A career change doesn't have to mean quitting on Monday and hoping for the best. Everyone warns you about the big leap. Nobody warns you about walking briskly in the wrong direction, which is what I did first time round...

This is the plan I wish I'd had: what to work out first, how much money you need behind you, and when to hand in your notice. I've laid out my notes in six stages, the way a building project runs, whether you're moving into a new role, retraining, going freelance or starting a business. Take what's useful and leave the rest.

In this episode:

(00:00) Walking briskly in the wrong direction: the pivot mistake nobody warns you about

(02:51) Why we either leap with no plan or plan for years and never start

(06:08) Stage 0 and the six stages of a career pivot

(08:00) Stage 1: what you want from a career change, and getting your partner on board

(11:14) Stage 1: what's structural in your life, from bills to the people who rely on you

(13:48) Stage 2: testing a new career with the normal Tuesday test

(18:54) Four routes: retrain, build alongside your job, save a runway and go, or a mix

(20:43) Stage 3: the money, your monthly floor and your financial runway

(23:45) The payment maths that caught me out when I started a business

(25:31) Stage 4: what pays the bills while you change career

(28:52) A state and a date: deciding in advance when to quit your job

(30:16) Stage 5: on site, doing the work

(32:09) Stage 6: the first months after you leave, and the daily anchors that help

(34:40) The blueprint I wish I'd followed

Mentioned in this episode:

- Episode 2: the values exercise

- Episodes 4 and 9: "do I actually want this, or do I think I should want it?"

- Annie Duke, author of Quit: pairing a state with a date

Get the one-page Pivot Blueprint on Substack

A money checklist is coming there too, for moving into a new role and for setting up on your own.

Fill yours in alongside mine and reply with your state and your date. I read every one.

Let's keep WIP'n & Reppin' together!

Connect with me:- Substack: https://wipitandrepit.substack.com- Instagram: @hh_squared- Instagram: @wipn_reppin- LinkedIn: Holly H

Pivoting is like being a lobster...it grows its new shell under the old one before it breaks out. Your next version works the same way.

If you've been wondering why going after the bigger thing feels so uncomfortable, this episode is for you. That could be a career change, starting your own business, or stepping up to the next level where you already are.

If you keep reading one more book before you start… if you've outgrown a job title but don't know what to call yourself yet… if you've felt like running back to your comfort zone just as things start to change… you're in the right place.

In this solo episode, Holly explains why a show about career pivots keeps coming back to personal growth. The life you're building can't stay bigger than the person holding it. Using a children's book, some surprising lobster biology, and a very unglamorous bad day in her property business, she explains why growing pains are usually a sign it's working, and how to tell them apart from the kind of pain that means you're in the wrong place.

In this episode:

• Why your business or career can grow past you, and what happens when it does
• What lobsters can teach you about outgrowing an old identity
• Growing pain vs wrong-fit pain: how to tell the difference
• Why personal development can become the most sophisticated way of never starting
• The Stretch Check: three questions for when you're in the middle of it

Chapters:
00:00 The Bear Hunt confession
01:30 Welcome to WIP'n & Reppin'
02:15 Why this show keeps making you do the inner work
05:30 The lobster and the old shell
08:30 What going through it looks like on a bad day
12:00 The Stretch Check
13:45 What's on the other side

This week's question: What's the thing I keep trying to go round, and who would I have to become to go through it?

Resources mentioned:

• Susan David, Emotional Agility
• Brené Brown, Dare to Lead
• Herminia Ibarra, Working Identity
• Tony Robbins, Awaken the Giant Within
• Noam Wasserman, "The Founder's Dilemma," Harvard Business Review (2008)
• Michael Rosen & Helen Oxenbury, We're Going on a Bear Hunt
• Lobster facts: NOAA Fisheries

If this episode landed, listen next: Ep 9, "You know your values — so why aren't you acting on them?"

Free values exercise: link
Read more on Substack: https://wipitandrepit.substack.com/
Instagram: @wipn_reppin
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/holly-harrington/

WIP'n & Reppin' is a podcast for women navigating career pivots, personal growth, and building a life that's theirs. New episodes every other Thursday. This podcast is not therapy or medical advice.

She moved her whole family to Finland 1 month after launching her new business in London.

Life just wasn't working. That's how Faith describes London in 2023 — two kids under five, a husband who was never home, a startup she was building from scratch, and a growing sense that something had to change.

So she got out a whiteboard. Mapped family values on one side, real life on the other. Looked at what they'd written and thought: none of this matches.

Fourteen months later, the whole family moved to Finland.

This is a conversation about what deliberate pivots actually look like from the inside — not the polished version, the real one.

In this episode:

• What Faith did before the move that most couples never do — and why she says it made everything else possible
• The moment she realised "not being on the property ladder" was actually the thing that bought her freedom
• Why building something meaningful rarely looks like a hockey stick — and what keeps you going on the days it feels like nothing is working
• How to build a team around you when you have no money, no co-founder, and no idea what you're doing yet
• What it actually feels like to arrive in a new country and realise you don't fully know who you are there yet
• The one question that cuts through every big life decision faster than any framework

What we discuss:

00:00 — "Life just wasn't working"
02:30 — From disaster zones to diapers: Faith's journey before Nugget
08:00 — Building a startup in the middle of COVID, two kids, and an identity shift
16:00 — Why talking about your idea is the actual work (and the story behind the name Nugget)
18:57 — "It's almost every day where you're like — what am I doing?"
27:00 — How to build a team when you can't pay anyone
33:00 — The whiteboard that changed everything
41:00 — Testing Finland in the dead of winter before committing
46:00 — The regret question that made the house decision easy
50:00 — Building a home in a language you're still learning
1:09:56 — Faith's three F's: family, Finland, founder life

"We have to be comfortable with the pace that's right for us. And I can't compare myself to others."

🎙️ Find the Nugget: https://www.thenugget.app/

Get in touch with Faith: https://www.linkedin.com/in/falyons/

Substack — deeper dives between episodes: substack.com/@wipitandrepit
Instagram: @hh_squared