You’ve built the experience...
Now turn it into what comes next.
Helping experienced professionals navigate their next move - whether that means a new role, a different sector, consultancy, self-employment or a portfolio career.
Without starting again!
Work with SimonAs an experienced professional:
What is professional transition?
You’ve spent years building experience, expertise, relationships, credibility and judgement.
Now you’re thinking about what comes next.
The challenge isn’t necessarily becoming someone new. More often, it’s understanding how to use the experience, expertise and judgement you’ve already built in a new professional context.
That might mean repositioning yourself for a different role, moving into a new sector, building a consultancy or creating a portfolio career. The important thing is finding a route that feels both relevant to who you are now and realistic for the life you want to create.
That’s what Professional Transition Coaching is designed to help you do: make sense of what you already have, explore where it could take you next and turn that into a practical way forward.
You may be considering:
A promotion or different role
A move into another organisation or sector
Consultancy or self-employment
A portfolio career
Advisory, mentoring, coaching, teaching or speaking
Or simply a different way of using the experience you’ve already built.
Professional Transition
You’re not starting again…
One of the biggest fears experienced professionals have when considering change is the idea of going back to zero.
You’re not starting with nothing - you’re bringing years of accumulated value with you!
Experience, judgement, relationships, reputation, strengths and a track record built over time.
You also bring something less obvious: a deeper understanding of people, organisations, problems and what good looks like. Those things are often difficult to see when they’ve become such a familiar part of who you are.
The challenge is recognising that value, understanding where it could be useful next and translating it into a new professional context in a way that feels credible, relevant and true to you.
Perhaps you're asking:
Is this still the right role for me?
What else could I do with the experience I’ve built?
Could consultancy or portfolio work suit me better?
How do I explain my experience in a way that feels relevant somewhere new?
How do I test a new direction without taking unnecessary risks?
Am I ready to work for myself?
A practical five-stage roadmap:
A practical five-stage roadmap
Professional transition becomes easier when you stop trying to solve everything at once. My approach uses five connected stages:
Stage 1. Reflection
Who am I now, and what have I accumulated?
Before deciding what comes next, you need a clear view of what you’re bringing with you.
This stage helps you look beyond job titles and career history to understand the value you’ve built.
We explore:
- Your current reality
- Your experience and lessons learned
- Your values and priorities
- Your strengths and transferable expertise
- Your reputation and relationships
- What energises you - and what you want to leave behind
The aim is to understand not just what you’ve done, but what your experience now makes possible.
Stage 2. Exploration
What could come next?
Before making a decision, it helps to widen the possibilities and consider what your next professional chapter could look like.
That might include:
- Promotion or role progression
- Moving organisation or changing sector
- Consultancy or self-employment
- Coaching, mentoring or advisory work
- Teaching or speaking
- Portfolio careers
We also explore what you want your working life to offer next - whether that’s more autonomy, security, variety, purpose, flexibility or time.
The aim is to explore credible possibilities before deciding which direction feels right.
Stage 3. Direction
Which route are you actually going to pursue?
Exploring possibilities is useful. Eventually, though, you need to decide which route makes most sense.
This stage helps you weigh your options against the realities of your life, not just what sounds most exciting.
We consider:
- Your appetite for risk
- Income and financial requirements
- Autonomy versus security
- Family and lifestyle considerations
- Preferred working model
- Market opportunity
The aim is to identify a direction that feels both meaningful and credible.
Stage 4. Translation
How do you make your experience valuable in a new context?
Your experience may be highly valued where you are now, but that value does not always transfer automatically.
This stage helps you translate what you already know into something a new employer, sector, market or client can understand and value.
We work on:
- Packaging your experience
- Positioning and credibility
- Reputation and differentiation
- Relationships and visibility
- Personal brand and professional story
- Marketing and sales strategy
The aim is to make your experience feel relevant, credible and valuable in a different professional context.
Stage 5. Activation
How do you begin making the transition real?
The aim is not reckless change. It is practical movement that helps turn your chosen direction into reality.
1-1Â & group coaching
Who is it for?
Professional Transition Coaching is particularly suited to experienced professionals who:
- Have built a successful career but feel ready for something different;
- Are approaching a natural career crossroads;
- Have been affected by redundancy, restructuring or organisational change;
- Want to move into another organisation or sector;
- Are considering consultancy or self-employment;
- Want to create a portfolio career;
- Have significant expertise but are unsure how to use it differently;
- Feel capable of more but need clarity about where to focus;
- Or know what they don’t want anymore, but haven’t yet worked out what they do want.
You don’t need to have the answer before we begin.
That is part of the work.
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Books
Different routes. Different transitions.
Professional transition does not automatically mean leaving employment. You might be looking to:
Progress
Move into a more senior, more meaningful or better-fitting role within your existing organisation.
Move
Take your experience into a different organisation, industry or sector.
Build
Turn your expertise into consultancy, coaching, advisory or self-employed work.
Combine
Create a portfolio career made up of several different income streams, roles or professional identities.
Each route has different risks, opportunities and practical requirements.
The framework helps you decide which route fits you - rather than assuming there is one definition of a successful next chapter.
Testimonials
Why work with me?
My own professional life has taken several different forms...
I’ve worked in corporate marketing, held board-level leadership roles, experienced redundancy, built businesses, moved into consultancy, taught at university, coached professionals, written books and spoken to audiences.
That means I know what it feels like to reach a point where your previous professional identity no longer tells the whole story. And through my work with leaders, business owners and experienced professionals, I’ve seen the same pattern repeatedly: people often have far more to work with than they realise.
The challenge is making sense of that experience, understanding where it could be valuable next, choosing a credible direction and then having the confidence and structure to act.
That’s what this process is designed to support.
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What could you create - or transition into - with everything you already know?Â
You’ve already built the experience, skills, relationships and perspective.
The next step isn’t necessarily about becoming someone new. It’s about understanding how to use what you already have in a way that creates more meaning, opportunity and momentum.
If you’re ready to explore what comes next, let’s have a conversation.
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Tell me a little about where you are and what you’re working towards.