of life to you it's totally different when I was 25 and had a wild idea to set up a business and just gave it gave it everything for 13 years I'm not in that place anymore but I think we can still create really powerful mini businesses that bring us life and bring life to all those around us Yes. Oh thank you Claire, this has been such a lovely conversation. It was such a joy to work with you over those months as well out in the woods by the beach.
Speaker #0
I know! I miss it. But it's good to, like I said at the end, it's good to kind of take flight and not be there. I felt ready at the end, it was like, yes, this is, you know, I don't need Listerine anymore.
Speaker #1
Well and that is what I know my work has done. Yes. Thank you. If this episode of From Corporate to Calling was helpful or inspiring, follow the show so you don't miss an episode. And if you know someone who's questioning their career, send them this podcast. Lifelines are meant to be shared. Remember, you don't have to tolerate burnout or misalignment. You can redirect your skills into meaningful work that brings back life to you and to the world around you.

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

Does your career look good on paper but feel wrong in your bones?

Each week, I’ll share stories, provocations, and practical guidance to help you:

Recognise the signs of burnout and know when it’s time to quit
Redesign your relationship with work
Find your purpose and create meaningful work
Build a career or business that brings life back

If your career looks good but feels wrong — this is your invitation to step out of corporate, and into your calling.

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

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

Does your career look good on paper but feel wrong in your bones?

Each week, I’ll share stories, provocations, and practical guidance to help you:

Recognise the signs of burnout and know when it’s time to quit
Redesign your relationship with work
Find your purpose and create meaningful work
Build a career or business that brings life back

If your career looks good but feels wrong — this is your invitation to step out of corporate, and into your calling.

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

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Listen for:

How corporate conditioning leads us to over-work—and why we double down on it ourselves.
Why burnout doesn’t end when you quit, and how to move despite the fear of repeating old patterns.
The mindset shifts that unlocked momentum: slowing down, committing, and building something to last.

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Transcription

Speaker #0
I remember one Christmas Eve, this is how ridiculous things get, that rather than being with my husband and my not even two year old son, I was trying to finish off work on Christmas Eve because that to me felt so important that I got this particular project sort of wrapped up before Christmas. At that time, that felt... completely normal. Like that wasn't, I can't say that my boss was necessarily standing over me and telling me to do that, but there was me, I was also doing that. I was there thinking, honestly at some level thinking that the more important thing in my life was to finish that project than it was to spend time with my family.
Speaker #1
If your career looks great on paper but feels wrong in your bones, you're not alone. Welcome to From Corporate to Calling, your lifeline into meaningful work. I'm Alyssa Murphy, a regenerative business mentor and former startup CEO who walked away from corporate systems to create work that brings life. Each week I share stories, reflections and provocations to help you recognize the signs of burnout and make a career change with purpose. If work looks good but feels wrong, this is your invitation to get out of corporate and into your calling. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm your host, Alyssa Murphy, and this is from Corporate Into Calling. This week, I'm excited to share with you the first in my Finding Purpose series. This is going to be a series of conversations where I'm speaking to clients and other amazing people who have taken that leap out of the corporate world of work, done the inner work, done the outer work and created their own meaningful careers and businesses. Today you're going to be hearing from my client Claire who worked with me inside of the Meaningful Business Incubator. Claire is going to tell you her story right back from the days when she worked in creative agencies in London working incredibly long hours, really all-consuming commitment to her work in corporate sustainability, what finally made things click for her and made her decide to step out of that world, and how after a long pause raising her babies, she found the courage to pursue her passions and the learning that she'd done in her master's and create a really exciting and unique regenerative offering that aligned with her values and allowed her to create a work life that put family first. If Claire's journey resonates with you and you are ready to take that leap all the way out of corporate, if you are ready to reimagine your relationship with work and if you want to build a meaningful business that brings life to you and to those around you, come and have a chat with me about the Meaningful Business Incubator. It's a six month intensive coaching program where we will design, test and launch your regenerative business or offering. Just send me an email, Alyssa, A-L-I-S-A at lifesizemedia.com or use the link in the show notes to book a call with me and we'll talk about what the Meaningful Business Incubator can unlock for you. Now, without further ado, it's over to Claire. Hi Claire, welcome to the podcast. It's very exciting because you are the first guest I've had on the podcast that's actually been here in the office with me. We are in the same room, we can actually touch each other. And so Claire is the only client I've ever had who is actually here in the same space as me. We live in the same town and we've had the joy of being able to do all of our coaching work. together in person, often out in the wild. We'll come on to that. But Claire has agreed to come to talk with us today and Claire what I would love to share with people is kind of your story in terms of how your work life has changed. So perhaps going right back to what your kind of conventional work life looked like, why you chose to step out of that where you were when we started working together and then we can take it up to where you are now which spoiler alert involves launching a really exciting regenerative offering so does that sound okay yeah all right so take us take us right back to the beginning in terms of where you were at this sort of peak of what would be considered your successful career so the peak of my career i was
Speaker #0
Well from the age of 24, actually even prior to that really, until I left, I worked for creative agencies in London, so predominantly on brand strategy and corporate communications. And when I left I was client partner, I think was the term. I was working on Multiple projects. I had clients in Germany, so I was regularly flying over there. And I had young children, actually young child, sorry, and I was working very long hours. Dylan was two and I would, we'd drop off at nursery. My husband would do the drop off at eight o'clock in the morning, then I would have to get to him, to my son, on the other side of London by six. And some nights that was a challenge, the tubes weren't working or something. I remember one day... Ringing my husband and saying I'm on trying to get on the train there's no tubes and I can't I think I've been a meeting and he He said well I can't get there And I got to the nursery and Dylan was in his coat and they'd actually switched the lights off so he had like a little coat on and they were just sat there And it was you know those kind of things are actually really difficult in the end And I think for a long time I'd also been feeling like when I did that job in my 20s I loved it. I thought I worked with really a lot of autonomy. I worked with designers and strategists and we would create our own projects essentially with lots of different clients and my clients were like the who's who we had actually BP was one of them at one point but we there's L'Oreal and we'd go to Paris and it felt like quite an exciting time but I think there was something sort of starting to make me feel uneasy about not perhaps just the work that we were doing which was a lot of it was around sustainability communications in one particular agency so there was something kind of maybe something to maybe make me question what we were doing but more than that i think it was the lifestyle it was the it was long hours i mean it was just long hours like agencies are quick and that's fun to a certain degree but then at a certain point the fun stops and so I, but I don't think I would have stopped so I, so though there was little bits of me that was thinking maybe this isn't quite right for me, there was a money thing as well because I earned, I earned as much as my husband earned so we, you know, I had to keep working. But then I got, I got pregnant with twins and that really did change everything and I was very sick during my pregnancy but I didn't take a single day off work and I kept working until I was taken to hospital and they basically said you have got nothing left in your body you need to we need to stop now basically I don't think you've ever just listeners may know
Speaker #1
I also had twins my twins are two years younger than yours I think and I was also really sick through my pregnancy I found extremely physically hard and I cannot imagine how you went to work every day because I mean at the time I was running a company but I had sort of more flexibility I suppose but I would lie in bed until I had to like literally drag myself out for like super critical meetings and then go back I mean it's just it's quite astonishing what we ask for ourselves and what work it like that kind of conventional work asks of us as well.
Speaker #0
I used to, and this is a bit graphic, but I'd get a bus down the Auckland road and on the way home there was a I knew where the bus, the bin, the bins were because I would get off the bus to be sick because I was so, I was sick. I think between pregnancies, just to say, oh, they do make you more sick. And they do actually bring that with them. Yeah.
Speaker #1
And it really strikes me that story that you shared as well about like picking up little Dylan, like them sort of waiting with the lights off, that there's, there's a real lack of kind of humanity in that model that requires long hours. sort of unwavering contribution that for me like part of thinking of regenerative work is like Just making space for the human stuff that happens to us, that like we need to go and get our kid or somebody gets sick or our parents are aging or we're growing two humans inside of us, like that there's just so little space in kind of conventional work for just... being a human and all the things that happen to us in life.
Speaker #0
Yeah, but also in our own heads I think that's the other thing. There was a need for me to work. I was living in London, I had to pay a mortgage to pay. I didn't really have... and that's my job, that was my job and so it sort of had to. But there is another, I think, the latter jobs I had I actually caught a relatively understanding boss, he had a family, but I think there was something within me as well that had come from that world or within me, who knows what happens. But I remember one Christmas Eve, this is how ridiculous things get that rather than being with my husband and my not even two year old son I was trying to finish off work on Christmas Eve because that to me felt so important that I got this particular project sort of wrapped up before Christmas. At that time, that felt completely normal. Like that wasn't, I can't say that my boss was necessarily standing over me and telling me to do that. And what would I, maybe if I'd have not done it, the consequences, I don't know what would have been. But there was me, I was also doing that. I was there. thinking honestly at some level thinking that the more important thing in my life was to finish that project than it was to spend time with my family where do you think that compulsion came from I think I don't I mean it's really hard to say what's the chicken and the egg isn't it where does it come from it's a kind of well I mean I worked I think you've talked about it as well and and so you had your own business. It's a slightly different results as well. But I worked with somebody. else I worked so hard for so many years I literally did nothing but work I just worked I had a getting early in the mornings I'd work long hours I mean rarely in my twenties I think before nine the weekends were very quite hedonistic it was it was just this constant like cycle and I'm having one job within an agency where I finished at five and I got to the train station at five o'clock one day or again I these things are really popping in my head because I can remember being... clearly London Bridge and like seeing all the pictures and I thought what am I gonna do it's five o'clock so what do people do with it I had literally I don't have hobbies but I don't have anything other and then I always knew I wanted a family but then I had Dylan and then I was like and actually I left my job and I didn't have a job and I won't at that point I was thinking about do you want to do something different but again money i felt like they were reason I needed to keep going but yeah I I was like he got went back to nursery at 10 months and at that point went back for three days and I was like there's no way I can do this work in three days I need to do four days obviously maybe that's it and then I used to work on a Sunday to catch up from the Friday that I had off my
Speaker #1
I mean I obviously yeah we have very different experiences because I as an entrepreneur so I worked for myself but I do I recognize that compulsion to work and that feeling of like what will I possibly do if it's not there. I remember when I got married and I was pregnant at the time and I took ten days off to go to New York to get married and sort of have a honeymoon at the same time and it was the first time in what I'm trying to work out the dates now like close close to ten years that I had switched off from work like in that period of time. So I really recognise that. but I find it very interesting to think about where it comes from. And for me, my sort of working hypothesis is that it's, you say about the chicken and egg, I think it's that the system asks so much of us. So the expectation on you was that you work long hours, that the project gets done no matter what, that you don't let something like getting pregnant or being sick or having a young child in any way get in the way of your ability to perform. And that's a real demand. And because that is asked for us, we sort of respond. by almost doubling down on that because it is unnatural to kind of make that bargain where we like and to say yes I can give you that much and so we kind of give it all of us because it's like the only way we can actually kind of make sense of how much is being asked of us is that we're like we invest our self-worth and our kind of meaning and our value into that exchange for work and then it becomes really quite frightening to think well who am I outside of this? So take us to that point for you because that did happen for you where it reached the point where like you said that the fun, well it sounded like the fun had stopped for a while but it was it reached the point where you needed to change
Speaker #0
things. Yeah I mean it was my hand was slightly forced but I so I wrote I woke up one night in the middle of the night and wrote this letter and I said that I will never work like this again to my unborn children and then I and then everything changed so we so when the twins were like five months old we left London and we moved to Villanhoe which is where we are now and that meant financially things changed because suddenly we weren't paying those kind of everything just it meant that I didn't have to I didn't have to work to pay the mortgage that's essentially what it meant where prior to I had to work post-mortgage. This meant I didn't. And also just having that you know having three young children under three under two at one point because they were in two and the girls were born so everything just switched for me like it was suddenly like oh but i wanted it to switch like there was if i'd have really been invested in that job as a career perhaps maybe i would have maybe i wouldn't but either way that everything sort of changed that point. And for two years I'd say that I was just so immersed in children that I didn't particularly have time to think. Although there was always this nagging sense of, I need to get back to work. So there was this kind of dual thing, there was a little bit in the back of my head that was going, well this is fine for now, it's fine for now, but obviously it's not fine forever, for multiple reasons. And then I did one of the girls with... two or three I started a master's and that coincided with lockdown I'm trying to get all my dates mixed up but yeah lockdown obviously happened as well I did my master's in sustainability and behavior change which I loved but again I really threw myself into that too so there was another part of me that was still really not yeah really wanting to to do something and then at that that same point a lot of people sort of saying what are you doing? As if it was never perhaps enough just to be a mother, like that's quite hard thing to say but I think and then I've been from Masters that's when I think we kind of met and I think I just felt very we as you know very very lost I couldn't conceive of work I knew I wanted to go back to work and not what why I can't maybe the why is an interesting one but as I knew I wanted to do that but I couldn't conceive of work as being anything other than what it had been. So for me, work is associated with everything. Like it was like long hours, it was my whole identity, it was it was just what I did and I couldn't see how that would ever be compatible with children.
Speaker #1
Yeah and I remember that was a really big part of our work at the beginning, our work together, was that you that kind of overshadowed everything for you because it was like you thought of anything that you might want to try or explore or even research came with this sort of baggage of but it's going to mean going back to that way of existing it's going to mean sacrificing time with my family it's going to mean really long hours getting burnt out and it took quite a while didn't it for that to kind of shift and i think one of the really powerful things that we did at the beginning was kind of setting this vision do you remember of this balance that that you wanted to have like long before you knew any specifics about the kind of work that you were doing it was these sort of foundational pieces of like my family must be part of this it has to be balanced and and i remember this sort of there was like a peacefulness that you were looking for in work which clearly we can hear from your story wasn't wasn't there for you before yeah
Speaker #0
yeah it's actually we've got the when we first did our first session together in the wild we we had this image didn't we that well whose head it came from my head probably but you shared the image somehow of that sort of standing by the sea with a cup of tea in a warm jumper and and that and that was what I wanted in my life and how could work be part of that.
Speaker #1
That's right and it's so it's so interesting because I think most people actually live kind of their whole professional lives thinking what is work going to be and how do I fit in the life around that and what we did was kind of kind of turn that around to like I want that experience of that kind of yeah you know it's a it's a kind of metaphor but like being being by the sea being on the coast being cozy and and then like let's work from there and I think so many people miss that even when they have had a similar experience to you of you know taking a big leap out of what seemed to everyone else to be a really successful career and but the next question is always what what do I do next what is the work that I'm going to do and we miss that step of like how is work going to feel like and I think that is such an important starting point yeah Yeah.
Speaker #0
Yeah, it's the main work, I think. I don't know for other people, but certainly for me. It's reimagining what work can be and then thinking that it can be something different because I think the image at the sea was a kind of... cup and we have been talking about this about being cosy but what that means essentially but I think for me what it meant and this came out through our coaching was I I wanted something that was a craft and meaningful like I wanted something that I was doing like it was sort of like being sort of physical or but I wanted something I'd done a long lots of my career was spent doing things that really at the bottom when it really came down to it they weren't they won't be doing anything sometimes sometimes it was being busy for being busy it was like going to meet lots of meetings and and a lot of spreadsheets and a lot of it was just it was yeah there wasn't creative industry which is kind of ironic isn't it say that but I wanted something that was that I could build I think I think that was kind of what I was searching for like and I say it as a craft and then all of my kind of imagery that we that kind of came about was often about people that had a craft and it was like an artist or a carpenter or something that was this like I had this or creating but that's not my where my we're not actually where my love is either but not where my skill set is certainly so i kind of bit like well so the only people I could really see that were doing anything that really that kind of work that I was drawn to were people that were very much not in that corporate office environment so that was one thing that was very clear when I looked at where I was where those images were kind of coming from it was always people that were quite well I mean interesting solo but that isn't necessarily necessarily what i want but it was like people that are that i doing something that they really believe in. Like that kept, that was quite a strong feeling. And so it was trying to, but then it was like, well, that's not the work that I know. That's the people that are artists or carpenters, or I'm trying to think of other examples or have a, or have a farm or, or run retreats or, laser that, or yoga, yoga teacher, that was one that kept coming up, was there, yoga teacher. I'm not looking on to be a yoga teacher, but I think it was something that just wasn't from that world. world.
Speaker #1
Yeah, yeah and exactly and allowing yourself to think, I thought there was a couple of episodes ago, like to start thinking of yourself as an artist I think is a really big leap actually for a lot of people but it's something I really believe in because fundamentally what is an artist? Someone who is creating something and something like you say that they really believe in and something that will have some kind of impact. impact on others that will make some kind of lasting change.
Speaker #0
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker #1
And how did you talk us through how those kind of threads started coming together? So once you had the sort of once you were more connected with the feeling of how you wanted work to be and shifting your ideas about what work meant and from this kind of sort of corporate experience that you turned into this more craftsmanship kind of
Speaker #0
thinking how did this sort of thread start to come together into what you were going to do next well you know over time and with a lot of help from you I mean as it was as we both noticed it was these threads were there but it took a while it took there was a there was a kind of a couple of breakthrough moments weren't there but it took it took time and actually I think in the sense I wish that I listened a little bit more about having that time because I think it I wanted to get on and do stuff quite quickly didn't I and so And in the end... Yeah, having a bit more time, allowing myself a bit more time just to be like in that space would have probably been quite helpful. But in terms of your question, what things that, one, I think there's a couple of reasons that stood out for me. One was I had to be at my age. too old to do anything this was a big thing for me I was like I'm in my 40s mid 40s you know I'm just past it that was a really big thing and you really helped with that because you had this you made me think about other people I could look at that were doing really exciting things in their 50s and 60s and 70s and 80s so suddenly so this was a big thing I wanted this period of of like trying to work out what this next thing was has been it's been a very very difficult thing it's been very hard and I've had you to help me and I just honestly don't think I would have done because It's just been hard. It's hard to reinvent yourself. It is. It's much easier just to go back to doing what you were doing, isn't it?
Speaker #1
This is hard work. But I think the mindset shift that you're talking about there is, and the thing of slowing down, because I think a lot of people feel like, I can't afford to slow down. I don't have, I'm getting older and I can't, it needs to be done now, or I've already had a career break and like I need to solve this. I think a real shift that you had was, but if I'm trying to create something
Speaker #0
work that I can do into my 70s yeah okay if this takes a year that's nothing if this serves me for the next 30 years yeah that was the shift that was the and we had this conversation to me and I think you've actually said it on the podcast before but it again things take in my mind we had to come know exactly where we were we had a conversation we talked about your auntie I think and my nan your nan yeah and her nail hit her ankle yes i can't remember what podcast i think it's in the one where i talk about age and regenerative work but yeah
Speaker #1
But yeah, my nan had kind of like shattered her ankle in, I think even in her late 40s and just never really sorted it out and never took the time to get proper physio or get the surgery that she needed. And it's, she's now in her late 80s and it's like affected her whole life. And I often think like, like if she could have her time back, would she not have wanted to invest? Like I'm sure at the time she was just busy or it just felt like, oh, it's going to take too long, like working with a physio or whatever it might be. but I'm sure if she could have had her time back, she would, yeah, would have invested that time because actually what she would be giving herself was like so much more mobility for decades to come of her life. Yeah.
Speaker #0
So that was, that's what the shift was. And I remember it clearly. It was a bit like, so what I've been thinking, well, I need to decide what I need to do. I need to go on and do it because the time's running out, time's running out, time's running out. and then the shift came and it was like oh but I want to do this for the next 20 20, 30 years. So now actually, it's about doing something that's going to last. Change happens, things happen, maybe I won't want to. But in terms of this real, like, more intentional change of direction, you can't do that many times in your life because of the energy it takes you to change direction. And so maybe there'll be some more and more organic shifts, but I definitely thought, right, I want something, I want to now, I was like, we looked forward, didn't we, to what I would be like at, say, six, seven. and how I would look back and what I wanted my work to be and how so that was a that was a big shift yeah that was one of the threads that shifted so I had that that I knew I had I knew I wanted to craft and I'm talking about in the widest sense of the word craft I knew that I wanted something that would fit with family life I knew I didn't have the energy to work those hours anymore. So there were these little threads that were coming through.
Speaker #1
quite strongly and then there was a fourth one like I'm curious I'm sure people will be curious because you know we've talked a lot about how the mindset shift and we haven't even got into like more of the kind of personal dimensions that you can keep for yourself but there was a lot of inner work as well that you had to do on kind of self-confidence self-worth all of this kind of thing and like anyone who's making these kind of shifts like all of that stuff is going to come up And it takes, that takes time, it takes work. but I think yeah it's also really inspiring people to hear like the practical side because I think what you've done with what you're you're now putting out into the world is you've you've taken all the experience that you had for your corporate life like it's not like that was wasted or that was thrown away you've you've used that as a sort of foundation you've used everything that you learned in your masters that's that's all all in there and then you've kind of that you've combined that with where you are in your life now with what you're really really passionate about and like you say with like something that can be a craft for you going on and i think like that's what so many people are longing to do and yeah so maybe you can just talk why don't you tell us about what you're doing now and maybe take it yeah we can see how those threads came together yeah yeah we should talk about the purpose for for the income part because that actually was a big change as well.
Speaker #0
So what I'm doing now, so... I'm building a business as a story facilitator in the climate and community space and at the core of my offer is something that I've called story labs which are essentially like participatory workshops or experiences that bring teams or multiple teams or communities together to share stories or experiences or perspectives. and then to kind of look at what the common threads are within those stories and create collective narratives from them that can be used to shape communications or place-based initiatives or research. So essentially it's bringing ultimately what the aim is is to bring kind of slightly different voices into conversations into stories to start shifting narratives So that's like a bigger ambition. But there is some quite practical kind of outputs from that as well. And it's quite, in a way, you know, Storyloves is quite, in a sense, it's quite a simple offer. But it combines both the brand communications world that I was in for so long with social sciences. So how you kind of create more inclusive spaces and elevate voices that aren't often heard. and there isn't quite practical reason for wanting to do that in the sense that stories that tend to be shaped by people tend to then also resonate with people so there's this kind of quite practical thing that's exactly it and it's such like it's such exciting work and it's
Speaker #1
also interesting like exactly they say like it goes back to the foundations that you have in your career and it's like probably on paper doesn't seem like a dramatically different thing and i think often people sort of feel like When they feel called to meaningful regenerative work, that it's going to be this completely new start, that they're going to have to go and completely re-skill in a different area and they'll often there's this sort of feeling of like I'll just be nowhere because I'm like whatever age like you're in my mid-40s and then I'm starting a totally new career and I don't think that's actually necessary for most of us because I think so many people are bringing with them a wealth of experience and connections and education and all of this kind of stuff but the real shift is like how you're expressing that like who you're doing that work for the way that you say your relationship with that work it's a totally different thing like you doing that kind of work for yeah huge huge brands that like in many cases sustainability is a kind of sticking plaster or an excuse for business as usual and doing that within like a big corporate system that then filters down to you being required to sort of give it so many hours of your life to you doing an expression of that work that feels like a craft that allows for like genuine balance and integration with your family and where you get to choose who you do that work for and really feel like the contribution that that work can make yeah exactly that
Speaker #0
Yeah, I suppose it's about doing something on my own terms for things that I believe in and using many of the tools in a sense that I, because I think creative communications and advertising and branding, all those things I was kind of connected to, they've got some really great, there is great stuff that comes out of there. They own like a lot of, a lot of my friends work in that sector still but most of my friends and i think that they have the the like this look that i'm thinking of the web like almost like the lion's share on creativity from like the brightest minds in terms of creative output and the way but i just stopped believing in what it was being used for i didn't necessarily stop believing in the tools i've never been in performance marketing for example where i didn't i wasn't on that size i was always on the side of like story and and that creation bit which i loved i mean i love writing i love and the other thing we've always talked about so I don't being with people so I knew I didn't want to do something that was That was purely online, I did know that, that was another quite big thing for me, I wanted to be with people. And so it was trying to look at those different bits. And I did my research in a community where I got to hear people's stories. I'd been working in an academic setting, again, where I got to hear people's stories and interpret those. with quite a lot of rigor like not just in terrapist than i mean off the hammer but actually really been thinking what is going on here what is the meaning behind them what people saying what what's the collective story what can we learn from this this is really interesting because it's not we're not we're not hearing from the same people that we normally hear from because that's the other thing in a brand and advertising setting we obviously do the research undoubtedly but ultimately really everything going down to the amazing minds of strategists at the end of the day to interpret that and then you go into meeting they'd be like ta-da here you are this is what you've done but and that's works but it's not really hearing from anything new I don't think because tends to be quite similar people that you're interviewing and they tend to be quite similar people that are dissecting those interviews and so I think this is so there was some there was lots of elements that that fed into this particular yeah and I love what you say about like not
Speaker #1
necessarily maybe falling out of love with who the work was done for and a lot the way that it was done but that the foundations of it like were still things that you wanted to hold onto and you absolutely have in terms of where you've now taken your work. I think that's, yeah, I think that's really comforting as well for people to hear that there's, and that's why, that's why I do what I do because I think there are so many incredibly talented people who are just capable of making stuff happen, like you, you know, who can do extraordinarily things and I think, I just feel, and I think many of them feel, that they're doing it for the wrong purposes and for the wrong people. and how incredibly exciting it is to think when we can harness all of that towards building a better future for everyone yeah i think that's it yeah taking those bits and taking the good bits out and okay so i have a few final questions let's let's do a quick fire round yeah to finish up what was the hardest moment of coaching together the bit before the breakthrough was that i just wasn't it So I had this,
Speaker #0
it was... I think I'd got to a place and I was thinking I'm quite happy with that and something wasn't quite right, something wasn't quite right and then I was like right I'm gonna go and work in a bookshop. I'm trying to get into a bookshop and didn't have any availability. I need to work in a bookshop. This is just the only way to do this work is to do something that literally I can just go and do and I don't think about again. I remember and then we had the crying on the beach day and I was like I just broke out. cannot do this anymore like what is wrong with my mind and then sat on the beach and was suddenly just like oh okay maybe this is what I want to do I've been making everything just really hard for a long long time so I think the hardest part with that was the it's just it's not linear is it nothing's linear so you kind of have these break moments when you think but I think you always know yeah what didn't i suddenly i knew like and again it was
Speaker #1
there was not there wasn't like a little it feels so silly at the end because at the end I'm probably quite where I was when I started but it was and yeah I think it was from from my perspective it was like the point where you were very tempted to quit on yourself yeah you know and and I don't mean that like there's nothing wrong with working in a bookshop I often have fantasies about how lovely it would be to work in a bookshop but I also don't think that is your path and I yeah And I think it's very often, it's so interesting at those moments when we're kind of almost ready to walk away is actually when we're so close. Like you say, it was right before you sort of had a breakthrough and I remember like very quickly all the ideas kind of came together after that point.
Speaker #0
Yeah.
Speaker #1
What was your favourite part of coaching together?
Speaker #0
What's my favourite part of the coaching? Well, I mean, personally, we also get, we got to spend time together that's actually really lovely lovely. I think the thing though that I would never have got without coaching, which I couldn't have done by myself, was someone that believed in me. That was like the best thing because I suddenly had someone that didn't see me as that internal dialogue going in, your head going, I'll never do this, you know, you're too old, who do you think you are? And that and each week there was someone that didn't see that person. They saw someone entirely different and that was... there was no... I don't... I honestly don't think that I would have... I wouldn't have believed I could do something by myself I don't think. So I think that was the the best bit having... and some weeks you were tough though for me. You know, it's tough, tough, tough love.
Speaker #1
Unless I can be quite. I think. Yeah. But what you just said about belief, I feel like that is the most important job that I have as a coach is that my belief in. my clients and what they're going to build is like so far ahead of where they are and then what's so gorgeous for me is the moment when it catches up and I can distinctly remember those moments when I was like oh like Claire's belief has caught up with mine and like we're both in that shared belief of this now because it's real and it's happening and and it comes it does take time and I you know I think it's something really important for anyone who might be listening thinking about making this kind of shift like it it does take time and I know you were just sharing with me before we started recording you're now in that you know the very early stages of launching a business but I think it's really it's really great to hear that you I feel like you've you've slowed your pace down and you're now approaching this with the mindset that you're building something to last and I think that to me is like what successful regenerative entrepreneurship looks like.
Speaker #0
And also, you talked about before, and I'm sorry to be a quick fire, but I think it's really important to say about the difference between me now and the difference between when we first met and now is huge. And, you know, I'm still in the very early stages. So in some ways, not like huge amounts have changed. But one thing that has changed, which is the biggest thing, is that I'm committed to something. That was the hardest thing, wasn't it? getting you know starting an idea coming out of it this one and actually you probably need to do that because you need to find the thing that feels right but there's such a different energy and suddenly having something to do to actually really okay right this is what I'm doing and now I need to do this I need to do this and it's hard you know you have to get rejection you know you're not it's not it's not gonna I'm not gonna suddenly be you know earning a 100,000 this year, it's still building up but suddenly it's
Speaker #1
feels more doable because I'm on the path that's the huge change that happened like actually having come in to commit to every day yeah and actually you mentioned to me this is a good case for us to think about the purposeful income path which is interesting because I created that like sort of towards the end of us coaching together and in some ways I sort of thought that I shared it with you before I shared it with anyone else that I don't know you might have been past that stage but you found it really helpful.
Speaker #0
to go through that framework yeah it was two things I think that really did help and they were quite late in because obviously with me we had a lot of the mindset work I don't know if that's necessarily the case for everyone but for me it was like that was a big thing but then on like the practical fronts mini business that one term you said to me one day really shifted it because I was like okay you can help build a business within the within yeah I'm not 20 so I'm I'm not gonna be like can't do it every second of the day I've got three children so I have to do it in these hours so it's a mini business it's not the only thing in my life it is one element of my life and that really has changed things like I stop at you know half past two and I pick my kids up and I don't start again until the morning and I look forward to start again in the morning so I'm like oh exciting I get to start again in the morning and the purpose for income path because it's good to have a goal and it's good to have you know it's like a little goal isn't it so I've I've got this goal I want to earn so much money. and by net end of next march to pay for us gone holiday so it's a it's a really tangible goal it's not it's not ludicrous and it's still relatively ambitious and it means that i'm quite focused on story labs so i'm not focused on like whereas before i was a bit like i would do bits of freelance work and i'd be like a bit of i'll do anything almost now i'm like oh no i just do this now yeah and it and it reinforces that commitment which is i think yeah
Speaker #1
a theme that has kind of been running through our whole conversation isn't it like making that commitment to yourself making your commitment to this journey to you know to building something that's going to serve you for however long into the future and then also committing to your idea and i think that's where like yeah the purposeful income path can be really helpful because it is so tempting to move to the next idea or to be influenced by what other people have to say about your idea or think oh so many people that i work with are like well but maybe i just need to go back and have a job or here's a contract maybe i should just do that contract and like there'll be times when that's the right choice but i think the heart of that it has to be that you really are committing to this thing that you build and you take that one step at a time so yeah Yeah, it's really lovely to hear. that that was helpful to you as well as the concept of yeah creating powerful mini business which is also how I think about my business being in a very kind of similar stage of life to you it's totally different when I was 25 and had a wild idea to set up a business and just gave it gave it everything for 13 years I'm not in that place anymore but I think we can still create really powerful mini businesses that bring us life and bring life to all those around us Yes. Oh thank you Claire, this has been such a lovely conversation. It was such a joy to work with you over those months as well out in the woods by the beach.
Speaker #0
I know! I miss it. But it's good to, like I said at the end, it's good to kind of take flight and not be there. I felt ready at the end, it was like, yes, this is, you know, I don't need Listerine anymore.
Speaker #1
Well and that is what I know my work has done. Yes. Thank you. If this episode of From Corporate to Calling was helpful or inspiring, follow the show so you don't miss an episode. And if you know someone who's questioning their career, send them this podcast. Lifelines are meant to be shared. Remember, you don't have to tolerate burnout or misalignment. You can redirect your skills into meaningful work that brings back life to you and to the world around you.

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

Does your career look good on paper but feel wrong in your bones?

Each week, I’ll share stories, provocations, and practical guidance to help you:

Recognise the signs of burnout and know when it’s time to quit
Redesign your relationship with work
Find your purpose and create meaningful work
Build a career or business that brings life back

If your career looks good but feels wrong — this is your invitation to step out of corporate, and into your calling.

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

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

Does your career look good on paper but feel wrong in your bones?

Each week, I’ll share stories, provocations, and practical guidance to help you:

Recognise the signs of burnout and know when it’s time to quit
Redesign your relationship with work
Find your purpose and create meaningful work
Build a career or business that brings life back

If your career looks good but feels wrong — this is your invitation to step out of corporate, and into your calling.

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Description

Listen for:

How corporate conditioning leads us to over-work—and why we double down on it ourselves.
Why burnout doesn’t end when you quit, and how to move despite the fear of repeating old patterns.
The mindset shifts that unlocked momentum: slowing down, committing, and building something to last.

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Transcription

Speaker #0
I remember one Christmas Eve, this is how ridiculous things get, that rather than being with my husband and my not even two year old son, I was trying to finish off work on Christmas Eve because that to me felt so important that I got this particular project sort of wrapped up before Christmas. At that time, that felt... completely normal. Like that wasn't, I can't say that my boss was necessarily standing over me and telling me to do that, but there was me, I was also doing that. I was there thinking, honestly at some level thinking that the more important thing in my life was to finish that project than it was to spend time with my family.
Speaker #1
If your career looks great on paper but feels wrong in your bones, you're not alone. Welcome to From Corporate to Calling, your lifeline into meaningful work. I'm Alyssa Murphy, a regenerative business mentor and former startup CEO who walked away from corporate systems to create work that brings life. Each week I share stories, reflections and provocations to help you recognize the signs of burnout and make a career change with purpose. If work looks good but feels wrong, this is your invitation to get out of corporate and into your calling. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm your host, Alyssa Murphy, and this is from Corporate Into Calling. This week, I'm excited to share with you the first in my Finding Purpose series. This is going to be a series of conversations where I'm speaking to clients and other amazing people who have taken that leap out of the corporate world of work, done the inner work, done the outer work and created their own meaningful careers and businesses. Today you're going to be hearing from my client Claire who worked with me inside of the Meaningful Business Incubator. Claire is going to tell you her story right back from the days when she worked in creative agencies in London working incredibly long hours, really all-consuming commitment to her work in corporate sustainability, what finally made things click for her and made her decide to step out of that world, and how after a long pause raising her babies, she found the courage to pursue her passions and the learning that she'd done in her master's and create a really exciting and unique regenerative offering that aligned with her values and allowed her to create a work life that put family first. If Claire's journey resonates with you and you are ready to take that leap all the way out of corporate, if you are ready to reimagine your relationship with work and if you want to build a meaningful business that brings life to you and to those around you, come and have a chat with me about the Meaningful Business Incubator. It's a six month intensive coaching program where we will design, test and launch your regenerative business or offering. Just send me an email, Alyssa, A-L-I-S-A at lifesizemedia.com or use the link in the show notes to book a call with me and we'll talk about what the Meaningful Business Incubator can unlock for you. Now, without further ado, it's over to Claire. Hi Claire, welcome to the podcast. It's very exciting because you are the first guest I've had on the podcast that's actually been here in the office with me. We are in the same room, we can actually touch each other. And so Claire is the only client I've ever had who is actually here in the same space as me. We live in the same town and we've had the joy of being able to do all of our coaching work. together in person, often out in the wild. We'll come on to that. But Claire has agreed to come to talk with us today and Claire what I would love to share with people is kind of your story in terms of how your work life has changed. So perhaps going right back to what your kind of conventional work life looked like, why you chose to step out of that where you were when we started working together and then we can take it up to where you are now which spoiler alert involves launching a really exciting regenerative offering so does that sound okay yeah all right so take us take us right back to the beginning in terms of where you were at this sort of peak of what would be considered your successful career so the peak of my career i was
Speaker #0
Well from the age of 24, actually even prior to that really, until I left, I worked for creative agencies in London, so predominantly on brand strategy and corporate communications. And when I left I was client partner, I think was the term. I was working on Multiple projects. I had clients in Germany, so I was regularly flying over there. And I had young children, actually young child, sorry, and I was working very long hours. Dylan was two and I would, we'd drop off at nursery. My husband would do the drop off at eight o'clock in the morning, then I would have to get to him, to my son, on the other side of London by six. And some nights that was a challenge, the tubes weren't working or something. I remember one day... Ringing my husband and saying I'm on trying to get on the train there's no tubes and I can't I think I've been a meeting and he He said well I can't get there And I got to the nursery and Dylan was in his coat and they'd actually switched the lights off so he had like a little coat on and they were just sat there And it was you know those kind of things are actually really difficult in the end And I think for a long time I'd also been feeling like when I did that job in my 20s I loved it. I thought I worked with really a lot of autonomy. I worked with designers and strategists and we would create our own projects essentially with lots of different clients and my clients were like the who's who we had actually BP was one of them at one point but we there's L'Oreal and we'd go to Paris and it felt like quite an exciting time but I think there was something sort of starting to make me feel uneasy about not perhaps just the work that we were doing which was a lot of it was around sustainability communications in one particular agency so there was something kind of maybe something to maybe make me question what we were doing but more than that i think it was the lifestyle it was the it was long hours i mean it was just long hours like agencies are quick and that's fun to a certain degree but then at a certain point the fun stops and so I, but I don't think I would have stopped so I, so though there was little bits of me that was thinking maybe this isn't quite right for me, there was a money thing as well because I earned, I earned as much as my husband earned so we, you know, I had to keep working. But then I got, I got pregnant with twins and that really did change everything and I was very sick during my pregnancy but I didn't take a single day off work and I kept working until I was taken to hospital and they basically said you have got nothing left in your body you need to we need to stop now basically I don't think you've ever just listeners may know
Speaker #1
I also had twins my twins are two years younger than yours I think and I was also really sick through my pregnancy I found extremely physically hard and I cannot imagine how you went to work every day because I mean at the time I was running a company but I had sort of more flexibility I suppose but I would lie in bed until I had to like literally drag myself out for like super critical meetings and then go back I mean it's just it's quite astonishing what we ask for ourselves and what work it like that kind of conventional work asks of us as well.
Speaker #0
I used to, and this is a bit graphic, but I'd get a bus down the Auckland road and on the way home there was a I knew where the bus, the bin, the bins were because I would get off the bus to be sick because I was so, I was sick. I think between pregnancies, just to say, oh, they do make you more sick. And they do actually bring that with them. Yeah.
Speaker #1
And it really strikes me that story that you shared as well about like picking up little Dylan, like them sort of waiting with the lights off, that there's, there's a real lack of kind of humanity in that model that requires long hours. sort of unwavering contribution that for me like part of thinking of regenerative work is like Just making space for the human stuff that happens to us, that like we need to go and get our kid or somebody gets sick or our parents are aging or we're growing two humans inside of us, like that there's just so little space in kind of conventional work for just... being a human and all the things that happen to us in life.
Speaker #0
Yeah, but also in our own heads I think that's the other thing. There was a need for me to work. I was living in London, I had to pay a mortgage to pay. I didn't really have... and that's my job, that was my job and so it sort of had to. But there is another, I think, the latter jobs I had I actually caught a relatively understanding boss, he had a family, but I think there was something within me as well that had come from that world or within me, who knows what happens. But I remember one Christmas Eve, this is how ridiculous things get that rather than being with my husband and my not even two year old son I was trying to finish off work on Christmas Eve because that to me felt so important that I got this particular project sort of wrapped up before Christmas. At that time, that felt completely normal. Like that wasn't, I can't say that my boss was necessarily standing over me and telling me to do that. And what would I, maybe if I'd have not done it, the consequences, I don't know what would have been. But there was me, I was also doing that. I was there. thinking honestly at some level thinking that the more important thing in my life was to finish that project than it was to spend time with my family where do you think that compulsion came from I think I don't I mean it's really hard to say what's the chicken and the egg isn't it where does it come from it's a kind of well I mean I worked I think you've talked about it as well and and so you had your own business. It's a slightly different results as well. But I worked with somebody. else I worked so hard for so many years I literally did nothing but work I just worked I had a getting early in the mornings I'd work long hours I mean rarely in my twenties I think before nine the weekends were very quite hedonistic it was it was just this constant like cycle and I'm having one job within an agency where I finished at five and I got to the train station at five o'clock one day or again I these things are really popping in my head because I can remember being... clearly London Bridge and like seeing all the pictures and I thought what am I gonna do it's five o'clock so what do people do with it I had literally I don't have hobbies but I don't have anything other and then I always knew I wanted a family but then I had Dylan and then I was like and actually I left my job and I didn't have a job and I won't at that point I was thinking about do you want to do something different but again money i felt like they were reason I needed to keep going but yeah I I was like he got went back to nursery at 10 months and at that point went back for three days and I was like there's no way I can do this work in three days I need to do four days obviously maybe that's it and then I used to work on a Sunday to catch up from the Friday that I had off my
Speaker #1
I mean I obviously yeah we have very different experiences because I as an entrepreneur so I worked for myself but I do I recognize that compulsion to work and that feeling of like what will I possibly do if it's not there. I remember when I got married and I was pregnant at the time and I took ten days off to go to New York to get married and sort of have a honeymoon at the same time and it was the first time in what I'm trying to work out the dates now like close close to ten years that I had switched off from work like in that period of time. So I really recognise that. but I find it very interesting to think about where it comes from. And for me, my sort of working hypothesis is that it's, you say about the chicken and egg, I think it's that the system asks so much of us. So the expectation on you was that you work long hours, that the project gets done no matter what, that you don't let something like getting pregnant or being sick or having a young child in any way get in the way of your ability to perform. And that's a real demand. And because that is asked for us, we sort of respond. by almost doubling down on that because it is unnatural to kind of make that bargain where we like and to say yes I can give you that much and so we kind of give it all of us because it's like the only way we can actually kind of make sense of how much is being asked of us is that we're like we invest our self-worth and our kind of meaning and our value into that exchange for work and then it becomes really quite frightening to think well who am I outside of this? So take us to that point for you because that did happen for you where it reached the point where like you said that the fun, well it sounded like the fun had stopped for a while but it was it reached the point where you needed to change
Speaker #0
things. Yeah I mean it was my hand was slightly forced but I so I wrote I woke up one night in the middle of the night and wrote this letter and I said that I will never work like this again to my unborn children and then I and then everything changed so we so when the twins were like five months old we left London and we moved to Villanhoe which is where we are now and that meant financially things changed because suddenly we weren't paying those kind of everything just it meant that I didn't have to I didn't have to work to pay the mortgage that's essentially what it meant where prior to I had to work post-mortgage. This meant I didn't. And also just having that you know having three young children under three under two at one point because they were in two and the girls were born so everything just switched for me like it was suddenly like oh but i wanted it to switch like there was if i'd have really been invested in that job as a career perhaps maybe i would have maybe i wouldn't but either way that everything sort of changed that point. And for two years I'd say that I was just so immersed in children that I didn't particularly have time to think. Although there was always this nagging sense of, I need to get back to work. So there was this kind of dual thing, there was a little bit in the back of my head that was going, well this is fine for now, it's fine for now, but obviously it's not fine forever, for multiple reasons. And then I did one of the girls with... two or three I started a master's and that coincided with lockdown I'm trying to get all my dates mixed up but yeah lockdown obviously happened as well I did my master's in sustainability and behavior change which I loved but again I really threw myself into that too so there was another part of me that was still really not yeah really wanting to to do something and then at that that same point a lot of people sort of saying what are you doing? As if it was never perhaps enough just to be a mother, like that's quite hard thing to say but I think and then I've been from Masters that's when I think we kind of met and I think I just felt very we as you know very very lost I couldn't conceive of work I knew I wanted to go back to work and not what why I can't maybe the why is an interesting one but as I knew I wanted to do that but I couldn't conceive of work as being anything other than what it had been. So for me, work is associated with everything. Like it was like long hours, it was my whole identity, it was it was just what I did and I couldn't see how that would ever be compatible with children.
Speaker #1
Yeah and I remember that was a really big part of our work at the beginning, our work together, was that you that kind of overshadowed everything for you because it was like you thought of anything that you might want to try or explore or even research came with this sort of baggage of but it's going to mean going back to that way of existing it's going to mean sacrificing time with my family it's going to mean really long hours getting burnt out and it took quite a while didn't it for that to kind of shift and i think one of the really powerful things that we did at the beginning was kind of setting this vision do you remember of this balance that that you wanted to have like long before you knew any specifics about the kind of work that you were doing it was these sort of foundational pieces of like my family must be part of this it has to be balanced and and i remember this sort of there was like a peacefulness that you were looking for in work which clearly we can hear from your story wasn't wasn't there for you before yeah
Speaker #0
yeah it's actually we've got the when we first did our first session together in the wild we we had this image didn't we that well whose head it came from my head probably but you shared the image somehow of that sort of standing by the sea with a cup of tea in a warm jumper and and that and that was what I wanted in my life and how could work be part of that.
Speaker #1
That's right and it's so it's so interesting because I think most people actually live kind of their whole professional lives thinking what is work going to be and how do I fit in the life around that and what we did was kind of kind of turn that around to like I want that experience of that kind of yeah you know it's a it's a kind of metaphor but like being being by the sea being on the coast being cozy and and then like let's work from there and I think so many people miss that even when they have had a similar experience to you of you know taking a big leap out of what seemed to everyone else to be a really successful career and but the next question is always what what do I do next what is the work that I'm going to do and we miss that step of like how is work going to feel like and I think that is such an important starting point yeah Yeah.
Speaker #0
Yeah, it's the main work, I think. I don't know for other people, but certainly for me. It's reimagining what work can be and then thinking that it can be something different because I think the image at the sea was a kind of... cup and we have been talking about this about being cosy but what that means essentially but I think for me what it meant and this came out through our coaching was I I wanted something that was a craft and meaningful like I wanted something that I was doing like it was sort of like being sort of physical or but I wanted something I'd done a long lots of my career was spent doing things that really at the bottom when it really came down to it they weren't they won't be doing anything sometimes sometimes it was being busy for being busy it was like going to meet lots of meetings and and a lot of spreadsheets and a lot of it was just it was yeah there wasn't creative industry which is kind of ironic isn't it say that but I wanted something that was that I could build I think I think that was kind of what I was searching for like and I say it as a craft and then all of my kind of imagery that we that kind of came about was often about people that had a craft and it was like an artist or a carpenter or something that was this like I had this or creating but that's not my where my we're not actually where my love is either but not where my skill set is certainly so i kind of bit like well so the only people I could really see that were doing anything that really that kind of work that I was drawn to were people that were very much not in that corporate office environment so that was one thing that was very clear when I looked at where I was where those images were kind of coming from it was always people that were quite well I mean interesting solo but that isn't necessarily necessarily what i want but it was like people that are that i doing something that they really believe in. Like that kept, that was quite a strong feeling. And so it was trying to, but then it was like, well, that's not the work that I know. That's the people that are artists or carpenters, or I'm trying to think of other examples or have a, or have a farm or, or run retreats or, laser that, or yoga, yoga teacher, that was one that kept coming up, was there, yoga teacher. I'm not looking on to be a yoga teacher, but I think it was something that just wasn't from that world. world.
Speaker #1
Yeah, yeah and exactly and allowing yourself to think, I thought there was a couple of episodes ago, like to start thinking of yourself as an artist I think is a really big leap actually for a lot of people but it's something I really believe in because fundamentally what is an artist? Someone who is creating something and something like you say that they really believe in and something that will have some kind of impact. impact on others that will make some kind of lasting change.
Speaker #0
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker #1
And how did you talk us through how those kind of threads started coming together? So once you had the sort of once you were more connected with the feeling of how you wanted work to be and shifting your ideas about what work meant and from this kind of sort of corporate experience that you turned into this more craftsmanship kind of
Speaker #0
thinking how did this sort of thread start to come together into what you were going to do next well you know over time and with a lot of help from you I mean as it was as we both noticed it was these threads were there but it took a while it took there was a there was a kind of a couple of breakthrough moments weren't there but it took it took time and actually I think in the sense I wish that I listened a little bit more about having that time because I think it I wanted to get on and do stuff quite quickly didn't I and so And in the end... Yeah, having a bit more time, allowing myself a bit more time just to be like in that space would have probably been quite helpful. But in terms of your question, what things that, one, I think there's a couple of reasons that stood out for me. One was I had to be at my age. too old to do anything this was a big thing for me I was like I'm in my 40s mid 40s you know I'm just past it that was a really big thing and you really helped with that because you had this you made me think about other people I could look at that were doing really exciting things in their 50s and 60s and 70s and 80s so suddenly so this was a big thing I wanted this period of of like trying to work out what this next thing was has been it's been a very very difficult thing it's been very hard and I've had you to help me and I just honestly don't think I would have done because It's just been hard. It's hard to reinvent yourself. It is. It's much easier just to go back to doing what you were doing, isn't it?
Speaker #1
This is hard work. But I think the mindset shift that you're talking about there is, and the thing of slowing down, because I think a lot of people feel like, I can't afford to slow down. I don't have, I'm getting older and I can't, it needs to be done now, or I've already had a career break and like I need to solve this. I think a real shift that you had was, but if I'm trying to create something
Speaker #0
work that I can do into my 70s yeah okay if this takes a year that's nothing if this serves me for the next 30 years yeah that was the shift that was the and we had this conversation to me and I think you've actually said it on the podcast before but it again things take in my mind we had to come know exactly where we were we had a conversation we talked about your auntie I think and my nan your nan yeah and her nail hit her ankle yes i can't remember what podcast i think it's in the one where i talk about age and regenerative work but yeah
Speaker #1
But yeah, my nan had kind of like shattered her ankle in, I think even in her late 40s and just never really sorted it out and never took the time to get proper physio or get the surgery that she needed. And it's, she's now in her late 80s and it's like affected her whole life. And I often think like, like if she could have her time back, would she not have wanted to invest? Like I'm sure at the time she was just busy or it just felt like, oh, it's going to take too long, like working with a physio or whatever it might be. but I'm sure if she could have had her time back, she would, yeah, would have invested that time because actually what she would be giving herself was like so much more mobility for decades to come of her life. Yeah.
Speaker #0
So that was, that's what the shift was. And I remember it clearly. It was a bit like, so what I've been thinking, well, I need to decide what I need to do. I need to go on and do it because the time's running out, time's running out, time's running out. and then the shift came and it was like oh but I want to do this for the next 20 20, 30 years. So now actually, it's about doing something that's going to last. Change happens, things happen, maybe I won't want to. But in terms of this real, like, more intentional change of direction, you can't do that many times in your life because of the energy it takes you to change direction. And so maybe there'll be some more and more organic shifts, but I definitely thought, right, I want something, I want to now, I was like, we looked forward, didn't we, to what I would be like at, say, six, seven. and how I would look back and what I wanted my work to be and how so that was a that was a big shift yeah that was one of the threads that shifted so I had that that I knew I had I knew I wanted to craft and I'm talking about in the widest sense of the word craft I knew that I wanted something that would fit with family life I knew I didn't have the energy to work those hours anymore. So there were these little threads that were coming through.
Speaker #1
quite strongly and then there was a fourth one like I'm curious I'm sure people will be curious because you know we've talked a lot about how the mindset shift and we haven't even got into like more of the kind of personal dimensions that you can keep for yourself but there was a lot of inner work as well that you had to do on kind of self-confidence self-worth all of this kind of thing and like anyone who's making these kind of shifts like all of that stuff is going to come up And it takes, that takes time, it takes work. but I think yeah it's also really inspiring people to hear like the practical side because I think what you've done with what you're you're now putting out into the world is you've you've taken all the experience that you had for your corporate life like it's not like that was wasted or that was thrown away you've you've used that as a sort of foundation you've used everything that you learned in your masters that's that's all all in there and then you've kind of that you've combined that with where you are in your life now with what you're really really passionate about and like you say with like something that can be a craft for you going on and i think like that's what so many people are longing to do and yeah so maybe you can just talk why don't you tell us about what you're doing now and maybe take it yeah we can see how those threads came together yeah yeah we should talk about the purpose for for the income part because that actually was a big change as well.
Speaker #0
So what I'm doing now, so... I'm building a business as a story facilitator in the climate and community space and at the core of my offer is something that I've called story labs which are essentially like participatory workshops or experiences that bring teams or multiple teams or communities together to share stories or experiences or perspectives. and then to kind of look at what the common threads are within those stories and create collective narratives from them that can be used to shape communications or place-based initiatives or research. So essentially it's bringing ultimately what the aim is is to bring kind of slightly different voices into conversations into stories to start shifting narratives So that's like a bigger ambition. But there is some quite practical kind of outputs from that as well. And it's quite, in a way, you know, Storyloves is quite, in a sense, it's quite a simple offer. But it combines both the brand communications world that I was in for so long with social sciences. So how you kind of create more inclusive spaces and elevate voices that aren't often heard. and there isn't quite practical reason for wanting to do that in the sense that stories that tend to be shaped by people tend to then also resonate with people so there's this kind of quite practical thing that's exactly it and it's such like it's such exciting work and it's
Speaker #1
also interesting like exactly they say like it goes back to the foundations that you have in your career and it's like probably on paper doesn't seem like a dramatically different thing and i think often people sort of feel like When they feel called to meaningful regenerative work, that it's going to be this completely new start, that they're going to have to go and completely re-skill in a different area and they'll often there's this sort of feeling of like I'll just be nowhere because I'm like whatever age like you're in my mid-40s and then I'm starting a totally new career and I don't think that's actually necessary for most of us because I think so many people are bringing with them a wealth of experience and connections and education and all of this kind of stuff but the real shift is like how you're expressing that like who you're doing that work for the way that you say your relationship with that work it's a totally different thing like you doing that kind of work for yeah huge huge brands that like in many cases sustainability is a kind of sticking plaster or an excuse for business as usual and doing that within like a big corporate system that then filters down to you being required to sort of give it so many hours of your life to you doing an expression of that work that feels like a craft that allows for like genuine balance and integration with your family and where you get to choose who you do that work for and really feel like the contribution that that work can make yeah exactly that
Speaker #0
Yeah, I suppose it's about doing something on my own terms for things that I believe in and using many of the tools in a sense that I, because I think creative communications and advertising and branding, all those things I was kind of connected to, they've got some really great, there is great stuff that comes out of there. They own like a lot of, a lot of my friends work in that sector still but most of my friends and i think that they have the the like this look that i'm thinking of the web like almost like the lion's share on creativity from like the brightest minds in terms of creative output and the way but i just stopped believing in what it was being used for i didn't necessarily stop believing in the tools i've never been in performance marketing for example where i didn't i wasn't on that size i was always on the side of like story and and that creation bit which i loved i mean i love writing i love and the other thing we've always talked about so I don't being with people so I knew I didn't want to do something that was That was purely online, I did know that, that was another quite big thing for me, I wanted to be with people. And so it was trying to look at those different bits. And I did my research in a community where I got to hear people's stories. I'd been working in an academic setting, again, where I got to hear people's stories and interpret those. with quite a lot of rigor like not just in terrapist than i mean off the hammer but actually really been thinking what is going on here what is the meaning behind them what people saying what what's the collective story what can we learn from this this is really interesting because it's not we're not we're not hearing from the same people that we normally hear from because that's the other thing in a brand and advertising setting we obviously do the research undoubtedly but ultimately really everything going down to the amazing minds of strategists at the end of the day to interpret that and then you go into meeting they'd be like ta-da here you are this is what you've done but and that's works but it's not really hearing from anything new I don't think because tends to be quite similar people that you're interviewing and they tend to be quite similar people that are dissecting those interviews and so I think this is so there was some there was lots of elements that that fed into this particular yeah and I love what you say about like not
Speaker #1
necessarily maybe falling out of love with who the work was done for and a lot the way that it was done but that the foundations of it like were still things that you wanted to hold onto and you absolutely have in terms of where you've now taken your work. I think that's, yeah, I think that's really comforting as well for people to hear that there's, and that's why, that's why I do what I do because I think there are so many incredibly talented people who are just capable of making stuff happen, like you, you know, who can do extraordinarily things and I think, I just feel, and I think many of them feel, that they're doing it for the wrong purposes and for the wrong people. and how incredibly exciting it is to think when we can harness all of that towards building a better future for everyone yeah i think that's it yeah taking those bits and taking the good bits out and okay so i have a few final questions let's let's do a quick fire round yeah to finish up what was the hardest moment of coaching together the bit before the breakthrough was that i just wasn't it So I had this,
Speaker #0
it was... I think I'd got to a place and I was thinking I'm quite happy with that and something wasn't quite right, something wasn't quite right and then I was like right I'm gonna go and work in a bookshop. I'm trying to get into a bookshop and didn't have any availability. I need to work in a bookshop. This is just the only way to do this work is to do something that literally I can just go and do and I don't think about again. I remember and then we had the crying on the beach day and I was like I just broke out. cannot do this anymore like what is wrong with my mind and then sat on the beach and was suddenly just like oh okay maybe this is what I want to do I've been making everything just really hard for a long long time so I think the hardest part with that was the it's just it's not linear is it nothing's linear so you kind of have these break moments when you think but I think you always know yeah what didn't i suddenly i knew like and again it was
Speaker #1
there was not there wasn't like a little it feels so silly at the end because at the end I'm probably quite where I was when I started but it was and yeah I think it was from from my perspective it was like the point where you were very tempted to quit on yourself yeah you know and and I don't mean that like there's nothing wrong with working in a bookshop I often have fantasies about how lovely it would be to work in a bookshop but I also don't think that is your path and I yeah And I think it's very often, it's so interesting at those moments when we're kind of almost ready to walk away is actually when we're so close. Like you say, it was right before you sort of had a breakthrough and I remember like very quickly all the ideas kind of came together after that point.
Speaker #0
Yeah.
Speaker #1
What was your favourite part of coaching together?
Speaker #0
What's my favourite part of the coaching? Well, I mean, personally, we also get, we got to spend time together that's actually really lovely lovely. I think the thing though that I would never have got without coaching, which I couldn't have done by myself, was someone that believed in me. That was like the best thing because I suddenly had someone that didn't see me as that internal dialogue going in, your head going, I'll never do this, you know, you're too old, who do you think you are? And that and each week there was someone that didn't see that person. They saw someone entirely different and that was... there was no... I don't... I honestly don't think that I would have... I wouldn't have believed I could do something by myself I don't think. So I think that was the the best bit having... and some weeks you were tough though for me. You know, it's tough, tough, tough love.
Speaker #1
Unless I can be quite. I think. Yeah. But what you just said about belief, I feel like that is the most important job that I have as a coach is that my belief in. my clients and what they're going to build is like so far ahead of where they are and then what's so gorgeous for me is the moment when it catches up and I can distinctly remember those moments when I was like oh like Claire's belief has caught up with mine and like we're both in that shared belief of this now because it's real and it's happening and and it comes it does take time and I you know I think it's something really important for anyone who might be listening thinking about making this kind of shift like it it does take time and I know you were just sharing with me before we started recording you're now in that you know the very early stages of launching a business but I think it's really it's really great to hear that you I feel like you've you've slowed your pace down and you're now approaching this with the mindset that you're building something to last and I think that to me is like what successful regenerative entrepreneurship looks like.
Speaker #0
And also, you talked about before, and I'm sorry to be a quick fire, but I think it's really important to say about the difference between me now and the difference between when we first met and now is huge. And, you know, I'm still in the very early stages. So in some ways, not like huge amounts have changed. But one thing that has changed, which is the biggest thing, is that I'm committed to something. That was the hardest thing, wasn't it? getting you know starting an idea coming out of it this one and actually you probably need to do that because you need to find the thing that feels right but there's such a different energy and suddenly having something to do to actually really okay right this is what I'm doing and now I need to do this I need to do this and it's hard you know you have to get rejection you know you're not it's not it's not gonna I'm not gonna suddenly be you know earning a 100,000 this year, it's still building up but suddenly it's
Speaker #1
feels more doable because I'm on the path that's the huge change that happened like actually having come in to commit to every day yeah and actually you mentioned to me this is a good case for us to think about the purposeful income path which is interesting because I created that like sort of towards the end of us coaching together and in some ways I sort of thought that I shared it with you before I shared it with anyone else that I don't know you might have been past that stage but you found it really helpful.
Speaker #0
to go through that framework yeah it was two things I think that really did help and they were quite late in because obviously with me we had a lot of the mindset work I don't know if that's necessarily the case for everyone but for me it was like that was a big thing but then on like the practical fronts mini business that one term you said to me one day really shifted it because I was like okay you can help build a business within the within yeah I'm not 20 so I'm I'm not gonna be like can't do it every second of the day I've got three children so I have to do it in these hours so it's a mini business it's not the only thing in my life it is one element of my life and that really has changed things like I stop at you know half past two and I pick my kids up and I don't start again until the morning and I look forward to start again in the morning so I'm like oh exciting I get to start again in the morning and the purpose for income path because it's good to have a goal and it's good to have you know it's like a little goal isn't it so I've I've got this goal I want to earn so much money. and by net end of next march to pay for us gone holiday so it's a it's a really tangible goal it's not it's not ludicrous and it's still relatively ambitious and it means that i'm quite focused on story labs so i'm not focused on like whereas before i was a bit like i would do bits of freelance work and i'd be like a bit of i'll do anything almost now i'm like oh no i just do this now yeah and it and it reinforces that commitment which is i think yeah
Speaker #1
a theme that has kind of been running through our whole conversation isn't it like making that commitment to yourself making your commitment to this journey to you know to building something that's going to serve you for however long into the future and then also committing to your idea and i think that's where like yeah the purposeful income path can be really helpful because it is so tempting to move to the next idea or to be influenced by what other people have to say about your idea or think oh so many people that i work with are like well but maybe i just need to go back and have a job or here's a contract maybe i should just do that contract and like there'll be times when that's the right choice but i think the heart of that it has to be that you really are committing to this thing that you build and you take that one step at a time so yeah Yeah, it's really lovely to hear. that that was helpful to you as well as the concept of yeah creating powerful mini business which is also how I think about my business being in a very kind of similar stage of life to you it's totally different when I was 25 and had a wild idea to set up a business and just gave it gave it everything for 13 years I'm not in that place anymore but I think we can still create really powerful mini businesses that bring us life and bring life to all those around us Yes. Oh thank you Claire, this has been such a lovely conversation. It was such a joy to work with you over those months as well out in the woods by the beach.
Speaker #0
I know! I miss it. But it's good to, like I said at the end, it's good to kind of take flight and not be there. I felt ready at the end, it was like, yes, this is, you know, I don't need Listerine anymore.
Speaker #1
Well and that is what I know my work has done. Yes. Thank you. If this episode of From Corporate to Calling was helpful or inspiring, follow the show so you don't miss an episode. And if you know someone who's questioning their career, send them this podcast. Lifelines are meant to be shared. Remember, you don't have to tolerate burnout or misalignment. You can redirect your skills into meaningful work that brings back life to you and to the world around you.

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

Does your career look good on paper but feel wrong in your bones?

Each week, I’ll share stories, provocations, and practical guidance to help you:

Recognise the signs of burnout and know when it’s time to quit
Redesign your relationship with work
Find your purpose and create meaningful work
Build a career or business that brings life back

If your career looks good but feels wrong — this is your invitation to step out of corporate, and into your calling.

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

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

Does your career look good on paper but feel wrong in your bones?

Each week, I’ll share stories, provocations, and practical guidance to help you:

Recognise the signs of burnout and know when it’s time to quit
Redesign your relationship with work
Find your purpose and create meaningful work
Build a career or business that brings life back

If your career looks good but feels wrong — this is your invitation to step out of corporate, and into your calling.

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

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