Coaching with Stefan
Career & What’s Next
Something about work doesn’t feel right. Or perhaps work has stopped altogether.
You might be thinking about leaving. You might be between jobs and looking for your next opportunity. You may have been made redundant. Or perhaps everything looks fine from the outside, but you’re quietly wondering:
“Is this it?”
You don’t have to know what comes next.
Sometimes it helps to understand where you are before deciding where you need to go.
Recognition before explanation
You might be here because…
- “I hate my job, but I don't know what I'd do instead.”
- “I've been out of work for a while and I'm starting to lose confidence.”
- “I'm applying for jobs, but I'm not even sure they're jobs I want.”
- “I need to earn money. I have people depending on me.”
- “I've got a good job. Why am I not happy?”
- “I want to leave, but I have a family to support.”
- “I've spent years building this career. I can't just throw it away.”
- “I've been made redundant and don't know what direction to take.”
- “I've done what everyone expected of me. I'm not sure I've ever asked what I want.”
- “I want something different, but starting again scares me.”
- “Work used to mean something to me. It doesn't anymore.”
- “Is this really how I want to spend the next ten years?”
What’s next doesn’t always mean leaving what’s now.
When work feels wrong, leaving can feel like the obvious answer.
Sometimes it is.
But sometimes the first step isn’t making a decision. It’s creating enough space to understand what’s actually happening.
- How did you arrive here?
- What has changed?
- What have you stopped listening to?
- Is it the work, the environment, the people or the pressure?
- Could there be something within your existing world you haven’t explored?
- Could something outside work bring back energy that’s been missing?
You may eventually decide to leave. You may discover something worth exploring where you already are. Or you may simply begin seeing things differently.
You don’t need to know before you begin.
Your head and your heart both have something to say.
Your head may remind you about salary, bills, family, qualifications, security, responsibilities and everything you’ve spent years building.
Your heart may be telling you that something is missing.
Neither needs to be ignored.
Creating space to hear both can help you understand what each is trying to tell you before you decide what comes next.
When work has stopped
When the choice wasn’t yours
Losing a job or spending time out of work can bring pressures that go far beyond finding another vacancy.
There can be financial pressure, rejection, uncertainty and questions about confidence and identity.
Sometimes you need the next job because life needs to keep moving. That matters.
But the next job doesn’t necessarily have to be the forever job.
There can still be space to understand what you’ve learned, what you need now, what kind of environment helps you thrive and what this next step might make possible.
Coaching offers somewhere to think. It isn’t recruitment or job placement.
A lived connection
I’ve stood at “What’s next?” more than once.
My working life hasn’t followed a straight line.
I wanted to enter the music industry, but my parents encouraged me to continue my education. A related route led me into Broadcast Engineering.
Once I’d worked so hard for the qualification, I thought:
“I’ve come this far. I might as well see where it takes me.”
And I did.
What followed included redundancy, unemployment, moving back home, survival jobs, difficult and supportive bosses, working abroad, retraining, freelancing and leadership.
It also included entrepreneurship, business failure and closing Ginger Camel after more than a decade. I found myself facing “What’s next?” again.
In 2025, I began taking off the CEO jacket before fully putting on the coaching jacket, giving myself space to understand what this next part of life might look like.
None of those experiences means I know what you should do. They mean I understand that “What’s next?” isn’t always an easy question.
I’ve lived enough life to know I don’t have the answer to yours.
Coaching
Sometimes you need somewhere to think.
Coaching can create space to step outside the immediate situation and look back in.
We might explore how you arrived where you are, what’s working and what isn’t, what you’ve been telling yourself, what you’ve stopped listening to, what matters now and what possibilities you haven’t considered.
You may begin to hear your own internal voice more clearly and question thoughts or assumptions that you’ve carried for a long time.
I’m not here to make the decision for you.
I’m here to create the space in which you can make your own.
A conversation first
You don’t need a career plan to start a conversation.
You might want a completely different career.
You might discover there is more available where you already are.
You might explore something alongside your existing work.
You may simply need somewhere to think while looking for your next job.
Or you may not know yet.
We don’t need to know where the conversation will lead before we begin.
An unhurried twenty-minute conversation. Nothing needs to be decided.