Don't do one thing.

I flew back to my other life on Tuesday. Before then, there were a couple of half marathons, a reef break or two to ride, and three more sunsets.?

I already feel like I’m being dragged back into myself. Some of this is exciting; I was longing to see my family and friends.?

When I was running a couple of days ago, I made note of a couple of circling thoughts: Don’t do one thing well.?

Some people say “Do one thing well.” They even market the concept, and manifest it with strategies like limiting product ranges.?

Fuck that.?

I’m all for focus and understanding niches. In coaching, for example, I believe I can be most useful in working with guys as they progress through existential transitions. Midlife without the crisis. This doesn’t mean foregoing opportunities to work with other leaders, teams and other demographics, it’s just a recognition of where my empathy may be strongest.?

Rather than do one thing well, do several things brilliantly, without balancing the innate obsession of betterment perpetuated by the insatiable appetites of the personal development and wellness industry. All hail the polymath.?

Afraid??

Good.

I have taken several leaps in my career, sometimes and more recently, into the unknown. I left a lucrative marketing career to start a shoe company. Why? I love shoes. Launching a business was one of the greatest learning experiences of my life. We sold the business in 2020, two months before the pandemic when no one bought “anything” from the waist down. And now I prefer being barefoot.?

In parallel, I trained to be a breathwork instructor, learning a full spectrum of modalities, from functional breathing to healing. Little did I know that I went on to do thousands of classes, helping people manage themselves through the trauma of the pandemic.

Then, after years of “agency-side” I went “brand side”, leading an insurance company. I went to work, virtually, with a knotted gut for months, knowing I didn’t have a Scooby-Doo about the product, only “thriving” on my nature to encourage my far better-informed team to do their best work.?

Coaching, another pivot, underpinned by 18 months of intense training and qualification, is not just a nuanced adaptation or evolution of my former roles, but rather a wholesale paradigm shift.??

In parallel, I cofounded @themovementproject and subsequently hosted day-long and weekend events all over the UK, introducing people to a plethora of new movement techniques for mind and body.?

And now, after having been thousands of miles away from normal for a month, I face another. While I will still coach and teach breathwork and meditation, I have the opportunity to lead a hyper-scaling company with a real climate purpose, addressing one of the fastest-growing, and comparatively “secret” sources of pollution. It’s an opportunity to dedicate the next phase of my career to the joy of learning mastery.?

Is there fear? Fuck yes.?

We are here once. We cannot stay. The trick is not to reduce the fear factors to nothing or to back away from the edge. It’s to leap with them.

Addendum.

Sometimes, oftentimes, it's best to leap holding the hand of another or being pushed by them.

Shoes - @iancartwright Breathwork - @michelleflynn Insurance - @alexsullivan Coaching - @alistairwilliams @stephenburke Movement - @neilfrankel

Eternal gratitude.