Joy Mpofu spent nearly a decade working in investment banking, including seven years at Morgan Stanley. She left the industry in June 2022, six months after ending a seven-year relationship. Looking back, she describes that period as a year of letting go. One chapter after another came to an end.

After banking, Joy co-founded a women’s health start-up focused on female pleasure, an area she cared deeply about. The business was backed by a VC accelerator and gave her the opportunity to build something she genuinely believed in. But in 2024, she made the difficult decision to close the company.

What surprised her was which ending proved harder. Leaving investment banking came relatively easily. Letting go of her identity as a founder did not.

I first met Joy more than six years ago at a hair salon called Mimi et Mina. Mimi, the owner, had separately told each of us that we needed to meet. We started talking and immediately realised how much we had in common: growing up proudly Black British with African heritage, building our careers, navigating everything else life throws at you, and a shared love of fashion.

What has always struck me about Joy is her commitment to becoming more herself. Authenticity has become something of a buzzword, but Joy has always been unapologetically herself. It is one of the things I admire most about her.

What I didn’t fully appreciate until we sat down for this conversation was how much work sits behind that confidence: the setbacks, self-reflection and conscious decision to build a life that feels true to who she is, even when it means walking away from the things that once defined her.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Tell me about your quitting moment. What did you quit, and when did you know?

My first big quit came in 2021, when I ended a seven-year relationship. Six months later, I left my seven-year career at Morgan Stanley.

Both decisions came from the same place. I couldn’t settle anymore. In different ways, I’d started betraying myself. I was making myself smaller, ignoring the quiet voice that knew something wasn’t right and convincing myself I could live with it.

I turned 30 during the pandemic and felt as though I was living in a doll’s house that I had outgrown. I made the decision to leave Morgan Stanley in February, gave notice in March and finished in June 2022 - with no plan and a ridiculous sense of optimism that everything would work out.

That decision led me to co-found a women’s health start-up focused on female pleasure. It was the right mission, but I slowly realised I wasn’t the right person to build it in the way it needed to be built. The longer it continued, the more I began to experience the same feeling I had felt in banking: disconnected and smaller.

I closed the company in 2024.

Looking back, I don’t actually think I was quitting jobs or relationships. I think I was repeatedly leaving versions of myself that I’d outgrown. At the time it felt like failure. Now it feels like evolution.

“I don’t actually think I was quitting jobs or relationships. I think I was repeatedly leaving versions of myself that I’d outgrown.”

What was the loudest voice telling you to stay, and whose was it?

In the relationship, the loudest voice was embarrassment. We had been together for seven years, and I worried that leaving would mean all that time had been wasted.

With my career, it was my family and the belief that nobody quits a job at a prestigious bank. But it was not only my family. I think we’re all influenced by environments that become our normal. When everyone around you values the same thing, it’s incredibly difficult to imagine another way of living.

I think there is also a quieter voice that tells you to stay because you already know how to succeed there. That’s probably the most seductive voice of all. When you’ve built competence and credibility in an environment, leaving means becoming a beginner again. You have to give up the certainty of knowing how to win and trust that you can figure something else out.

What did this all cost you, financially and emotionally?

I left banking with savings, a ridiculous amount of optimism and a genuine belief that I’d probably be a millionaire within a year. And if it all went wrong? Well, I’d just move back in with my parents. That was my backup plan.

Quitting banking felt surprisingly peaceful. Closing the company was something else entirely.

What I hadn’t anticipated was the grief. I wasn’t just mourning a business. I was mourning a future I’d imagined, a version of myself I’d become attached to and an identity that had quietly become intertwined with my self-worth.

I found myself asking, who am I if I am not a founder?

Closing the business also meant letting go of the life I thought I was building. I’d gone from the security of a stable career to betting everything on a dream, and then having to accept that the dream, at least in that form, had come to an end. In many ways, it felt like going backwards in order to move forwards.

But here’s the interesting part: I didn’t die.

I rebuilt. Slowly. Differently. And in the process I realised that so much of what I’d been clinging to wasn’t actually security, it was certainty. Losing the company forced me to loosen my grip on both.

Founders don’t talk about that enough. We celebrate the courage it takes to start something, but not always the courage it takes to let it go.

“We celebrate the courage it takes to start something, but not always the courage it takes to let it go.”

What does quitting mean to you now, compared to your last quitting moment?

It still means refusing to stay somewhere that asks me to become smaller than I know I can be. But I think my understanding of quitting has changed. I used to think quitting was about leaving something behind. Now I think it’s often about making space for the next version of yourself to emerge.

Looking back, I don’t actually think I’ve been quitting jobs and relationships. I’ve been leaving versions of myself that I’d outgrown. And usually, I knew before I was ready to admit it. There was always a quiet feeling that something wasn’t right, but I would negotiate with it for as long as I could because staying felt safer than stepping into the unknown.

That’s probably the biggest thing I’m still learning: trusting myself sooner. The courage isn’t always in making the decision. Sometimes it’s in trusting that you don’t need to know exactly what comes next before you are allowed to leave what no longer feels right.

What have you discovered about yourself since quitting?

I’m calmer. I had convinced myself that I was type B, laid-back and easy-going. Then a friend told me that I was actually “type A light”. She was right.

Looking back, I realised how much of my planning was actually an attempt to feel safe. Therapy helped me see that what I called discipline was often fear dressed up as control.

The biggest lesson has been that nothing is within my control except how I respond and whether I remain guided by my own compass.

“Nothing is within my control except how I respond and whether I remain guided by my own compass.”

You’ve also spoken about stepping away from Instagram. Why did you step away?

It was about identity and visibility. When I closed the business, I felt as though I had nothing to post and was ashamed of that. After stepping away, I realised how rarely I had been fully present. I realised I wasn’t actually taking photos because I wanted to remember the moment. I was taking them because I was already thinking about how I’d present the moment. Writing gave me permission to experience life first and make sense of it afterwards.

What’s next for you?

Honestly, I’m trying not to over-answer that question. Over the last few years, I’ve realised my life has been less about finding myself and more about returning to myself. It feels like I’m constantly peeling back another layer of identity, expectation, achievement and fear to get closer to what actually feels true.

And interestingly, that has extended far beyond my career. I left a seven-year relationship in my early thirties convinced I had somehow missed my chance at love. I had no idea that letting go would eventually make space for the kind of love I had always wanted. I recently got married to my best friend, which feels like one of life’s great reminders that we really don’t know what is waiting for us on the other side of letting go.

I know I’m deeply drawn towards storytelling and community. Those are the spaces where I feel most alive, and I’ve been trying to understand what it means to trust that calling rather than continually retreating towards what I already know I’m good at.

So what’s next is probably more trust. More stillness. Less trying to force life into a particular outcome and more believing that if I keep showing up honestly, the path will reveal itself.

I don’t know exactly what that looks like yet. And for once, I’m trying not to see that as a problem.

What is the one piece of advice you would give to someone sitting with a decision they can’t stop thinking about?

In my experience, the things we’re avoiding don’t disappear. They usually get louder. We mistake the discomfort of staying for the safety of staying, but they’re not the same thing. Every time I’ve eventually made the difficult decision, I’ve wished I’d trusted myself sooner. Not because the decision was easy, but because I realised my intuition had been gently trying to protect me all along.

Who should I speak to next?

My incredibly smart and talented friend Megan Chang. Megan is a US lawyer and ex VP at Morgan Stanley. She quit her corporate career to build a jewellery brand as COO. She is now an angel investor in consumer and wellness with a particular focus on women. She is just a fabulous, smart and dynamic woman also on a journey of discovering more about herself and letting go of the constructs of what she can achieve.

You can find out more on Joy’s Substack, Not The Status Quo.

Rachael Higgins is the founder of Because of Marketing, a global media company that reaches over 800,000 marketers, founders and industry leaders worldwide. Rachael started Because of Marketing from her childhood bedroom during lockdown, with no real plan or strategy, just her passion for the industry after studying marketing at university. In 2020, she had been offered a role at Coca-Cola, what she said was her dream company. Covid came and then the role went on pause, and the job never came. Rather than wait for another or apply for other grad roles, Rachael started her business. What began as a one-woman Instagram page is now a global publication followed by more than 800,000 marketers.

I have read and followed Because of Marketing from its early days, launching six years ago. It’s one of the few newsletters I open the moment it arrives, and it’s a real treat to sit down and read with a cup of tea. The reason I love the publication so much is the quality of the content, the craft, and the perspective Rachael brings to marketing - it’s refreshing and needed in an industry that, despite being so creative, can at times feel like a sea of sameness.

While I had read the publication for many years, I hadn’t met Rachael. We met a few years ago at Snap’s conference at Soho Farmhouse, and then recently again in Cannes, where Rachael interviewed me. Because of Marketing turned six this year, we spoke a few days before the anniversary. I enjoyed this conversation, as Rachael puts a new perspective on building on your own, and I left the conversation thinking she is going to build one of the most successful media companies of the next decade - she has the hunger, passion and attitude to do so.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

You didn’t quit in the “classic” sense. Tell me about that, and why you built your own thing rather than wait for another door to open.

I studied International Business with Marketing, and I always knew I wanted either to run a business or work in marketing. I graduated into a tough job market in 2019. My dream was to move to London and work for a company that did marketing really well and the first company that came to mind was Coca-Cola.

I applied for a role and was invited to the headquarters in January 2020 for a three-hour interview. I was in awe. They called the next day to say I was overqualified for the role I had applied for, but that they would create another role for me if I could join within a couple of weeks. It was my dream job. I said yes.

Then Covid happened. A few weeks later, they called to pause my recruitment because they did not know whether I would be able to join. I went from being on the verge of starting my dream job to being an unemployed graduate.

Looking back, it was the best thing that could have happened to me because it made me believe in myself. I set up a marketing Instagram page to keep myself up to date. I would walk to bus stops to photograph the advertising panels as they changed and pace supermarket aisles studying what stood out.

Six years later, I have a full-time media company. What’s for you will never go past you.

What’s for you will never go past you.

So where were you when you started it?

I was literally in my childhood bedroom, sitting on my bed. It’s funny because so many companies begin in the least glamorous places - a bedroom, a garage or a café - and that is part of the fun of it.

For the first two years, it was just me sharing campaigns and documenting my experience as a graduate. We didn’t begin trading until 2022. Now, we are a publishing company with more than 800,000 followers. We partner with brands and interview marketing leaders about the thinking and work behind their campaigns.

Was there a voice telling you not to start your own thing - and whose was it?

It was definitely my own voice. I actually deleted the Instagram account two weeks after starting it. During Covid, there were so many fitness and baking accounts, but hardly any marketing ones. When the page began appearing in people’s recommendations, I was hit by a wave of self-consciousness. What will people think of me? Is it cool? Is it nerdy? So I deleted it. But my friends said, “You light up when you talk about marketing. If you do not go all in on the subject you have just spent four years studying, when will you?” I reactivated it, and I have never looked back.

What did it cost you?

There are always trade-offs, and the two biggest have been time and balance. There is no real work-life balance when you are building something that you care about this deeply. I will put in the work required to make something happen and fulfil my dreams.

What I have learned is that I need to be more strategic and say no to the things that don’t move the business forward. In the beginning, I ran on adrenaline and said yes to everything.

The biggest lesson has been that your health is your wealth. I have always put everyone else first and myself second. I am now retraining myself to recognise that I need to come first.

I have always put everyone else first and myself second. I am now retraining myself to recognise that I need to come first.

What did it give you that you didn’t expect?

It has opened up so many doors that I would never have walked through on the traditional path - people, connections, invitations I never take for granted. One conversation can change your life. I now have at least one connection at most of the major brands, and I would never have gained that access if I hadn’t started Because of Marketing.

One conversation can change your life.

What does your Monday look like now?

We are a small but lean team of three: me, my editorial assistant and our social media manager, who is based in Melbourne. I start Monday with a walk outside because it gets the creative juices flowing. Then we plan the week: what matters most, what the analytics are telling us and what the audience has responded to. From there, we divide and conquer.

Last week was Cannes Lions, so the itinerary looked different every day. We interviewed more than 17 leaders while also editing content and producing the newsletter. Everything moves so quickly that, by Friday, the week often looks nothing like the plan we made on Monday.

What have you discovered about yourself through all of this and have there been any hard times?

2024 was the hardest year of my life. My dad was diagnosed with Lewy body dementia. I was building the company on my own, and a media company is difficult to monetise quickly. You have to earn people’s trust, build an audience and only then begin working with brands.

My dad spent six months in hospital, and I was by his side every day while continuing to build Because of Marketing. I reached a crossroads where I was prepared to give it up and care for him full-time.

But my dad had been a journalist, and we actually have similar career paths. He said, “There is no way you’re giving up Because of Marketing. This is your soul, and you have to have purpose in life.” So I continued building the business while also being his carer. To keep going, I had to loosen my grip. That was when I brought on my first two interns who I’m proud to say are still part of the team today.

I learned that I am resilient. So much of who you are as a leader comes from your life and your childhood.

To keep going, I had to loosen my grip.

What is the one piece of advice you would give to someone sitting with a decision they can’t stop thinking about?

Look at the decision from both sides. You can sit with a burning desire and allow it to pass, or you can picture yourself having acted.

Perhaps you will be better off because it worked and opened all these new doors. If it doesn’t work, you will still have learned something. One of the coolest things to do nowadays is to try and fail - it’s so much cooler to at least say that you’ve tried something as opposed to just never trying it.

Spending six months in a hospital grounds you. You have one life. I would hate for someone to hold back because of fear or because they were worried about being judged. You have to believe that you are on the right path.

One of the coolest things to do nowadays is to try and fail... it’s so much cooler to at least say that you’ve tried something as opposed to just never trying it.

What is next for Because of Marketing?

I’m excited about the next six months. We spent four and a half years on the tarmac, and now we are finally taking off.

We are taking the community from online to offline through more events and meetups, while also leaning further into video. On the business side, we are building our own IP and franchises. I want to take Because of Marketing into as many cities and countries as possible.

We will keep the weekly newsletter and campaign roundup, while creating more original series and more opportunities for the community to come together.

Who should I speak to next?

Erica Wright, founder of Sourcewhere. I met her while we were both appearing on a panel. I later did a deep dive into her company, and we ended up talking over coffee for two hours - we should have recorded the conversation there and then!

She has an incredible backstory, has built an incredible brand, and she is really taking off. I left feeling genuinely inspired.

You can find out more at becauseofmarketing.com | @becauseofmarketing

Sophia Li is an award-winning journalist and climate advocate. She is the global correspondent for the Earthshot Prize, co-founder of STEWARD, conscious media for a world worth caring for, and a United Nations Human Rights Champion, and she has written for Vogue, New York Magazine and the Washington Post. Before this, Sophia was the Entertainment Media Editor at American Vogue, part of the founding team of Vogue.com, helping to create Vogue’s digital and social voice. It was the kind of job people don’t walk away from. It was also so much a part of who she was that her colleagues stopped using her surname. She was just Sophia from Vogue.

Sophia and I first met years ago through HER, an international community network. If you have been reading this series, you will know I always close by asking who I should speak to next, and Sophia’s name kept coming back, first from Aida, then from Lydia, then from others. When we finally sat down, I wanted to understand the story behind it, why she walked away from a job most people only dream of getting, and what pulled her towards a life built around purpose and climate.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

You spent most of your twenties at Vogue, where you were the Entertainment Media Editor and part of the founding team of Vogue.com. Arguably, “the dream job”, and then you left. Tell me about this chapter.

Something I didn’t realise then that I do now is that dreams expire, and we have multitudes of dreams. In that moment I could tell I needed to leave. I had every sign. Physically, I was getting sick a lot, and I don’t usually get sick - I’ve always had a strong immune system - so when I’m really run down, I take it as my body telling me to listen.

I have this phrase. The universe gives you a sign, then it nudges you, then it pushes you, and if you’re still not listening, it slaps you across the face. My slap came in the spring of 2017. I was travelling constantly. In one month I went from New York to Sweden, back to New York, then on to LA, Tokyo, Kyoto, back to Tokyo, back to LA, back to New York, all in three weeks. And right at the end of it, over Memorial Day weekend, my last flight was to San Francisco for my older sister’s wedding. I was her maid of honour. It was the first personal day I had taken in months.

I just needed to get to the finish line. I boarded exhausted, fell asleep immediately, and woke up to sirens. They were evacuating the plane. We had taken off and landed again straight away. You could smell smoke. The left engine had caught fire. There was a recorded voice saying, evacuate, leave all your belongings, evacuate through the emergency exit. We went down the slides, we had to slide down four stories, it was that steep, and people were screaming. Then everyone ran to the field by the tarmac and the fire trucks came. It was completely surreal.

And in a moment like that, time slows down and speeds up all at once. The thought that arrived wasn’t about dying. It wasn’t “what if I die.” It was “what if I die and I had never left Vogue.” There was so much I hadn’t done yet, and I didn’t even know what I wanted at that juncture. But I knew I couldn’t go through that and walk back into my old life as though nothing had happened.

“It wasn’t what if I die. It was: what if I die and I had never left Vogue.”

A couple of months still passed between that flight and you actually leaving. Was there a voice telling you to stay?

I was in my late twenties and I was still letting my ego be in the driver’s seat. It was also when I started really understanding intuition, my higher self, my connection to spirituality. That had always been in me, but I never let it lead. My ego was too much in the way.

I’d been at Vogue for most of my twenties and it had become my entire identity, which feels silly looking back. People wouldn’t even use my last name when they introduced me. They’d say, this is Sophia from Vogue. I drank the Kool-Aid, and so did everyone around me. I was proud to be there and proud of the work. But there was this quiet inkling that there was more I wanted to do.

When I finally told them I was leaving, my boss raised my pay and offered all these things, and I thought, I could have had this the whole time. It felt like a test - now that the money is here, will you stay? I had to work through every layer of it. Saying yes to myself meant saying no to my ego, no to the identity the institution gave me, no to the validation, and no even to the money at the end. The whole thing kept asking me one question. Who are you without the role, the title, the association? It terrified me. And then it freed me.

“Who are you without the role, the title, the association?”

You went from a salary and the security to freelance and then to building your own thing. What did leaving actually cost you?

On paper it cost me the steady job, the salary, the benefits. It cost me the validation my ego wanted in my twenties, and the identity that came with the name. But those are only the costs on paper. The gains were exponential.

What I didn’t see at the time was that staying was costing me my emotional, mental and spiritual wellbeing. When you’re in it, all you think is, where’s the next paycheck, will people still take me seriously. You don’t realise that staying somewhere you already sense you shouldn’t be is the more expensive choice. It just isn’t as easy to measure. My autonomy, my time, my freedom to choose, this whole career in climate and sustainability - none of it would have been possible if I’d stayed. Those are the real gains, and the fact that they aren’t quantifiable doesn’t make them smaller.

This is the part people skip past when they talk about quitting. The cost is rarely the thing you can put a number on.

Exactly. And you realise that part of yourself is infinite. There’s no finite threshold.

Take me from Vogue to climate. You have a media company, a podcast, a whole body of impact work now. How did the dots connect?

I’m so grateful for Vogue. It was the ultimate life boot camp. When graduates ask me whether they should just launch their own agency or go straight to being independent creators, I tell them to get the years inside an institution first. Even one or two years there compounds - the work ethic, the professionalism. These days I sometimes leave Vogue off my bio entirely, it feels like a past life. But people always ask how I connected the dots.

Some of it is just who I am. But a lot of it was Vogue - that is where I connected so many dots. We did far more than fashion there. I think back to Trump’s first administration, when we were moving into politics. And one of the things that pulled me back towards real impact journalism was when we covered the Paris Climate Agreement. We gave it the full Vogue treatment - the women who wrote it, the photographers, the writing, all of it. And it didn’t perform anywhere near as well as a 500-word piece on a Kim Kardashian red carpet look, which would pull millions of views in an instant.

It made me ask, what comes first - are we just feeding what society will click on, or are we the ones manufacturing the clickbait? I came to the realisation that media has a responsibility to drive where society goes, not just chase clicks. After that, I only wanted to work on journalism that changes how people see and understand the world. That’s what led me to climate.

“Media has a responsibility to drive where society goes, not just chase clicks.”

What does a typical Monday look like now?

Before Luna, my daughter, Mondays were for admin. I would try not to take any calls. I’m a big-picture thinker, the storytelling comes naturally, but invoices and logistics and paying contractors do not. So Monday was the day to get all of it done.

Now it’s a little different. This morning I woke up and wrote in the five-year journal a friend gave me, went through the week and worked out how to shape it. Then I put Luna down for her first nap. The first year goes so fast. If we’re all going to live to 100, the baby stage is just 1% of that. So I’m giving myself more pockets of time to just be present with her.

You’re upstate now, not in the city. Does that change how you plan the week?

I go in two or three days, usually Tuesday and Thursday, with a half day on a Wednesday or Friday. We wanted her first year to be in nature, somewhere steady, so we’re in Tuxedo, north of the city for now.

What does quitting mean to you now?

I wouldn’t even call it quitting now. I quit Vogue, obviously. But it doesn’t feel like that word. Every time something closed, more things opened. It felt more like levelling up - the move that took me to my highest alignment, which I could never have reached by staying put.

Back then I had a lot of bravery, but it was bravery wrapped in fear. I always say my fear is a compass. As long as I’m not in physical danger, the things that scare me most are the map. We’re lucky to live in a time when our basic needs are met, so the fear I feel now is almost always pointing me somewhere I need to go. When I was terrified of leaving Vogue, that was the signal.

Intuition is a muscle. I’ve worked it so much that it’s strong now, and I can’t talk myself out of it the way I used to. Back then I ignored it constantly, because I had never trained it at all.

What is the one piece of advice you would give to someone sitting with a decision they cannot stop thinking about?

I'd go back to the compass. Even if you have no idea what the next step is, if something keeps tugging at you, there's a reason it's pulling you. Follow it.

“Use your fear as a compass.”

What is next for STEWARD and your work?

Right now, a lot of it is about building my work around Luna’s first year, protecting my time and saying yes only to the things that are in real alignment.

At STEWARD, we will continue to have live conversations and experiences on really sticky topics that all connect back to personal and planetary renewal: from the women’s health gap in longevity to men leaving the patriarchy to reach spiritual alignment. STEWARD is the destination and the safe space to have these conversations with experts, thought leaders to help us all process and reset our overstimulated nervous systems. There are some “off-menu” projects we are working on where we are reinventing how Gen Z and Alpha perceive and understand complex topics through long-form storytelling.

Outside of STEWARD, I am proud to continue working with The Earthshot Prize team as their global correspondent, storytelling their finalists’ work to scale their solutions across the world from seaweed packaging to storing carbon into rocks. I am part of the small and mighty team that launched the first ever NAT Gala, we will be having our second one this upcoming September during New York Climate Week. As someone who has worked 7 Met Galas, it is refreshing to work on Nature’s Met gala where funding goes towards preserving the greatest thing we will ever know: our own biosphere. I’m proud to be on multiple climate and impact boards for companies like Saie, Cocokind, Fable Fund, and more. I span multiple industries and everyone says my biggest weapon is my network which I nurture religiously.

Who should I speak to next?

Liz Tran. She’s a dear friend and an author now. She quit venture capital to start a meditation studio in New York, had to close it during the pandemic, and that led her to become a two-time bestselling author.

You can find out more @sophfei and @steward.media.

Grace Williams trained as a corporate lawyer and spent years building a career she never imagined leaving. In her early twenties, she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and told to avoid stress, expect fatigue, and prepare for relapses. She was determined not to let the diagnosis define her and started a career in law. And then the challenges came - both her parents were diagnosed with cancer in the same year, and she became their carer while continuing to build her career. She quit, almost overnight, to retrain as a health and nutrition coach. She now works with private clients and runs the Rhythm Code, her group programme for ambitious women in senior corporate roles. She is based in the Cotswolds, which is its own kind of quit from London life.

I met Grace at a Pilates retreat in Menorca last year. If you have ever been on a retreat, you will know how it goes - you arrive as strangers and somehow leave having had the most honest conversations of your year. Grace and I connected that week and have been close friends since. There are not many people you meet at this age and think we are going to be friends for life. Grace was one of them. What drew me to her immediately was her story. The first time I heard it I thought she is so resilient. I still think that. I felt it even more sitting down to interview her.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Let’s start at the beginning. You had a career in corporate law. Then you quit. Why and when did you know?

It was a Friday morning and I had absolutely no thought of quitting my job. By 3am the same night - well, what would technically have been Saturday morning - I had made my decision. There was no build up. I had always wondered whether I would have the guts to do something different, but never actually thought I would.

What was life as a corporate lawyer like?

The three years before that, I had been a lawyer and a carer - looking after my mum who was unwell. I qualified, made the transition from trainee to associate, all while that was happening. That transition is the big one in law. But I never felt 100% in it because my focus was split. When my mum passed away, I thought okay, now I can be a proper lawyer.

So I was a year into what I felt was real law. And the stress I had assumed was tied to caring - I realised it was just law. The requests coming in at 6, 7pm. Deadlines set not around reality but around what the client wants. I had gone from caring for my mother - not seeing friends, not really living - to still not seeing friends, still not really living. But now it was law causing it. I thought I would get my life back. Instead I was just at my desk, behind a laptop screen, not leaving my flat.

So you went from one form of disappearing to another.

Exactly that. And the cruelest part was that the reason had changed but the experience had not.

So what happened that Friday night?

My aunt and uncle had moved into the family home while they were between houses. For the first time in a long while, it felt like a family home again. After my mum passed, that house had become a kind of empty shell. But with them there, it had life back in it.

I had gone home for the weekend. Everyone went out for dinner on the Friday. I was working when they left. I was still working when they got back - which was around midnight, 1am. My aunt sat down next to me. I think she had had a glass of wine. And she said what is going on here?

Not just - why are you still working. More like bigger picture. You’re not living. You’re not okay.

What followed was a couple of hours of conversation I would not have found on my own. Because it was not only about what was not working - it was about what was. She had watched me come off calls with my one test client - I had been quietly exploring what would become my business on the side. She had seen something different in me. She had noticed how lit up I was. And her question was really - is this what you want? Is it worth the stress, when you have something else you actually care about?

That was the 180.

“She had watched me come off those calls and seen the difference in me. Her question was really - is this what you want? Is it worth the stress, when you have something else you actually care about?”

What happened when you woke up the next morning?

I walked into my dad’s room and said I am going to quit my job on Monday.

And I didn’t question it. I am an overthinker. I second-guess everything. It takes me forever to make decisions. But it was like the decision had already been made somewhere else, and I had just caught up with it. There was this feeling of peace and groundedness that came with it - and I have come to trust that feeling. That is where I look now, whenever something big is in front of me. If that peace is there, it is right.

“The decision had already been made somewhere else. I had just caught up with it.”

What did quitting cost you?

Financially - from a very comfortable salary to zero. No paying clients, no database, starting from nothing. I didn’t start building while I was still in the job. So that hit was real and immediate.

But the bigger cost was identity. I had no idea how much of my confidence, my worth, my status - how I showed up in any room - was tied to saying I was a lawyer. It took a good six months to stop qualifying everything with I used to be a lawyer, but now I do this. That title had been my reason for things. My excuse for things. Can’t make dinner - I am a lawyer. Not dating - I am a lawyer. It explained me. And suddenly I didn’t have it. I had to walk into rooms and just be Grace. That was the hardest lesson - not finding a new title, just being myself without the armour.

And then there was the grief. I thought I would jump straight into the business from January - I quit in December. What I didn’t anticipate was needing about three months just to rebuild. To actually face that my mum had died, that I was grieving. My health took a real hit. I had to recover, do the identity work, and come back to myself physically before I was in any place to think about what the business would look like.

“I had to walk into rooms and just be Grace. No title. No armour. That was the hardest lesson.”

What did that period give you that you didn’t expect?

Confidence. And trust in myself.

I would never have called myself resilient. On paper, yes - I knew we had been through a lot. But busyness had been my shield. If I stayed busy, I did not have to face what any of it actually was.

Quitting stripped that away. It gave me the courage to stand in what I had been through and turn it into something. I wish every day that my mum was still here. But I would not be doing this work - not really, not from this place - had it not been for her passing. That can sound harsh. But I was hiding so much. I needed the push.

And then quitting itself teaches you to trust your own voice. Because everyone asks why. Particularly with law, it is always - well, you have the qualification, you can always go back. And from day one, something in me was just: I am not going back. Not from wanting to stay away - more like that path simply is not mine. You get very good, very quickly, at holding your own decision in the face of everyone else’s doubt.

“When you can admit that something is not for you - whether that is big or small - that is such a strength. Because what does it open up?”

You have done another quit since - tell me about the move to the countryside.

When I left law, I moved back home straight away. I knew I was not going to pay rent while building a business from zero. But that part felt like a failure. Quitting London, moving home - I can’t believe I am having to do this.

Fast forward three or four years - and I have just moved from London to the Cotswolds. And this one is completely different. This is the most successful quit I have made. I could not be happier. It came from knowing where I am happiest, where I am most at peace, where my health is best. I was telling myself for years that I needed to be in London - for the work, for the visibility, for all the things. But the first quit of London was a cost I took. This one is a choice I made. The difference between those two is everything.

Success for me now is doing something you love but fundamentally feeling at peace in it and after it. That is here.

What does a Monday look like now?

Slow. Deliberately slow. Sunday is church in the evening - I get back late. So Monday morning is mine: a long walk outside, my diary, a notepad, a brain dump. Where am I this week? What am I creating? I will pray, ask where I am meant to be, what I am meant to be building. And then it ranges. Private clients. The Rhythm Code. Corporate workshops. Creative work behind the scenes. It is varied. And I like that it doesn’t have a structure.

What does quitting mean to you now?

It used to mean failure. I took so long to stop saying I was a lawyer because leaving felt like admitting I had not been good enough. The thing was, I was good enough. But I was terrified of being read as someone who had failed.

Now it is a strength. When you can admit that something is not for you - whether that is a career, a city, or a fashion choice you have sworn by for years - that is not weakness. That is clarity. And clarity opens things up.

“When you can admit that something is not for you - that is not weakness. That is clarity. And clarity opens things up.”

What is the one piece of advice you would give to someone sitting with a decision they can’t stop thinking about?

If you can’t stop thinking about it, there is a reason it has stayed there. We all have ideas that land one week and disappear the next. If this one hasn’t gone anywhere, that means something.

And underneath all the fear and the questions - if there is a feeling of peace that comes with the thought, even just a flicker, that is your answer. It is on your heart for a reason. Trust that.

Who should I speak to next?

I might be cheating a little here - but I think we need to hear from the voice behind all of it. The one who created this and has been asking everyone else these questions. You.

Let’s do this. Watch this space!

Grace Williams is a health and nutrition coach. Find her at @g_documented

Lydia Pang is one of the most talented creative leaders working today, with a career spent building some of the most iconic brands in the world. As Group Creative Director at Refinery29 in New York and then Creative Director at Nike HQ in Portland, she earned a reputation as one of the sharpest creative minds in the industry - someone with a rare ability to move between culture, creativity and commercial impact with equal conviction. She has judged Clio Awards, D&AD, and sat as a Cannes Lions delegate. Her studio, MØRNING, works with clients including Nike, LVMH, Margiela and YSL. And her debut book, Eating Bitter - a memoir woven through eight recipes, exploring burnout, fertility, marriage and the quiet act of starting again is out now.

I had admired Lydia from afar for years. When we finally worked together a few years ago, I got to experience first-hand why - someone who pushes and challenges your thinking in equal measure. What I didn’t know until we sat down for this conversation was the full story behind the move that preceded all of it - leaving Nike, leaving Portland, leaving the United States - and what it actually took to walk away from everything she had dreamed success was.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

You were one of the few female creative leaders at Nike - the job you had spent your career building towards. Tell me about your decision to quit.

I had arrived. That was genuinely how it felt. I was like, this is it - this is who I was supposed to be. And I did that job for a few years. But something was missing. I kept telling myself I could be entrepreneurial within the structure, that I could scratch that itch from the inside. But ultimately, I wanted to build something of my own. And to try to hold that ambition while being in Portland, in the eye of the storm - COVID, the wildfires, the social justice movement, George Floyd - it was a lot. I felt so compressed, by the job and by everything happening around me. I just needed to palette cleanse. I needed to cleanse my brain.

And was there a single moment, or was it more of a slow undoing?

It was a slow undoing. I had always done side hustles - started a small business, written an article, tried to turn a profit on something on the weekends - to satiate what was missing. That year I self-published a zine. But underneath all of that, I had started to not even recognise myself. My marriage was struggling. I was showing up to work being super shiny, zipping myself into confidence, while quietly falling apart. And then one day someone shouted racial abuse at me in the street. And that was the day I decided it was time to go home. It sounds strange to say, but it gave me permission. It made the decision for me.

“I needed to be nothing. I wanted to be nothing and no one and do nothing.”

You left Nike. You left Portland. You moved back to Wales - where you grew up - not London, not New York, but Wales. Tell me about that decision and what it actually cost you.

It literally cost me my financial security. It cost me a hard-earned reputation - or at least that is how it felt at the time. It was a significant ego dent. And it cost me something inside my family dynamic too. I am the firstborn, the straight-A, the shiny one. Moving back in with my parents, needing them to look after me when I had always been the one looking after everyone - that was a whole new identity to reckon with. But I moved back to Wales by design. I needed to be nothing. I wanted to be nothing and no one and do nothing. And honestly, it was one of the hardest and best things I have ever done. During those months - no money, no home, no fancy email address - I was the least shiny I had ever been. But I felt the most present with myself I had ever been.

There must have been a voice telling you to stay. What did that sound like?

It was the girl in my twenties who got up for the gym at five, did the panel in the evening, worked on the weekends. It was my past self being like: what are you doing? This is what we wanted. This is what we worked towards. Where are you going? It was not fear of the unknown. It was my own history scolding me for daring to want more. I honestly did not think there would be more after Nike. It was the best job I had ever had. It was everything I had wanted it to be. But it was not my own thing. And I had never felt more full than I do now, doing my own thing.

“I felt invisible. And so to be visible to people I admire - it felt like maybe I am actually good enough.”

What did quitting give you that you didn’t expect?

My sense of self feels so rooted now. I feel so clearly who I am. I have more autonomy, more influence, more money - all of the things I was goaling towards, I have actually attained, on my own terms. And there is nothing sweeter than that. But the thing I did not expect was how held I would feel by my community. You can’t feel more irrelevant than quitting your great job and moving to Wales. I felt invisible. And so to be visible to people I admire - to have people reach out, to feel relevant in my field even from rural Wales - felt like permission. Like, maybe I am actually good enough. Maybe I do not need to be in New York to matter.

You started MØRNING with a co-founder, Sam. Was that always the plan?

I was always planning to go alone. But when I met Sam at Nike, I realised what I had been missing. I have always been a generalist - across culture, creative direction, strategy, vision. I have never gone deep on a single craft. Sam is the opposite. He is a visionary at the work, exceptional at the depth of the craft. Incredibly detail-oriented. I was intimidated by his attention to detail, and then completely enamoured by it, because it was the skill I could never quite grasp. It felt like I had met the other half of me, professionally. I can sell and I can paint a vision but Sam can innovate and exceed it. And so starting the business together, I suddenly had the full picture.

And the friendship - does that make it easier or harder?

Both. It is rooted in friendship and humility. We are both clear on what we are great at and what we are not, and that creates real respect for each other’s lanes. He is my best friend, and I admire him as an entrepreneur. But this duality makes running a business together both great, and occasionally very hard. We always say our friendship comes first, because MØRNING would not exist in the same way if it wasn’t born from our friendship. It’s very much our baby.

Your book, Eating Bitter is out now. It discusses your burnout, fertility, marriage, and belonging. What made you want to write it?

I spilled my guts. It is really quite ugly and uncomfortable to read. And I feel so much power from that. I love truth. It feels very powerful to me. Morning and Evening - the studios - they run on that same energy. Decisiveness and clarity meeting emotion. The book is the same. I have always worn my heart on my sleeve, kind of with my chest. And I think that is what has set me apart, actually. Not despite the vulnerability, but because of it.

How has your relationship with quitting changed? When you look back now, what do you understand about it that you didn’t then?

I think I understand that the cost and the loss, as painful as they were, were things I didn’t actually need. They were things that needed to be shed. The identity stitched to a fancy email address, the reputation tied to a brand name, the safety of a defined role - none of that was really mine. What I have now is mine. The qualities that perhaps I had edited in corporate environments - the decisiveness, the emotional intelligence, the instinct - I was able to let them sing. And it has been really beautiful to watch that be commercially viable. That it is not chaotic or naive to lead that way. That it works.

“If it is present, it exists. You have to honour it.”

What is the one piece of advice you would give to someone sitting with a decision they cannot stop thinking about?

Honour it. If it is present, it exists. You have to honour it. Because there is data there. You may not know now, or in a year, or in ten years, and that is fine. It can simmer. But you have to honour it.

Who should I speak to next?

Sophia Li. A dear friend, and an incredible creative entrepreneur and climate journalist. After building a significant social media presence, she launched her own media company and now speaks at the UN, builds community around climate advocacy. She is fearless. And the quitting story she has is iconic.

Lydia Pang is the Co-Founder, MØRNING. Find her on Instagram: @lydia_pang_

Coaching has shaped every quit, pivot, and pause I have made. And one of the coaches who has been most pivotal to that journey is Tash Ullah - so when I decided it was time to speak to a coach for this series, there was only one call to make.

Tash spent over fifteen years as a director at some of the biggest PR consultancies in the country - FTI, Hill & Knowlton, freud communications. On the surface, the career she had built was working. Promotions, pay rises, seniority. Underneath, something else was happening entirely. For years, she felt isolated and overwhelmed, and exhausted - until her body made the decision for her. She was diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

What followed was not a straightforward pivot. It was a long process of rebuilding - physically, psychologically, professionally - with coaching as the constant thread. When she came out the other side, she built a practice around exactly that experience.

She now runs The Reframe with Biomedical Practitioner Lilly Barton - a whole system performance coaching practice working with women who sense they are capable of more. The approach combines executive coaching, nutrition, and targeted diagnostic testing to identify and address the behavioural and biological factors quietly limiting energy, resilience, and performance.

Through that combination, Tash helps clients bridge the gap between where they are and where they want to be - rebuilding their relationship with stress, reclaiming their energy, and building the capacity to show up more fully at work and in life, with lasting change.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What did you quit, and when did you know?

A job in communications. And when did I know? I think I knew when I had a big promotion - I went from managing a team I had really enjoyed to becoming business director, which meant less oversight of people and more responsibility for the numbers and new business. And it left me feeling bereft. It had cut off my contact with people. That connection - with colleagues, with clients, with the human side of the work - was the thing that got me out of bed in the morning. Without it, everything felt flat.

What happened after that? How did you get from knowing to actually becoming a coach?

I knew I was coming to the end of the line. I knew I wasn’t happy. And I had a really good relationship with my CEO at the time, so I sat down with her and said: I don’t think this is working for me. I told her that what really excited me was when someone on the team was struggling, or when a client needed support, or when someone needed building up. But put me in a room with Coca-Cola and tell me to come up with a strategy and I’m just falling asleep.

She said, “Have you ever thought about being a coach?”

Honestly, I hadn’t. When she said it, something just clicked. Of course, that’s what I should be doing. But I’ll be honest - I had never had a coach, never really looked into it. My immediate association was life coaching, and if I’m honest I had a bit of stigma in this area. I had this vague image of dowdy people in cardigans preaching about ‘living your best life’. But there was also something in the idea that excited me, and through The Reframe I’ve created a warm, pragmatic and modern style of coaching that I love. So really, that conversation was the start of everything.

Was there a voice telling you to stay?

As soon as you say that - it’s my dad’s voice. Of course it is. I grew up with him saying you have to get a stable job, build yourself up through a company. That’s no fault of his own - that’s what safety meant to him. And it was a message that stayed with me.

There’s that voice in your head saying: you’ve built this, it’s safe, you’ll be making a massive mistake if you leave and try something else. But it is an inherited voice. It’s not your voice.

And I do see this with the women I work with. It takes women a bit longer to get to the decision than it does for men. Not that men don’t have the same voice - but women seem somehow more lashed to the mast of what the voice tells them, it can take longer to overcome. Because in the main, it’s not in our culture to sit down and encourage little girls to do big, brave things - to take risks, to seek glory.

It is an inherited voice. It’s not your voice.

What did quitting cost you?

Ego. There was something really safe and validating about building an identity based on the company you work for and the title you hold. I worked in film for a long time and I used to love waltzing around parties telling people I was a director in film PR - it sounded glamorous, even though the reality really wasn’t. I strove for the safety of that descriptor. This is who I am. Therefore I must be valuable, interesting, worthwhile.

And then to give all of that up. To walk into a room and have people ask what you do, and to say - nothing much, really, right now. That takes a lot of getting used to.

Interestingly, I didn’t have a coach during my own transition. But I was introduced to someone who had made a similar journey, and rather than coaching me, she just talked about her own path - the training, the qualifications she had done. I eventually did work with her. She became my first coach. But it started as just a conversation about someone else’s story.

It’s ego death. There was something really safe and validating about building an identity based on the company you work for and the title you hold.

What did going through that teach you about the work you do with others?

The biggest revelation was that all the people I used to work with who really seemed like they had it together - who had this magical formula no one else had access to - it was nonsense. Everyone shares the same anxieties. Everyone has that little voice whispering nonsense about their own capabilities. We just don’t tell each other. And because I was suddenly in this position where I was having those honest conversations with everyone, I felt this enormous sense of connection - especially with women.

What I wish I had known is that everything I felt was probably something most of my peers were feeling too. And I think one thing corporate environments genuinely fail at is creating space for people to be honest - about having a bad day, about having doubts. There’s this culture of bringing your best every single day. For some people, that sustained performance isn’t sustainable. It’s actually what ends up being the reason they leave.

What does your week look like now?

My week is very deliberately divided. Monday is my house and family life admin day - kids health appointments, laundry, food, I set my stall up for the week. And then I leave it. I’ve had to train myself to do that, because the moment everything bleeds into everything else, I lose the plot.

Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday is work. Clients, session prep, personal development, working up new programme ideas, connecting. If I had to divide it down to its essence: Monday is the day of labour. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday is the day of connecting & creation & Friday is my special time with my son when he’s off nursery.

What do people underestimate about quitting - and what do they overestimate?

They underestimate the skills they’ll need - particularly if they’re going out on their own or starting something new. Financial management, marketing yourself, understanding what it actually takes to generate revenue. People need a clearer picture of that before they go. But that stuff also isn’t hard. It’s just doing your research.

What they overestimate is how hard it will be. People love to catastrophise. I won't make any money, I'll fail, it'll be awful. And there's a very specific reason for that: catastrophising is a way of avoiding the discomfort of actually doing it. If you convince yourself it's going to be awful, you never have to try. You get to stay exactly where you are and tell yourself you're the special person it just wouldn't work for.

When you strip all of that away, there’s just a fear of discomfort. And people fear the discomfort of quitting so much they’ll stay in a job for two more years - being even more uncomfortable and unhappy.

People fear the discomfort of quitting so much they’ll stay in a job for two more years - being even more uncomfortable and unhappy.

What is the one piece of advice you would give to someone sitting with a decision they can’t stop thinking about?

Stop and seek inspiration. The definition of rumination is getting stuck in a loop of repetitive, negative thinking - going over the same thoughts or problems again and again without moving toward resolution. This is what many people experience when they think about quitting.

The most effective way to break that cycle is to create some psychological distance. Shift your focus. Listen to a great podcast. Speak to someone who’s made a similar decision. And really importantly, actively explore what could go right when it comes to this decision.

When you let the rumination drop and gain perspective, you may be surprised by what bounces back up.

Who should I speak to next?

Lilly Barton. She’s got a great story.

Tash Ullah

Founder, The Reframe

LinkedIn

Website: www.thereframe.co.uk

Tobi Asare has spent her career helping ambitious businesses grow - commercially, culturally, and reputationally. She is also the author of The Blend, a practical guide to navigating career and parenthood - covering everything from the financial to the emotional, from preparing for maternity leave to returning with confidence. It is about how to thrive while blending work and family life, not just survive it. She founded My Bump Pay, a platform dedicated to the financial realities of pregnancy and parental leave.

I read The Blend on maternity leave and it had such an impact on me - navigating the return to work, motherhood, ambition, everything that comes with it. I have ordered it for every woman who has asked me for advice on navigating all of it since. What I keep coming back to with Tobi is not just what she has built, but how openly she has shared the process of figuring it out. When she stepped away from a senior leadership role at one of the largest media agencies in the country, she did it in the open - posting about the wobbles, the identity questions, the unexpected gifts of pausing.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What did you quit, and when did you know?

I quit working for one of the largest media agencies, where I was on the leadership team in a growth role - new business and marketing. And honestly, I knew over a year before I actually made the decision. There was a long process of exploration, quite an open one. I was having those conversations internally and externally, and I had made it a very open conversation with my leadership that I was exploring and thinking. So it was not a sudden thing. It was a crescendo.

What brought you to the actual moment of decision?

It was a feeling, more than anything. I just felt like I needed to take a bet on myself. I needed to take a risk. The job was really great, but it was all-encompassing, and because of that I was really struggling to get any kind of bird’s-eye view of the possibilities. What I could do alongside being a mum, alongside being all the other things I am to other people.

It was only when I started talking properly to my husband, and he asked me, what’s stopping you? that I realised. If you remove those barriers, maybe it is possible to take a bet on myself. And once that thought takes hold, it’s almost like ripping off a plaster. We had that conversation in the afternoon. A few days later, I started the conversations at work about moving on.

“If you think about all the reasons not to do it - especially as a mum - you definitely won’t do it. It’s not always a rational thing.”

What was the loudest voice telling you to stay, and whose was it?

Honestly? What the outside world thinks of you. How you think you’re perceived. It has a massive bearing on the decision to stay, even when we tell ourselves it should not. When you’ve built a profile, you start to believe that profile is also what’s going to open doors for you next. In a small industry, perception matters. That definitely weighed on me.

But the biggest pull - and I’m being really honest here - was my team. If you know what new business pitches are like in agencies, you go through things together. Work things, but also life things, because life bleeds into those long hours. They supported me in a way that’s hard to describe. I had seen their careers grow. I had met their families and likewise they had met mine. That felt like a lot to walk away from.

And then there was the woman who hired me, one of my former bosses. She was such a massive part of my professional growth. It felt scary to leave that support system. Plus the job itself was interesting. I had carved out a way of doing it that worked for me. And I’ve got kids. Starting again when you’ve got kids is a massive upheaval that I don’t think you can really appreciate until you do it.

What did quitting actually cost you?

It cost me my identity. That sounds really strong, but I think it’s worth exploring. The marketing and advertising world is interesting - you can build a personal brand, but it’s attached to a title. When the title goes, you have to really look in the mirror and ask: who am I? Is attaching your identity to a corporate entity healthy? Is it right? Because we are so much more than our job titles.

I remember going to an event and there was a form with an asterisked field for your title. And I genuinely did not know what to write. The first day of not working, I felt miserable. I was with my kids all day, which I loved - but I also felt this semi-depression, this loss of momentum. I had to find a rhythm quite quickly that made me feel productive, like I was still learning.

And all of a sudden you’re an entity not attached to a massive corporate brand. Sometimes that brand opens doors for you - people hear where you work and they’re immediately interested. When you don’t work there, you have to qualify why you’re interesting. That’s a different kind of effort.

“When the title goes, you have to look in the mirror and ask: who am I beyond it?”

What did the pause give you that you didn’t expect?

So much. I decided very quickly that this was my time to say yes. Before, I’d be invited to lunches, launches, events - and I could never really make them because I had a full-time job. But I just decided to say yes to as many things as possible. To get out there, stay busy and stay open.

And every single person I told - I’m in a bit of a career break, figuring out my next move - would say: you should talk to so-and-so, or would you come and do this, or I think this would be really interesting for you to explore. Out of that, I had offers to do some really interesting projects. Not all of them were right, but it just opened up this whole new frame of what was possible.

During that time, I worked two days a week for SheerLuxe, leading their commercial team. They’re an incredible publisher, genuinely innovative. Being at the forefront of that taught me a huge amount about fast-paced environments - and it kept my brain moving, while still giving me flexibility for family. It was the short gap year I never had. I went straight from university into law school and then into work, so I’d never really had that space before.

You’ve been very open about this whole process publicly. Why?

Because I wrote a book about being a working parent and blending work and life. But the one chapter I always regret not writing was about actually taking a moment for yourself. What does looking after yourself really look like? What choices does it require - especially when you’ve got a family?

So I felt like I needed to live it out loud. To actually show people that sometimes it’s okay to take a step back. The pressure to have it all, and have it all at the same time, is just too much. Sometimes having it all means one thing at one point in your life, and something completely different at another. I thought people might think, ‘aren’t you the person who works?’ But we have to expand our definition of what work means. Working is not necessarily going to an office every day.

And what did you learn about yourself through all of it?

That I don’t always feel resilient. I have wobbles many times a day. But I’ve learned that movement is the thing that brings me back. I can feel quite wobbly in the morning - a little raw, a little emotional. I go to the gym, and by the time I come out, something has shifted. Physically stronger, and emotionally stronger too.

During the pause, I took movement really seriously. Because I was going through this wave of emotions - who am I, what am I doing, am I relevant? - and I needed something that would just cut through all of that and remind me that I’m capable. I don’t need a corporate logo behind me to be worth something.

What does quitting mean to you now, versus then?

I’m just not afraid of it the way I was. I’m not saying I’ll do it again - but if I had to take another big pivot and find my way, I feel confident I could. So for me now, quitting means new self-discovery. Growth. Self-exploration. New opportunities. It was the gap year I never had. And I really cherish that time.

What is the one piece of advice you would give to someone sitting with a decision they can’t stop thinking about?

Do it in community. Don’t do it alone. Find like-minded people who can come alongside you on the journey - a mentor, friends, events, spaces you’ve never had the capacity to be in before. That was the most enriching part of it for me. I learned things about myself, met people who will inspire me forever. You can’t find any of that by staying in the same room.

Who should I speak to next?

The founders of Wardrobe Icons, Laura Fantacci and Petronella Stofberg.

Tobi Asare is the author of The Blend and founder of My Bump Pay. Find her on Instagram @tobi.asare.

Meredith Gillies started out in PR and communications before joining Bumble’s Canadian marketing team as a founding team member - later taking on a global and US role where she led some of the brand’s most impactful campaigns. From there, Kotn, Parade, and now HelloFresh. She is one of the best marketers I have ever worked with - and I am not being biased. Culture, creativity, brand. She just gets it.

I met Meredith at Bumble, where she quickly became my work wife. Despite living on opposite sides of the world, we still manage to see each other every year. There has always been a quiet confidence to Mere. An unshaking belief she will be fine. She is the friend who backs you when sometimes you don’t fully back yourself. And when it was her turn, she packed up a 15-year life in Toronto, wired money to a stranger for an apartment she had never seen, and boarded a plane to New York. What this interview made me think about is how rarely we talk about the role friendship plays in all of it - the friend who says out loud what you already know, the ones who show up when your whole life is in boxes, and the ones who are still there on the other side.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What’s the first quitting moment that comes to mind?

Quitting Bumble. It was the most emotional decision I had made up to that point. I remember sobbing because it felt like such a significant piece of my personality and life was ending. I was Mere from Bumble. And I knew it was time to go, but that didn’t make it any less huge.

It was wild because it had only been three years and it felt like a lifetime. We met so many cool people through Bumble. I was integrated into Toronto in this new way - I knew every woman entrepreneur in the city, we did all these incredible events. And I genuinely wondered: will my next role even matter? Will I have those kinds of connections again?

Looking back, that was also the beginning of a bigger shift. I’d just been through a significant breakup. I was no longer tied to Canada in any real way. So there was this question of - what is next for me, and where?

The Bumble identity piece is interesting. I felt the same. Because it wasn’t just the job, was it?

I think what I’ve realised since is that we both suffered from the same thing - burning ourselves out for a job, even one we loved. So in a strange way, leaving was the thing that taught me my job doesn’t have to be the centre of my identity. I needed Bumble at that moment. But I needed to leave it too.

And then leaving Toronto. That felt like a different kind of quitting - more of a pull?

I had been thinking about moving out of Toronto for three years, flipping between which city I would want to move to. LA, Austin and even London. Just this constant loop of - where should I go, what’s the right moment, I still have my lease, I still have these trips booked. I thought about it all the time.

And then after a year of me joining Parade, I had been talking to them about moving to LA and we had a staff party at a bowling alley where the chief of staff came up to me and just said: you should just move to New York. It doesn’t have to be forever. When else will you get the opportunity?

New York felt so big and like a crazy decision but as soon as I heard her say it out loud it clicked.

But the timing was complicated. You moved knowing Parade was being acquired.

I knew it would be sold a few months after moving and what would happen with my role after that was kind of up in the air. So I had to make a decision: do I let this uncertainty stop me? Because there will always be something. There’s always a reason to wait. Toronto was so comfortable - I’d been in my apartment for six years, I had routine. And I was like, I have to go, or there will always be something holding me back.

My mom and I have a motto: “stop yapping and start doing.” That was genuinely me. I had to stop talking about it and go.

“Stop yapping and start doing.”

What did it actually cost you?

My company covered lawyers, which is a huge expense - visas are brutal, the process is so slow, you live in this strange limbo for so long waiting for something that’s entirely out of your control.

I wired $2,000+ to a stranger without ever seeing the apartment. She said the keys would be in the mailbox and I hoped the apartment would be fine. I spent around $3,000 moving my furniture down. And then you get there and you realise - I also need a whole new wardrobe, because I had worn sweatpants for three years since the pandemic and New York requires you to actually leave the house.

So I saved hard from October until I moved. Stopped going for dinners, stopped random shopping, didn’t really travel. Because I knew I wanted to arrive with money, not to be cautious, but so I could actually live.

And what does life in New York actually look like now?

I don’t do anything on Mondays and Tuesdays. It’s not optional. I work from home, I go to Barry’s at 5:30, same trainer, same spot, I make dinner, and that’s it. If someone asks me to hang out I’m busy.

When I first moved I said yes to everything - if someone invited me to a random party I went, because you’re new and you need to build your people. And it worked. But I was burning out. So now Mondays and Tuesdays are mine. The rest of the week, whatever happens happens. Now I say yes to everything except on Mondays and Tuesdays.

I learned to let go in New York because so many things are out of your control, so you learn to go with it. I feel like a different person than who I was in Toronto. I feel closer to my friends. I feel like I’ve built a life I actually want rather than one that just accumulated around me.

“I built a life I actually want rather than one that just accumulated around me.”

How has your relationship with quitting changed?

Things used to feel so overwhelming. Leaving Bumble felt so big. Then I went to Kotn - and I loved that brand, I loved those people, but it wasn’t the right role. And I left after seven months and I was so self-conscious. What will people think? I’ve only been here seven months.

And then I realised - it’s fine. It feels so much bigger than it actually is. You get overwhelmed for a day, and then you make the decision, and you move on. Every choice I’ve made has made the next one easier.

It’s also your narrative to tell. When I talk about my career, I say I went from Bumble to Parade - that’s where I found the work that defined me, the campaigns that mattered, the version of my career I’m most proud of. So why would I stay at a job just for what it looks like on LinkedIn? Who cares?

What have you discovered about yourself since?

That I have the greatest friends in the world. Being single and making a huge life change is so hard, and I’ve had friends talk me through every single piece of it - the visa stress, the new city, the career changes. People who invited me places when I was new to the city, people who helped me clear out my Toronto apartment, people who listened to all my voice notes when the whole thing felt like a lot.

I think you can feel very alone in your head when you’re making a big change. But everyone wants to help. That was the thing I hadn’t expected.

One word or piece of advice for a woman thinking about quitting - a job, a city, a version of herself.

Go. Why not? Moving gave me a new perspective on almost everything. My world feels bigger now. I chose a career that supports the life I want to build, rather than a life built around a career. And you don’t get many opportunities like that in your thirties.

Who should I speak to next?

Francesca Morfini! She quit being a workaholic, left Canada, got married, had a kid. The life Fran thought she'd have five years ago is so different to the one she's living now. She still has a great career, she's still passionate, I think she would be so interesting.

Meredith Gillies - Follow her at @murrrdiff

Aida Vrazalica has spent most of her career building things for other people: brand narratives, cultural moments, global teams. Her client list reads like a mood board - YSL Beauté, Hermès Beauty, Bumble, Marimekko, GANT. She founded A LIST for all, Sweden’s first premium gift registry, and is currently Global Head of Brand Communications and Cultural Marketing at Happy Socks. She is a mother of three. She and her husband recently moved their whole family from Stockholm to Milan. She has, by most accounts, never stopped.

I first met Aida when I was at Bumble - when we were looking for a PR and marketing agency in Stockholm. We didn’t end up working together at the time, but we got on well and stayed in touch, and a couple of years later we did. What struck me, and has never left me, is that Aida is unapologetically herself. Her drive is obvious and you feel it the moment she walks into a room. Her taste is impeccable. But that unapologetic quality is what I have always admired most. Because underneath all of it is a woman who wore a bracelet at twelve that said winners don’t quit - and who has spent the years since unlearning almost everything that bracelet stood for.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

You have quit more than once. Can you take me back to one of those moments - when did you know?

I have to say, when you sent me these questions, my first reaction was: I am the opposite of a quitter. That is genuinely how I have gone through life - I had a bracelet when I was twelve that said “winners don’t quit, and quitters don’t win.” I wore it proudly. That was the script I ran on for a long time.

But I do think that learning to quit is a maturity move. You come to a point in life where you understand that quitting is actually a power move. When it is on your own terms, on your own grounds - that is, I think, the purest form of luxury. I am still working towards that. I want to be so stable in my decisions and my forward movement that I have the power to say when I quit.

So what was the moment that came to mind?

Closing down By Babba. That was the one. We had opened a brand marketing agency and within six months we had YSL Beauté, Hermès, Bumble, Marimekko. An insane list of clients in a very short time. And then one year in, I booked a morning call with Babba Rivera - who founded By Babba across the US and Nordics, where I was CEO - to tell her I was expecting my third child. She told me, in the same call, that she was also pregnant - her first. It was a beautiful call, actually.

She said she wouldn’t be involved going forward, and the decision was mine: close it in the Nordics, or keep going alone. I knew I didn’t want another chapter where I was half working, half caring for my son. It was also Covid. There was so much uncertainty. I wanted to feel confident that I could handle at least one thing well - and that thing was being present with him.

What was the loudest voice telling you it was the right call?

Honestly? I was calm. I think pregnancy gives you that - a stronger sense of intuition and a clearer signal. But if I am honest, there was also FOMO. Not for something I had already lost - FOMO for what it could have been. It was such a short chapter and such a powerful one. I kept thinking: what if?

But I think that was my ego. Because everything that happened afterwards confirmed the decision.

“Quitting, when it is on your own terms - that is the purest form of luxury.”

What did it cost you?

I don’t think it cost me anything. But what it did take was the clear picture of what was next. I have never had a five-year plan but I have always had massive plans for myself. And when you don’t know your next move, that sits with you. The beauty is in learning to stay in that space. I think some of your biggest growth happens in the unknown, if you can power through it.

What I will say is that a previous experience left a deeper mark than I perhaps admitted at the time. When I was expecting my first son, Maximus, I was made redundant at six months pregnant. Twenty-four years old, just moved back from Milan to Sweden, first-time mother, no job. That fear of not knowing - it doesn’t fully leave you. When I stepped back from By Babba with Leopold, the circumstances were entirely different. But that earlier scar came back in some form. I had to consciously separate the two.

What would you say to a woman in that position - on maternity leave, no clear next step, afraid of what comes after?

Use the time. Sweden's maternity leave system is genuinely generous - whether you have been working or not, there is real support there. But you can't fully enjoy that time if half of it is spent worrying about what comes after. So I would say: devote some of that period to thinking about what you actually want. Where are your connections? What do you want to build? Don't wait until the baby starts nursery and the answer still isn't there.

How has your relationship with quitting changed - from By Babba to where you are now?

When I came back after Leopold, I went freelance, I consulted - and what I found was that people weren't looking for the agency name or the staff. They were looking for me. I think I had always protected myself from believing that fully. I hid behind the structure - the agency, the team, the context. It took stepping out on my own to understand: I am what they want to work with. That realisation is everything. And it is maturity, yes - age and experience - but it is also learning about yourself as a woman, as a leader, as someone who is ambitious and has finally stopped pretending otherwise. Quitting is not the opposite of ambition - it is often its sharpest expression.

“I had always protected myself from believing it. It took stepping out on my own to understand: I am what they want to work with.”

What have you discovered about yourself through all of this?

That I go up and down in terms of knowing my own worth. There are days I wake up feeling completely brilliant, and the next I feel the opposite. The path is not as smooth as I sometimes pretend it is. My husband is different - he is very steady, consistent, never thinks he is Superman but never questions whether he belongs either. We are very different in that way. When I am at my best, I operate at the highest level. But I am still learning how to sustain that consistently.

For the woman reading this who can’t stop circling her next decision - what would you tell her?

Listen to your intuition. Find a way to hear it, and believe that you have one. I genuinely think women carry that signal. It will not hand you a plan. It will just tell you when something is no longer right. That is enough to start.

Who should I speak to next?

Babba Rivera, Founder & CEO of Ceremonia. Sophia Li — she was a Vogue editor, and now runs a media company focused on sustainability. And Gabriella Karefa-Johnson.

@aidavraz / @alistforall / www.alistforall.com

Eshita Kabra-Davies spent many years building a career in London’s corporate bond market. She was good at it. She understood risk, she spoke the language of it, and she knew how to think about downside. Then, in March 2019, she quietly incorporated a company on the side. Six months later, she handed in her notice. The company was By Rotation, now the world’s largest peer-to-peer fashion rental platform, and the quit that launched it was less a leap of faith than a calculated, almost reluctant, move from someone who understood better than most what she was giving up.

Eshita is a close friend. I have watched her build By Rotation from the inside. I have seen the discipline, the hard work, the relentless attitude it takes to build a business this way — and the sacrifices she has had to make to keep it going. What I didn’t fully understand until we spoke was the emotional weight of being a solo founder: the years of tradeoffs when it felt like everyone else was moving forward, the renegotiation of what partnership looks like when one person is all in on a bet the other is carrying too, the particular burden that falls on a first-generation immigrant who knows she cannot afford to be wrong.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What did you quit, and when did you know?

I quit my career in finance in September 2019. I was working as an investor in the corporate bond market. I had incorporated By Rotation in March of that year, so for the first six months, I was running it as a side hustle, trying to get the MVP up, get some proof points, before I felt confident enough that the opportunity cost was worth it.

And honestly, there was not one clean moment where I thought: right, I am handing in my notice next Friday. I wanted to believe I could have it all: the finance career, the salary, the bonus, the handbags, and still build this on the side. What finally set a deadline was that By Rotation’s launch was going to be covered by the Business of Fashion, with my name and my image. I had already told compliance I had started a new venture. But I knew that when that piece ran, everyone on the floor, including my boss, would find out. That made the decision for me.

Did anyone at work know what you were building?

There were maybe a couple of people on my team who I would pick the brains of, other women, asking whether they would use something like this. But it was not widely known. The demographic By Rotation is built for did not really exist on the trading floor.

I did some field research, though. On work trips to New York, I would use the evenings and weekends to understand the market.

You have talked about opportunity cost. But what was the voice telling you to stay? Was that fear, or was it something else?

My dad is a self-made entrepreneur. When I was weighing this up, he said to me: “You might not have this life again. It could be better, or worse, or just different, but it will never be this. So if you are happy now, build that into your opportunity cost, beyond the salary and the net worth.”

That landed hard. I work in corporate bonds, which is a risk-averse asset class by nature. And as a first-generation immigrant, you think very differently about worst-case scenarios. People always say to dream big, think about the total addressable market. But when you have the odds stacked against you, you have to think about what happens if it does not work. That is not timidity. That is survival instinct.

And that is why I was not one of those founders who just says, I will get another job. I had six and a half years in a career I had poured everything into (including a work permit visa). That is not nothing.

“It could be better, or worse, or just different, but it will never be this.”

What did it cost you?

Emotionally, the cost took a while to arrive. I did not feel the financial insecurity straightaway because COVID hit five and a half months after we launched, and everything was disrupted for everyone. It was afterwards, when people went back to their lives and started climbing the ladder again, that I really felt it. Friends who had stayed in their corporate jobs were buying their first homes, having kids, getting cars, a house in the countryside. And I thought: have I been left behind? Have I matured inversely, while everyone else was growing up in the traditional sense?

The social side was the inverse, though. My network was growing in ways I could not have imagined from the trading floor. I was going to events I had only seen online, sitting at tables I did not think existed for people like me. Being invited to Downing Street, going on Bloomberg live, being the person the UN invites to speak on circular fashion. I now get gifted from brands I used to wait until they were on sale. The social access and currency has grown exponentially. But it has come at the cost of not having the liquid wealth that some of my corporate friends now have.

“I was sitting at tables I did not think existed for people like me.”

You recently bought your first home. What did it feel like to finally do it on your own timeline?

We had been married for seven years, still renting in Marylebone. And at some point you think: why am I paying for someone else’s mortgage? It was time to grow up, settle down. It might not be the house we had dreamed of in Marylebone or Hampstead, but it is a great first home and I am proud of it.

What it clarified, though, was the broader agreement my husband James and I have arrived at. For now, the financial and economic resources I have go into By Rotation. He takes care of the household, our personal life. That is the sacrifice that comes with being a solo founder, and it is something people do not talk about honestly enough. When founders discuss burnout, they often leave out that part of it is being driven by not reaching the financial position they wanted. That is the real reason some people stop. I have had to reframe things and accept that, right now, I am not an equal financial provider in my marriage. Not yet. But I contribute in other ways. And that “not yet” is doing a lot of work.

By Rotation has outlasted a lot of its competitors. What actually kept it alive?

Partly because we bootstrapped: my own salary and savings in the first eighteen months, then a pre-seed round with friends, family, ex-colleagues. We opened it to people who had worked in corporate and had bonuses to park in SEIS and EIS. But it is also because my finance background gave me hard skills: how to read annual reports, understand governance structures, plan fundraising, manage investor relations. That knowledge does not disappear when you leave the industry. It travels.

And I would attribute the caution and the risk-averse mentality to my parents too. They are self-made entrepreneurs who came from nothing and built remarkable businesses. That instinct runs deep.

What have you discovered about yourself since quitting?

I have discovered I am genuinely tenacious. Before By Rotation, I wondered sometimes whether I was just someone who was always looking for the next thing. I had had three employers, never stayed anywhere more than a few years. But with this, I have found my match. And I am going to see it through, no matter what.

I have also realised I perform well under pressure. Managing a P&L with millions going through it, making calls with real consequences: I am more professional, more focused, more responsible than I sometimes gave myself credit for. Or perhaps more than the way I present myself externally sometimes suggests.

What does your Monday look like now?

Mondays are mostly internal: working from home, meetings with the team, getting everyone aligned at the start of the week. Though this coming Monday I have a dinner with the King’s Trust and a meeting with a brand we might partner with, so no two are the same.

I do like to get ahead of the week, though. On Sunday afternoon, I will start sending emails, replying to anything outstanding, so that by Monday morning, the ball is in someone else’s court, not mine.

What is the one piece of advice you would give to someone sitting with a decision they can’t stop thinking about?

Test it on the side first. Evenings, weekends, before you jump. Not because I don’t believe in backing yourself — I do. But the macroeconomic environment right now is genuinely hard. Things are tight. A bit of risk aversion and a reality check matter before you make the leap.

Who should I speak to next?

Martha Petrocheilos. She is a very dear friend and her story is genuinely interesting. She went from being a lawyer in private practice to going in-house at a venture capital firm, where she is now general counsel and will be heading up the London office from September. She is also moving back from New York. In terms of quitting a version of yourself, a career, a city. She covers a few of them at once.

byrotation.com | @eshitakabra

In 2017, Alex Holder wrote an article that changed the conversation. The Joy of Quitting, published in Elle, gave me the language for something I was feeling but couldn’t say out loud. At the time, Alex was one of the most recognisable names in the British creative industry — Partner at Anomaly London, Creative Director at Mother, a creative lead at BBC, Elle and Vice. And then she walked away from it.

What came next doesn’t follow a straight line. She moved into Elle as Content Director, before stepping out to work directly with brands and agencies — creating global work for the likes of Bumble and Headspace. She wrote a book, Open Up: Why Talking About Money Will Change Your Life. She moved to Lisbon. She opened a bookshop on a cobbled street, built a community around it, and sold it in 2025. She moved her family back to the UK after 6 years. And she is now in her first year of a Masters in psychotherapy.

She is one of the UK’s most recognisable voices on personal finance, with work appearing in The Guardian, Elle, Stylist and Grazia among others. I’m lucky enough to have worked with Alex at Bumble, where we created some of my favourite pieces of work I’ve done to date, and to have had her on the very first Power of Quitting panel nearly ten years ago. When I decided to bring this series back, there was only one person I was calling first.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What did you quit and when did you know?

The first big one was leaving full-time employment about ten years ago. I’ve never gone back, and I don’t think I could now. Once you truly change your mindset around it, it would actually feel quite unsafe to go back to working for a single client, a single company. I work quite laterally now, across different industries, with different people, different income streams. Some people find that really risky, but I find it comforting. I’m not relying on one person or one industry to keep me buoyant.

Then post-pandemic, I was living in Lisbon. Remote work had normalised and I was really set up — good work, good clients, the life I’d wanted. But something was missing. It was all quite online. Not very tactile. I wasn’t meeting people. I missed small talk. I missed colleagues. So I opened a bookshop.

"I missed small talk. I missed colleagues. So I opened a bookshop."

It’s kind of the stupidest, bravest thing. Not a slam dunk business-wise, and I knew that going in. I genuinely weighed it up: I could buy a camper van or I could open a bookshop. They kind of cost the same amount. I had savings — not holiday-home money, but something. And I went for it. In that first year, Salted Books turned over €330,000. People bought books. We were in profit. It was a small space on a cobbled street, but it was a legitimate business taking €1k a day. We were immediately in profit and interestingly the takings never fluctuated.

It was me and Mark, my partner. He’s a brilliant art director, he created the Salted brand. We applied everything we’d learned over years working on other people’s brands to create a brand of our own. There is something you get from running your own business that you simply cannot get any other way. Truly understanding what it means to hit a P&L. That was wild for me. I also set up hosted writers hours, people just writing in silence together, and found almost by accident a writing practice I’ve kept ever since.

Did you have a team or was it mainly you and Mark?

It was me and Mark. I did employ people because I realised quickly that I didn’t want to work behind a counter every single day. But managing staff, chasing book orders, carrying boxes — some days I’d be like, why am I carrying boxes down the road, is this what I envisaged?

You said it legitimised you in a world you wanted to be part of — but from the outside I would say you already had that.

Yeah. And it’s really interesting. What has it actually done for my career? I still don’t quite know. It was a quite weird couple of years. But it added texture to life that you just can’t get from behind a screen.

What was the loudest voice telling you to stay and whose was it?

I’m not very good with shoulds. I’ve always ended things well, with care for the people around me. I’ve never just walked out. But I am genuinely fuelled by the excitement of starting something. I’m pretty good when no one knows what they’re doing and something needs to be created from scratch. Other people are scared of that bit. I’m just not.

So the starting doesn’t scare you?

The excitement fuels me. What scares me is feeling stuck. Feeling trapped. I’m saying this like I’m living some crazy life — I’m opening bookshops. But that feeling of being trapped past the point something is feeding you, that’s genuinely what I’m most afraid of.

"What scares me is feeling stuck. Feeling trapped."

What did it cost you? And I want to be honest about this because I think quitting gets glamourised. Every decision I’ve made to quit has cost me, financially, physically, mentally. So what did it actually cost you?

It does cost me. I used to joke it was the shop that advertising built, because you’ve got to be rich to open a bookshop. You have to have savings. No one should be getting into debt to open a bookshop. And ex-colleagues would visit, tilt their heads, say “well done, so brave” and I would smile, because I knew what they meant - That perhaps it was a slightly stupid financial decision.

The ultimate cost was time away from my family. It felt like having a third child. Mark would sometimes say he didn’t know what he was getting from it. And at the leaving party I received so many thank-yous from the community we’d built and they were almost hard to receive. Because I was beginning to understand what it had cost my family for me to have been this person, out there doing this thing.

"I was beginning to understand what it had cost my family for me to have been this person, out there doing this thing."

There was also an emotional cost I hadn’t fully anticipated. A bookshop is an incredibly open emotional space. People come in carrying enormous personal weight — grief, estrangement, trauma — and those conversations are beautiful but they were sometimes quite unboundaried.

I don’t think I would set up a physical business again. When anyone talks about creating a physical product now it makes me wince, because I know what’s involved.

And then the move back from Portugal. That was a big decision on top of everything else.

Moving back was really hard. I said to a friend recently that I’m paying for six years in the sunshine on the other side now. The kids were happy at school. I had a community. We had a lovely life. But I’m not culturally Portuguese, and I was getting more and more separated from the language, from how you relate to people day to day. And professionally I was aware that each year I was getting further from the contacts who had seen me in a room working. There is a cost to distance that builds slowly. I was 42. If not now, then when?

What does quitting mean to you now versus then?

The feelings still come. But I know I’ve ridden them out before. Each chapter teaches you something. What I’m really conscious of is not letting years roll into years because I’m too scared to move on. Quitting means making space to start something new. It’s not just about what you’re leaving. It’s about what you’re going towards.

What have you started?

I am studying for a masters in psychotherapy. I want a career that goes into my 80s. This is a world I’ve been circling for a long time and wasn’t brave enough to enter before. It was seeing a friend describe the course and feeling a trickle of jealousy go through me that made me realise that maybe I could study too.

That was the signal. It took a year from that moment to making it happen.

"I felt a trickle of jealousy go through me. That was the signal."

How do you feel telling people about it?

Still hard. One of my big fears about doing this course was telling my own therapist. Which is not a reason to not do something. But I was so embarrassed that he might think I was copying him or over-influenced by him. These are the fears we don’t say out loud. And as embarrassing as that fear was, I had to name it before I could move past it.

What does your Monday look like now?

No set Monday anymore. It used to be that I would be in the bookshop hosting writers’ hours. Now it looks like a client call followed by writing. This week I’m writing for Chelsea Football Club. I love the range — the variety of different clients and contexts is genuinely what keeps me going.

What have you discovered about yourself since quitting?

One of my biggest fears going into all of this was putting my kids through so much change. And they’ve just rolled with it. My daughter has only ever been educated in Portuguese. And it’s really worked. As a family we’re more resilient than I thought we’d be because we’re doing it together. I didn’t have to carry the weight of other people’s fragility the way I thought I would. That was a real discovery.

Advice for the woman sitting with a decision she can’t stop thinking about.

Dig down into the fear. Be really honest with yourself about what’s actually stopping you, because there usually is a specific fear and it might be more embarrassing than you expect. It might be that one person whose opinion you’re living your life for. It might be removing a job title from Instagram, and that just feels too hard. Which it did for me at one point.

Name the fear, as embarrassing as it might be. Because once you can see it clearly it usually has a lot less power than you thought.

Who should I speak to next? The author of the incredibly poignant upcoming memoir, Eat Bitter: Lydia Pang.

alexholder.co / @alexandreholder

Nearly ten years ago, I stood in a room at Ace Hotel London and moderated the first-ever Power of Quitting panel. I had recently left a role, was running my own consultancy, and was very much in the middle of figuring out what came next.

That evening became something I didn’t fully expect. A sell-out event. A community. Incredible women on the panels and in the audience having conversations that felt genuinely rare and needed. I took the series from London to New York and Berlin. And then life shifted, as it does, and the series paused.

But it never really left. It still comes up in interviews and on panels. It comes up over dinner with friends. It’s become one of those topics I keep returning to — because honestly, so does everyone else.

So nearly a decade on, it feels like time to bring it back.

One thing before we start.

I started this because of the women around me. Friends, peers, women I admired from afar were quietly making bold moves, pivots, resets. Leaving things that looked great on paper. Backing themselves into something unknown and rarely talking about it openly.

I wanted to create a space for that. Because at the time, I didn’t have one.

When I say quitting, I’m not telling anyone to hand in their notice tomorrow. I never was. It’s about the pivot, the pause, the moment you give yourself permission to question whether what you’re doing is actually what you want. Sometimes that leads to something life-changing. Sometimes it’s just a shift in thinking. Both count.

That’s what we’re here to talk about.

Conversations coming soon…

— Naomi

First up: the perfect 24 hours in Paris. My friend and I went in February, to start the year well, to have some proper quality time vs a quick flurry of WhatsApp messages and voice notes, and for 24 hours of not parenting (although of course we discussed our children for a good chunk of it). There is also something just chic about saying you are going to Paris for the night.

What I Wore

Day 1

• Alex Eagle Cashmere Jumper

• Still Here Buckle Jeans (my friend in New York introduced me to this brand and I am hooked)

• Ferragamo Boots (I got these years ago from Net-A-Porter, but found this link here!)

• Bottega Andiamo Medium Black Bag purchased via Classles

Evening

• Galvan Bodysuit, rented via , a company founded by my friend where I am also an advisor and investor.

• Vince Black Crepe Bias Pants, the perfect alternative to The Row Gala pants at a fraction of the price

• Stuart Weitzman Suede Boots

• Bottega Solstice Black Bag, perfect for dinner

Day 2

• Vintage Prada Jumper, purchased from Vestiaire a few years ago

• Flore Flore T-shirt, they do the best basics

• Still Here Jeans and Ferragamo Boots from Day 1

Getting There

We took an early Eurostar from St Pancras. Top tip: book Eurostar Plus or Premier if you can. It is less expensive than you think if you book ahead, and it made the whole trip feel more special.

We arrived by midday, took the Metro to our hotel, about 20 minutes, and dropped our bags.

Where We Stayed

Hotel Dame des Arts, Latin Quarter and Saint-Germain neighbourhood. We wanted something convenient and design led, and it delivered on both. Designed by Raphaël Navot, there is a nice design flair to the hotel. Honest caveat: in person it is slightly less polished IRL vs photos, but for one night it was perfect. It also has a gym which can be hard to find in Paris given the nature of the buildings. The gym was chic, NOHrD equipment throughout. There is also a sauna which we did not use but will definitely do next time.

Day One

Café de Flore, yes, a classic. The service was great, the eggs were good, and we went over the plan for the day over tea and coffee while everyone around us ordered their well known hot chocolate which looked delicious.

Next up and what we had both been looking forward to: vintage shopping.

I have a very specific approach to shopping investment pieces. I never buy something significant immediately. I want to make sure I will not regret it or fall in love with something else in another shop. So I always walk away, see everything else, come back if it is still the one. It almost always is.

Desert Vintage is the kind of shop I love. The manager made the whole experience so enjoyable, helping us try on pieces and giving feedback on the ones we liked or were unsure about. I found a Giorgio Armani black wool coat, made for Bergdorf Goodman, I think from the 1980s, oversized and just.. perfect. I loved it but held off.

PreClothed had some really nice pieces but we got there after they had been with private clients and it was hard to properly see the edit. Worth going back to on a quieter day. Desert Vintage was better in my opinion.

Mid afternoon we came across Copains, a gluten free bakery. I had been craving a croissant since we arrived in Paris and this delivered. We sat outside on a bench and just caught up, that is the beauty of friend holidays, you end up having time for you.

We kept walking. I love walking in cities, and Paris in February with clear winter sun is the best. My friend wanted to stop at Sézane where she found a great thick knit jumper. Then we went to Café Nuances for a matcha. Good vibe, good aesthetic and actually good matcha. It is rare to get all three.

Back to the hotel for a moment of quiet. We had planned to go to Hotel Costes for drinks but we both just needed to sit in silence for twenty minutes. There is something about travelling with someone you know that well where the silence is comfortable rather than awkward.

Dinner: Sugaar. A big recommend! The atmosphere downstairs, where we ended up despite briefly considering moving upstairs, had a nice kind of energy once it got busier - dark, cosy, and good music playing in the background. The food was delicious. The whole thing was a 10/10.

Then bed.

Day Two

Breakfast at the hotel, a good standard hotel offering.

Then to Causier, the latest coffee and brunch spot from our former colleague Arame, who has always had impeccable taste and whose space reflects exactly that. The interiors, the mood, the menu, all of it felt like a considered point of view rather than a trend exercise. Think Ace Hotel London Hoi Polloi brunch at its peak. Great people watching, great style, R&B playing in the background. Arame’s sister is the head chef, and we split their signature pancakes, which were probably the best pancakes I have eaten in a long time!

After that, back to Desert Vintage where I bought the Armani coat. No hesitation the second time. It is exceptional and I have worn it nearly every day since getting back home. Thank you to Nicole and the manager in the store for telling me I had to get it.

Then a wander through Le Bon Marché, there is something fun about going to department stores in Paris. I have been eyeing The Row suede boots for ages but keep talking myself out of it, my biggest worry is just not having enough opportunity to wear them living in the UK where the weather is so hit and miss. I walked away. The deliberation continues.

Final stop: Sant Ambroeus, their first restaurant opening outside of the US. I have been to the New York restaurant and the Paris version has the same vibe, great interiors, and excellent people watching. Is it the best Italian in Paris? Probably not. But there is something about the vibe and new restaurant energy which I loved. We each had a glass of wine, clinked glasses, reflected on how good the trip had been and headed back to the Eurostar.

Then arrived at my local station with my son and husband waiting for me.

24 hours. It was great and what we needed. ❤