Twenty years ago, I made a decision that changed the direction of my life.

I walked away from a successful corporate career and started my own business.

Some people thought I was brave. Others thought I was completely mad.

If I’m truthful, there were probably moments when I wondered whether they were right.

But the decision to start my business wasn’t driven by entrepreneurial ambition.

It was driven by loss.

Less than a year earlier, my mum had died suddenly and unexpectedly.

At the time, I was on holiday in the Maldives, taking a break from a corporate career that, on paper, looked incredibly successful.

I was working for a Silicon Valley technology company as a Global Account Director, travelling internationally and progressing professionally. I’d worked incredibly hard to build that career.

The truth was, it was sucking the soul out of me.

I wasn’t happy.  I just didn’t know what else I could do.

Then, a week into our two-week holiday in paradise, my phone rang.

My mum had died very suddenly and unexpectedly.

I was halfway across the world.

I began the long journey home and, a few days later, I stood beside my mum’s body for the last time.

It was the first time I’d ever been in the presence of someone who had died, and it was the person I loved most in the world.

There is something profoundly life-changing about that experience.

It changes your relationship with time, success, and what really matters.

Losing Mum didn’t suddenly make me dislike my career. It gave me the courage to confront something I already knew.

The life I was building didn’t feel like the life I wanted to live.

And suddenly, staying on a path simply because I’d invested so much in getting there didn’t feel like enough.

Grief has a way of stripping life back to its essentials.

I found myself asking questions that were difficult to ignore.

• How do I want to spend my time?
• What difference do I want to make?
• What will matter when my own life is measured?

In September 2006, those questions led me to take a leap.

During my corporate career, I was introduced to coaching as a way of leading and developing people, and I experienced firsthand how powerful it could be.

I became curious enough to hire my own executive coach and that experience changed something for me. I fell in love with the power of coaching: the quality of the conversations, the questions it opened up and the possibility it created for people to see themselves and their choices differently.

I knew I wanted to learn how to do that for others.

So I retrained as an executive coach and, on 6 September 2006, launched my own business.

Twenty years later, I’m still here.

Not with exactly the business I imagined I’d build (because businesses, like people, evolve), but with something that has become far more meaningful than I could have understood at the time.

Twenty years gives you a lot of data.

I’ve had extraordinary opportunities and difficult seasons. I’ve made good decisions and bad ones. I’ve created things that succeeded and things that spectacularly didn’t.

I’ve experienced burnout, become a mother, reinvented my business, invested deeply in my own development and had the privilege of sitting alongside thousands of people as they’ve navigated their own careers and lives.

And perhaps most importantly, I’ve changed.

So rather than celebrating twenty years by telling you everything that’s gone right, I wanted to reflect on what those twenty years have actually taught me.

The lessons I couldn’t have known in 2006. The ones I’ve had to live to understand.

Twenty years. Twenty lessons. And still learning. 🤍

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Leaving my corporate career made very little sense on paper.

I had a good salary, a successful track record and a career I’d invested years in building.

1. Bet on yourself

Walking away from that certainty to retrain and start again felt risky, and not everyone understood it.

But I’ve learnt that other people inevitably judge our decisions through their own values, risk appetite and definition of success.

You have to self-source your own definition of success. Betting on yourself doesn’t mean knowing everything will work out.

It means trusting that whatever happens, you have the capacity to respond to it.

Twenty years later, I’m very grateful that my younger self took that bet.

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2. Learn to become your own best cheerleader

Running a business requires a kind of emotional resilience I didn’t fully appreciate when I started.

There are wonderful moments.

And there are also proposals you don’t win. Ideas nobody buys. Quiet periods. Clients who choose someone else. Things you launch that don’t land quite as you imagined.

One of the most important things I’ve learnt is the difference between self-criticism and self-correction.

Self-criticism asks: What’s wrong with me?

Self-correction asks: What can I learn from this?

That’s a profoundly different place from which to respond to failure and setbacks.

Because if your belief in yourself depends entirely on external validation, entrepreneurship can be a brutal place to live.

I’ve had to learn how to say:

This is difficult. The results aren’t here yet. And I still believe in what I’m building.

That doesn’t mean ignoring feedback or pretending everything is brilliant.

In fact, it’s the opposite. It’s about being willing to look honestly at what’s happened, learn from it and make changes where they’re needed – without turning every setback into a judgement about yourself.

It means not outsourcing your entire sense of confidence to the latest result.

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3. Everything has seasons… including business

One of the most helpful ways I’ve learnt to think about business is through seasons.

There are springs when you’re planting, creating and beginning again.

Summers when things flourish, and momentum seems almost effortless.

Autumns when it’s time to harvest what has worked and prune what hasn’t.

And winters when things can appear quiet or even dormant.

Earlier in my career, I interpreted every winter as evidence that something was wrong.

Now I understand that some of the most important work happens beneath the surface.

Reflection. Learning. Recalibration. Rest. Reinvention.

Longevity isn’t about staying permanently in summer; it’s about recognising the season you’re in and learning how to work with it.

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4. Investing in yourself is one of the best investments you’ll ever make

Over twenty years, I’ve invested a significant amount of time, money and energy in my own development.

Qualifications. Accreditation. Coaching. Supervision. Therapy. Books. Programmes. Conferences. Training.

Some investments increased my capability, and some have fundamentally changed me.

It’s tempting, particularly when running a business, to prioritise investment in everything external like the website, technology, marketing, systems.

Those things matter, but I’ve consistently found that investing in the person making the decisions has given me some of the greatest returns.

Your business can only grow so far if you’re not willing to grow with it.

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5. Becoming a parent can change your ambition without diminishing it

Becoming a mother changed my relationship with time, work, identity and success.

It didn’t make me less ambitious. But it did make my ambition more complex.

I still wanted to do meaningful work. I still wanted to make an impact. I still wanted to grow.

But I also wanted to be present for my children. To protect my health. To nurture my relationships. To actually experience the life I was working so hard to create.

I struggled with that tension far more than I ever expected to.

At times, the career/caring conundrum nearly drowned me. I questioned myself, my ambition and even my desire to work.

But over time, I’ve realised that my ambition hadn’t disappeared. It was evolving… just as I was.

Motherhood has taught me that there are seasons in business and in life when our capacity changes, our priorities shift and our definition of success needs to shift with them.

For me, that isn’t diluted ambition. It’s a broader definition of success.

And that lesson has profoundly shaped both the business I’ve built and the work I do today.

I’ve written much more about my own complicated relationship with motherhood and ambition in Motherhood Didn’t Diminish My Ambition. It Rewrote the Brief. Read Motherhood Didn’t Diminish My Ambition. It Rewrote the Brief.

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6. Experiment more and stay curious

I genuinely believe my willingness to experiment has fuelled my longevity in business.

The world has changed enormously since 2006.

Technology has changed. Work has changed. Leadership has changed. My clients have changed.

And I’ve changed.

So my business has had to change too.

I’ve experimented with services, programmes, technology, content, marketing, partnerships and different ways of delivering my work.

Some experiments worked brilliantly. Plenty didn’t.

Fear of getting things wrong can easily become complacency. We keep repeating what has worked because it feels safe, while the world evolves around us.

For me, longevity hasn’t come from finding a successful formula twenty years ago and repeating it.

It’s come from being willing to keep evolving and uplevelling.  To stay curious about possibility and potential.

Twenty years in, I’m much less interested in protecting what I’ve already built. I’m much more interested in remaining curious about what it could become next.

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7. Building a business is a deeply vulnerable experience

I remember hearing Brené Brown talk about the relationship between creativity and vulnerability, and something clicked for me.

I’d never really thought of myself as particularly creative.

Then I realised: Entrepreneurship is an act of creation.

You create services, programmes, ideas, content, propositions and partnerships.

You take something that previously existed only in your imagination and put it into the world.

And then other people get to decide what they think of it.

They might love it. They might ignore it. They might criticise it. They might reject it.

You have very little control over that.

I’ve learnt that building something requires enormous emotional resilience.

Not necessarily a thicker skin, but a greater understanding of what uncertainty, criticism and rejection activate in you.

Do you become defensive?

Withdraw?

Work harder to prove yourself?

Doubt everything?

I’ve had to learn how to navigate vulnerability without allowing other people’s response to my work to determine my worth.

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8. Self-awareness is one of the greatest advantages you can develop

One of the most useful questions I’ve learnt to ask myself is:

What am I contributing to this?

Because while it asks you to confront your own part in a problem, it also gives you personal power.

If everything that’s going wrong is someone else’s fault, there’s very little you can do about it.

But the moment you’re willing to explore your own contribution – the behaviour, assumption, reaction or pattern that might be playing a part – you also discover where you have the power to change something.

For me, that’s what self-awareness offers: not blame, but agency.

We all have patterns.

• Things that trigger us.
• Things we avoid.
• Things we overdo.
• Stories we tell ourselves.
• Assumptions we make.

Under pressure, those patterns often get louder. Self-awareness doesn’t mean you’ll always get it right.

It means you have a better chance of noticing what’s happening before your automatic patterns take over.

Awareness creates choice. And choice creates the possibility of doing something differently.

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9. What got you here won’t necessarily get you there

This is something I talk about frequently in my coaching work because I see it in myself too.

The qualities that create our success can eventually become the things that constrain us.

Being the person who always knows the answer can make it difficult to let others know more.

A phenomenal work ethic can become a belief that the answer is always to work harder.

Perfectionism can create exceptional standards and make delegation almost impossible.

Independence can make you incredibly resourceful and terrible at asking for help.

Growth isn’t always about adding another skill.

Sometimes it requires relinquishing a behaviour, belief or identity that once served you beautifully.

What got you here deserves respect. But it doesn’t automatically deserve to come with you everywhere you’re going next.

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10. Have the conversation

This one has been a genuine learning edge for me.

I naturally value harmony and relationships.

And there have been times when I’ve avoided difficult conversations for longer than I should have.

I’ve worried about upsetting someone.

Or damaging a relationship.

Or being misunderstood.

Or I’ve simply hoped the issue might resolve itself.

Business has taught me that it rarely does. Avoiding discomfort usually doesn’t remove it… it prolongs it.

And quite often, the conversation I’ve created in my own head has been considerably worse than the one that eventually happens.

I’ve had to learn to lean into discomfort.

To say what needs saying. To be clear and kind. And to address things earlier.

Having difficult conversations still doesn’t always feel comfortable to me.

But I’ve learnt that courage isn’t about feeling comfortable.

It’s about being willing to enter the discomfort when something matters.

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11. Don’t be a lone wolf

I started my business alone.

But I certainly haven’t built it alone.

Over twenty years, coaches, mentors, supervisors, colleagues, associates, team members, friends, and family have helped me think, challenged me, encouraged me, introduced me to people, and sometimes simply reminded me to keep going.

I’ve learnt that independence can very easily become over-independence. Particularly for conscientious and capable people.

We convince ourselves that because we can figure something out alone, we should.

But some things are simply better done with other people.

You don’t get extra points for doing life the hard way.

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12. You don’t have to do everything you’re capable of doing

This has been another important lesson for me.

I’m naturally someone who gets things done. If there’s a problem, I’ll solve it. If something needs doing and I know how to do it, my instinct is often to get on and do it myself.

And for a long time, that served me incredibly well.

But as my business grew and I grew as a leader, I’ve realised there is a downside to being highly capable and resourceful.

Capability can become a trap.

Because you can do something, you assume you should.

And when you’re used to being the person who gets things done, delegating can sometimes feel slower, harder or less efficient than simply doing it yourself.

But I’ve learnt that leadership requires a different set of questions.

Not simply:

Can I do this?

Because, quite often, my answer will be yes.

Instead, I’m learning to ask:

Am I the best person to do this? Is this the best use of my time and energy?

And perhaps the most challenging one:

What am I preventing someone else from learning, owning or becoming by continuing to do this myself?

That last question has been particularly important.

Because leadership isn’t about proving how capable you are.

Sometimes the most valuable thing you can do is step back, create space and allow someone else to step forward.

Twenty years in, I’m still learning that just because I can do something doesn’t mean I should.

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13. Your love of learning will fuel your success

I genuinely believe my love of learning has been one of the things that has sustained me over twenty years.

I’ve learnt through books, podcasts, courses, qualifications, conferences and conversations.

And increasingly, I’ve learnt to seek out people who know far more than I do.

Not just about coaching and leadership, but technology, marketing, business, strategy, psychology and systems.

I’ve learnt the value of finding someone in their zone of genius and being willing to say:

You know more about this than I do. What can I learn from you?

There’s a humility in maintaining a beginner’s mindset – being willing to put aside what you already know, remain curious and accept that expertise in one area doesn’t make you an expert in another.

And paradoxically, I think that humility has fuelled much of my success.

The more experienced I’ve become, the less I’ve felt the need to have all the answers, and the more willing I’ve become to ask questions, seek out different perspectives and learn from people who know things I don’t.

The more I learn, the more aware I become of how much there still is to learn.

My knowledge twenty years ago couldn’t sustain the business I have today. I’ve had to keep learning in order to keep evolving.

Your love of learning might just become one of your greatest competitive advantages.

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14. Sometimes the bravest career decision isn’t the most impressive one

We’re conditioned to recognise progress in certain forms.

• The bigger job. 
• The promotion.
• The salary increase.
• The larger team.
• The impressive title.

But some of the bravest decisions I’ve made, and witnessed my clients make, haven’t looked particularly impressive from the outside.

• Sometimes progress looks like moving sideways.
• Saying no.
• Leaving.
• Starting again.
• Choosing less money for more life.
• Choosing meaning over prestige.

A career decision doesn’t have to look impressive on LinkedIn to be transformational in real life.

My business exists because, twenty years ago, I made exactly that kind of decision.

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15. Success isn’t success if it costs you your health

I wish I’d understood this lesson before my body forced me to pay attention.

My own experience of burnout fundamentally changed my understanding of success and high performance.

Some of the qualities I’d been rewarded for throughout my career – drive, conscientiousness, high standards, the ability to keep going – became liabilities when I didn’t know when to stop.

The body has an extraordinary capacity to compensate… until it doesn’t.

I’ve learnt that wellbeing isn’t something separate from performance. It’s one of the conditions that makes sustainable performance possible.

No level of professional success compensates for losing your capacity to enjoy the life you’ve worked so hard to create.

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16. Rest is part of performance, not the reward for it

For years, I treated rest as something that happened after the work was done.

The problem? The work is never done.

That’s especially true when you’re a working mum.

There’s always another email to answer, client to support, idea to pursue or task to finish.

And then there’s another kind of work waiting.

A meal to cook. A kitchen to clean. A school form to complete. A bag to pack. An appointment to remember. Something somebody needs.

The list rarely, if ever, reaches zero.

If rest has to be earned by completing everything, you can spend your entire life trying to qualify for it.

That’s something I’ve had to fundamentally rethink.

Rest isn’t what happens when everything else is taken care of. And it isn’t a reward for having been productive enough.

It’s part of what enables us to keep showing up, at work, at home and in our lives, with the energy and capacity we need.

I’ve learnt that recovery isn’t the opposite of performance.

It’s one of the conditions that makes sustainable performance possible.

We don’t need to earn rest by becoming exhausted first.

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17. Your definition of success is allowed to change

The version of success I wanted in my twenties isn’t the version I want now.

Thank goodness!

We change. Our circumstances change. Our priorities change.

And yet sometimes we keep pursuing goals chosen by a much earlier version of ourselves without stopping to ask whether we still want them.

I’ve learnt to revisit the questions:

• What matters to me now?
• What is enough?
• What am I no longer willing to sacrifice?
• What kind of life am I actually creating?

Changing your definition of success isn’t moving the goalposts. It’s evidence that you’ve grown and are evolving.

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18. Your life outside work isn’t separate from your leadership

This has become one of the central beliefs underpinning my work.

Leadership is never just about work. It’s about being human.

We don’t arrive at work as isolated professional beings.

We arrive:

• After a sleepless night with a child.
• After an argument with our partner.
• While worrying about an ageing parent.
• While grieving.
• While navigating hormonal change.
• While celebrating something wonderful.
• While carrying things nobody else in the meeting knows about.

Our lives influence our leadership, and our leadership influences our lives.

The goal isn’t to pretend those worlds are completely separate. It’s to build the capacity to lead well within the reality of a whole human life.

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19. People matter more than almost everything else

Twenty years gives you plenty of metrics.

I can try and measure my success by revenue, profit, clients, programmes, qualifications, awards, podcast downloads.

But when I look back, those aren’t the things I think about most.

I think about people.

The client who finally felt ready to step into the role they’d doubted they could do.

The person who chose their health before their body forced them to.

The working mother who realised the problem wasn’t simply that she needed to “cope better”.

The leader who finally had the conversation they’d been avoiding.

And the thousands of people who’ve trusted me with parts of their lives they may have shared with very few others.

That trust is something I never (and will never) take lightly.

Being invited into those moments is one of the greatest privileges of doing this work.

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20. Don’t postpone your life

This is the lesson underneath all the others.

And perhaps it’s fitting that it’s the final one, because it’s also where this business began.

Losing my mum taught me, very abruptly, that time isn’t guaranteed.

Most of us know that intellectually. Living as though we know it is much harder… even though I learnt this the hard way, I often forget it and have to find my way back to it.

I’ll slow down after this project.

I’ll look after myself when work settles down.

I’ll make the change when the timing is better.

I’ll spend more time with the people I love when I’m less busy.

There will always be another reason to postpone.

But life doesn’t begin when we’ve finished achieving.

This is life.

It’s the ordinary Tuesday.

The mad-dashed school run.

The difficult meeting.

The deadline.

The dog walk.

The bedtime story.

The career you’re building and the people waiting for you when you close the laptop.

Twenty years ago, losing Mum forced me to question the life I was creating.

Twenty years later, I think I’m still answering that question.

And it’s why my mission has never simply been to help people become better leaders.

It’s to help people build lives and careers they don’t have to wait for a crisis to re-evaluate.

Because my hope is that more of us remember our humanity while we still have the time to live it.

So perhaps the question I’ll leave you with after twenty years is this:

Are you building a successful career or a successful life?

Ideally, I believe we should be able to build both.

I also know that, for many of us, doing that is far harder than it needs to be. We don’t all have the same choices, freedoms or constraints. Our lives are shaped by the systems we’re part of, the responsibilities we carry and circumstances we don’t always get to choose.

And perhaps that’s one of the reasons I love the work I do so much.

I get to help people find greater choice and possibility within the reality of their lives.

And, twenty years on, I get to transform one of the most painful experiences of my own life into something purposeful.

The pain of losing my mum became part of the purpose behind Luminate.

I wish more than anything that she were here to see what grew from it.

But I hope she’d be proud.

Twenty years. Twenty lessons. And still learning. 🤍

Here’s to the next chapter of Luminate.

Whether you’re an executive, entrepreneur, or overwhelmed working mum, coaching for high-achieving women can help you rediscover your voice, values, and vitality.

👉 Book a free discovery call now and explore how we can work together.