Career Coaching

I help people with career coaching. Here’s how it works.

It’s hard to navigate the workplace and build career capital.

Why wouldn’t you get all the help you can?

Whether your goal is getting a payrise, landing a promotion or achieving a career change, you would benefit from an experienced mentor and people to talk to.

I provide an independent perspective and sounding board to discuss career challenges and help you negotiate the best deal that you can get from employers.

I have a degree in economics, I’m a qualified chartered accountant and I worked in corporate finance in the City over 20 years. This included mergers & acquisitions where I worked as a professional lead negotiator. Over a 20 year corporate finance career, I reached partner / MD level and ultimately financial independence (where work became optional).

How to escape a job you don’t like

I started out coaching people on how to get to financial independence: the point where work is optional.

I realised that a lot of people pursuing FIRE (financial independence, retire early) have more of a job problem or career problem than they do a money problem.

At the risk of stating the obvious, if the goal is to escape a job you hate, then changing jobs (or changing career) is a lot quicker than getting to financial freedom.

There are multiple levels to the career game

The further up Mount Everest you go, the thinner the air gets.

If you think that just working hard and being good at your job is going to be enough to get you a “stretch-promotion” then think again.

What got you here, won’t get you there.

You have to learn a whole new set of skills. These include (but are not limited to) influence, persuasion, psychology, strategy, game-theory and – last but not least – negotiation.

How to get a big payrise

The idea of a job for life went years ago. You have to be working for yourself…even when you are employed.

Loyalty is over-rated. If you want to get paid more & promoted, you have to be a “flight risk”

You have to have other options. There is nothing like an offer in your back pocket to get you a pay rise. You have to be willing to walk away.

People forget that the labour market <is> a market.

It’s good to talk

Yes, I’m biased but it’s very valuable to have career mentors and people you can talk to about your challenges. It’s invaluable to have someone on your team who can give you advice when you are in important negotiations.

Yes, it’s possible for some people to do it on their own. You can learn from your own expensive mistakes (as I did). But it generally works out cheaper to get help and learn from other people’s mistakes.

Price is what you pay and value is what you get and the value should be >10x the price.

How you benefit

You get to pick the brain of someone that has already faced the issues that you are facing. You get to ask questions and bounce ideas off someone independent and experienced. You get total confidentiality.

There are lots of different areas where I can help. We focus on what is most important to you but here are some of the things that I have helped people with:

negotiating a major payrise
moving job
overcoming imposter syndrome
achieving a significant promotion
becoming an equity partner at a professional services firm (law, accounting, consulting etc)
career change
transitioning to freelancing / self-employment / consulting

The coaching is bespoke in the sense that everyone’s situation is unique and heavily influenced by your unique set of values and circumstances.

And the coaching is holistic in the sense that career overlaps with other factors such as family relationships, personal finances career, health and wellness.

Take the case of a junior (fixed share) partner at a law firm who is seeking to negotiate a promotion to senior (equity share) partner.

Or the case of an overly-diligent senior employee at a startup / tech firm who has not been cut in on the equity and is slowly burning themselves out.

I like challenges like this when I’m doing career coaching because they are multi-disciplinary problems to solve.

Why have career coaching?

The job market is competitive. The high-flying people that hire good coaches will eventually out-compete those without coaches… …over a long enough timeframe, an “edge” always shows itself….this principle applies to sport, career, money, health, business…everything.

This is why all top sports people and business executives have coaching.

Reading books and blogs is great, but its not enough on its own: we learn best when we combine reading with a mixture of Q&A, personal interaction, accountability, discussion, encouragement and practical guidance.

Talking issues through with someone that has been through them before is hugely beneficial. Everyone has blind spots and you don’t know what you don’t know.

In other words, you don’t know what you don’t know and you don’t know your own blindspots. That is just as true for career issues as it is for relationship or personal finance or health challenges.

I do most sessions over Zoom / Teams / Gmeet but I’m more than happy to meet for the first session face to face in Central London. Or you are always welcome to come meet me in Farnham, Surrey.

Clients get unlimited coaching time

My career coaching works as a monthly subscription. There is an initial one-time payment of £275 followed by a recurring cost of £75 per month.

This includes unlimited one to one coaching time over Zoom plus access to all of the articles, spreadsheets and charts on The Escape Manual.

In other words; whilst you remain a subscriber, you get unlimited coaching time and as much access to me as you want (I can offer this because my clients are intelligent, reasonable and sensible people who want to make the best of their time).

Your monthly subscription will continue (at the same price) until cancelled.

You can pay securely by Paypal here:

Or you can pay here securely by debit card (processed by Stripe).

Suggestion : check if your employer will pay. Many employers give you a coaching budget or will pay for career development spend that you choose yourself. So you may be able to get your employer to pay.

A holistic approach

The monthly subscription is suitable for anyone that wants to achieve major change and / or shake up their life (in a good way).

This often means a change in your role, in your career, in your employer. But it might also mean a change in net worth, change in health, change in lifestyle, change in location, change in mindset. The key theme here is positive transformation and being able to achieve things that are hard!

No two clients are exactly the same. And some clients want to achieve changes that might overlap with their personal finances, health or relationships.

My career coaching clients tend to be high-performers (board level and partner-level) and / or people who want to achieve their full potential.

I have a holistic approach and so – as well as helping you get richer – I am interested in health, happiness, wellness and the science of high performance.

Introductory calls

If you would like to speak before signing up, you can choose a convenient time for a free introductory video call on Gmeet here.

You can choose a calendar slot that works for you here.

If you have any questions, please email me on barney.whiter@gmail.com

Barney Whiter