Why I Created This Coaching Program for Finance Professionals

LAST UPDATED: October 28, 2026

If you’ve been building a career in finance, I know you’ve worked hard to get where you are. You’ve solved difficult problems, taken on more responsibility, and become someone people rely on.

You’re proud of what you’ve accomplished. But you’re also starting to wonder how much of the rest of your life it’s going to cost.

Work spills into evenings and weekends. Even when your laptop is closed, your mind is still working. The things you want to do for yourself keep getting pushed to “after this quarter” or “when things settle down.”

And you find yourself revisiting the same questions.

Do I need a less demanding role? Should I stop pursuing the next promotion? Do I have to leave finance to have a life?

I spent a long time asking myself those questions, too.

What changed was discovering that I could work differently and that having a compelling vision for the rest of my life helped me follow through.

I began to see a future where I could continue succeeding in finance and enjoy the life I was building beyond it.

I wish I’d found the support to see that possibility much sooner.

That’s why I created By Design, Not Default, my one-on-one coaching program for finance professionals who want to succeed at work without sacrificing themselves or the rest of their lives.

I want you to know that staying and thriving is a possibility worth exploring. And I want you to have the support you need for figuring out how to change how you work and intentionally create a life you’re excited to live.

In this blog post, I'll cover:

How I Found a Way to Thrive in Finance

For much of my finance career, I kept coming back to the same question: Should I stay or should I go?

I enjoyed the work. I took pride in solving complex problems, contributing, leading my team, and taking on bigger roles and challenges. But I struggled with how much space work occupied in my life.

Even when I wasn’t working, I was often thinking about it. There was always something else I could finish, improve, or get ahead on. Making more room for the rest of my life felt difficult to reconcile with being the professional and leader I wanted to be.

But I wanted it all!

I looked for help. I listened to podcasts, talked to mentors, and benefited from some individual coaching sessions. I found useful ideas and perspectives, but I struggled to find focused support that brought together the two things I needed to learn: how to work differently and how to create a compelling vision for the rest of my life.

Over time, I began making changes in both.

I questioned assumptions I’d been treating as requirements of my career. I became more intentional about where my time and energy created value. And I started giving the life I wanted outside of work the attention I had always given my professional goals.

Having something beyond work that I wanted to make room for helped me follow through on changing how I worked.

My career still mattered to me. So did the relationships, interests, experiences, and personal goals I wanted it to coexist with.

The last five years of my finance career were much better because of those changes. I could see how I could continue doing work I was good at while having more time and energy for the rest of my life.

That’s why I believe staying in finance and thriving is a possibility worth exploring before you decide you need a less demanding role or an entirely different career.

By the time I chose to retire from finance, my reasons had changed. After more than two decades, I felt ready for a new chapter beyond my niche in financial reporting. I had found a way to stay, but I wanted to explore what else I could do.

Taking time afterward helped me recognize how I wanted to use my leadership skills and experience: becoming a Life & Leadership Coach for finance professionals facing challenges I knew firsthand.

I created By Design, Not Default because I wanted to offer the support I had struggled to find.

My coaching program is a place to think through what you want from your career and your life. To understand what keeps you working in ways that leave you depleted. And to put changes into practice with someone who understands the demands of finance.

I wished I had figured this out earlier. Helping others find their way sooner is why I now do this work. And I wouldn’t want to be doing anything else!

What Leadership Development and Mentorship Didn’t Give Me

Throughout my finance career, I had opportunities to develop as a leader and learn from others with loads of experience. Those experiences were valuable. But they didn’t bring together everything I needed to change how work fit into my life.

In my experience, corporate leadership development usually started with what the company wanted me to get better at. There were competencies to strengthen, expectations to meet, and skills to develop for my current role or the next one.

Those are worthwhile things to work on. But I wasn’t struggling because I lacked capability. Being capable and dependable was often why I took on more. I needed help questioning whether continuing to succeed had to mean continuing to carry so much.

I was also trying to answer questions that went beyond my performance at work.

What did I want my life to look like? How did I want work to fit into it? How could I continue succeeding in finance and have the time and energy to enjoy it along with the rest of my life? What needed to change for that to happen?

I wanted support that started with those questions - with what mattered to me as a whole person, including my career.

Mentorship offered another kind of help. I could talk through challenges, hear how someone else had navigated a situation, and get ideas about what to try.

But knowing what to try and putting it into practice were often two different things.

You can understand that you need to delegate and still feel responsible for checking every detail. You can know that priorities need to be discussed and still hesitate to tell your boss that everything won’t fit. You can decide to finish work earlier and then reopen your laptop because leaving something unfinished feels uncomfortable.

Advice can give you a useful next step. You may also need help understanding what makes that step so difficult and support as you practise doing things differently.

That’s the gap I wanted my coaching program to fill.

I wanted to offer support that started with what mattered to the individual and helped them put changes into practice in their actual working life. That became central to how I built By Design, Not Default.

How We Connect the Life You Want with the Way You Work

When work takes up more space than you want it to, it’s natural to focus on getting it under control. You want fewer reactive days, less work spilling into your evenings, and the ability to switch off.

Those changes matter. But we also explore what you want to make room for.

A compelling vision for the rest of your life gives you a reason to change how you work and a direction for those changes.

That might mean being more present with your family, pursuing a personal goal, building friendships, or rediscovering interests you’ve put aside. Your career belongs in that vision, too: the work you enjoy, the contribution you want to make, and the growth you still want to pursue.

Inside By Design, Not Default, we connect that vision with your everyday decisions at work. We uncover the beliefs, assumptions, and habits shaping your current experience, then develop and practise different ways of prioritizing, delegating, communicating, and leading.

We look at how you operate, how work flows through your team, and how you navigate expectations from your boss and other stakeholders. Together, we test changes in your actual work environment, learn from what happens, and adjust.

The aim is to help you create success in ways that support the life you want.

This work is supported by The Work Redesign Framework, the methodology I use to give our coaching structure while keeping it responsive to your circumstances.

For a closer look at how it works, you can read about it here:

>> The Work Redesign Framework: A Different Way to Succeed in Finance >>

What Becomes Possible - for Your Career and Your Life

One of my favourite things clients share is that coaching changes their experience of work but it also extends well beyond that.

They become clearer about what deserves their attention and more deliberate about where they put their effort. They stop automatically taking on responsibilities that belong to others. They feel more able to discuss competing priorities, make decisions, and lead without personally carrying every detail.

They begin to see how their success can depend more on their judgment and leadership, rather than continually giving more of themselves.

That creates possibilities beyond the workday, too.

The promise of By Design, Not Default is to help you double your free time without sacrificing your finance career success.

What you do with that time is personal. Our work connects creating more room in your life with having something meaningful you want to use it for.

Clients tell me they’re more present at home because their minds aren’t constantly returning to work. They have more energy for relationships, interests, and personal goals. The things they’ve been postponing start to have a place in their lives now.

And as they experience those changes, the future can start to look different.

A promotion doesn’t have to mean accepting that work will take even more of their life. Continuing in finance can become something they feel hopeful about, with greater confidence in their ability to adapt how they work as their responsibilities grow.

Finance will still have demanding periods. But those periods don’t have to define how you live throughout your career.

My hope is that fewer capable professionals spend years wondering whether they have to choose between a career they value and a life they enjoy.

If you still want to grow, lead, and contribute in finance, that ambition deserves a place alongside everything else you want for yourself.

Helping you find a way for those things to coexist is why I created this program.

Ready To Work By Design Instead of By Default?

If you value your finance career but keep wondering how long you can continue working this way, I invite you to explore what could change.

By Design, Not Default is my six-month, one-on-one coaching program designed to help finance professionals double their free time without sacrificing their career success.

Together, we’ll clarify what you want your career and life to look like, uncover what’s keeping your current working patterns in place, and put practical changes into action - with support as you try, learn, and adjust.

You don’t need to have it all figured out before we begin. You can start with the challenges you’re facing and the sense that you want something different.

Book a complimentary consultation call to explore what working differently could look like for you.

We’ll talk about where you are today, what you’d like to change, and whether this program is the right support for you.

>> Book A Complimentary Consultation Call Here >>

Or, want to start a conversation over email?

>> Contact Me Here >>