What’s next? Six weeks of 1:1 coaching
You’ve played the game well.
Now play your own game.
6 weeks to work out what you really want, deal with what’s holding you back, and change what needs to change, in the role you have or the next one.
A role you want to be in. The work you want to be known for. A life you have the energy to enjoy.
I won’t tell you to quit. Staying and growing where you are is a real answer. So is the promotion. So is something else. You can spend another three years thinking about this. I’d rather you didn’t.
How it works and what it costs
No commitment until we’re both sure it’s what you need.
1
Clarity Call · 20 minutes, free
No pitch, no prep. Just enough for both of us to know whether there’s something useful for us to work on together. If there is, we book a Strategy Session.
2
Strategy Session · 90 minutes
We block out 90 minutes, and use what we need. We start with what you want, where you are now, and what seems to be holding you back. Then we work on something that matters. It’s a real coaching session, not a sales call: you leave with something useful, whether or not we work together. You don’t pay before it, and you don’t have to decide whether to continue until afterwards.
3
You decide
After the Strategy Session, you decide whether to carry on, or whether that was enough.
It wasn’t valuable: €0
You pay nothing. Tell me what would have made it better, and we leave it there.
It was enough: €200
Including VAT. The Strategy Session did the job and you don’t need to go further. You pay for the session, and we’re done.
You want more: €1,000
Six sessions, incl VAT. The Strategy Session becomes session one of six.
We book five more weekly 50-minute sessions, accounting for holidays, travel, and other fixed commitments.
These are the prices for individuals.
I don’t normally publish my fees. I love this work, I’m at my best doing a lot of it, and right now I have room for more. When my calendar is full enough, the fee for new clients goes up.
A 20-minute Clarity Call. Free and confidential.
What I expect from you
Two things.
A short testimonial if it was valuable, or honest feedback if it wasn’t.
Show up 100%. I will. These aren’t calls to squeeze between two meetings while answering Slack. Bring what’s actually happening, including when you haven’t done what you intended or don’t know what you want.
Six weeks can change a lot if you’re willing to do the work and try things out.
I spent six years at Google, then two at Amazon as a Senior Manager. I know what this kind of success looks like from the inside.
On paper, it’s going well.
Your mother beams with pride as she tells her friends about the job she doesn’t understand, at the company everyone has heard of, or soon will. Your uni friends envy your equity and title. If 20-year-old you saw you now, they’d drop their iPod.
And there’s plenty you like about it. The people. The problems you get to solve. The feeling when something you helped build actually works.
But there’s something you keep coming back to.
Sometimes, it’s ambition.
You want the promotion. More say in the decisions. The chance to lead something that matters, and do it your way. You watch other people get those opportunities and wonder what they’re doing that you aren’t.
You’d lined it up with your VP. Then they moved on, and the clock went back two years.
Same level as your counterpart on the West Coast. Twice the scope, half the pay, and everyone knows the promotion comes faster if you move.
You missed the promo, and the feedback said “not strategic enough”. Nobody could tell you what that means.
You hold half the place together. You coach people, fix what’s broken, and keep things moving. You couldn’t write your job down if you tried. That makes you indispensable. It also makes you unpromotable.
You have ideas you don’t bring into the room. You soften the point you wanted to make.
Or you’ve already got the title, the equity, the seat at the table. You thought that would settle something. It hasn’t.
You’ve started wondering whether people are meeting you, or the logo.
Sometimes, it’s what all this is costing you.
Sunday night arrives, and next week looks like last week all over again. You sit in meetings you fought to be in and wonder when you stopped wanting to be there. Every win lasts about an hour before the machine in your head says next.
Your Financial Independence number is still three years away. It’s been three years away for a decade.
Meanwhile, you’ve looked at that vineyard in Portugal often enough that the ads follow you into meetings.
Mention any of this to someone outside the bubble and they say, a little wistfully, “I wish I had your problems.”
So you stop mentioning it.
You might know exactly what you want. You might just know something needs to change. Either way, it deserves more than the back of your mind.
Now picture a Tuesday when you’ve stopped ignoring it.
You know what you’re working towards, and there’s something in your day you’re looking forward to.
In the half-second before you speak, you used to run the calculation. Is this the right sort of provocative, or could it be a career-limiting move? Then one day you notice you’re doing it less.
You say what you think. You get excited without checking how it looks. You disagree when you disagree. You trust your own judgement enough to let people hear it.
Your shoulders come down. You didn’t know they were up.
And you’re better at the job, not worse. Sharper decisions, because you’re not spending half your energy managing how you come across. More impact, because you’ve stopped vetoing your own ideas.
You give your team room to make decisions without slowly taking the work back. More of your time goes into the work you’re best at.
Before you ask for something you want, you already know who to go to first, and what they care about. You spend more of your week on what will matter in two years, not just this quarter. “Strategic” is the word people use about you now.
And there’s more of you left when you get home.
The question you’ve been carrying starts to have an answer:
What do you really want?
Maybe it’s the VP role, and now you know how to get it. Maybe you’ve just got it, and you want the first few months to count. Maybe it’s the idea you’ve had and dismissed three times. Maybe it’s something different. You can say it out loud without immediately explaining why it’s unrealistic, selfish, or something you should already have done.
The life you built wasn’t a mistake. It got you here. It just doesn’t get to decide what comes next.
You’re becoming you, but more so. Full on. Wholehearted. Unleashed.
“Find out who you are and do it on purpose.”
Dolly Parton
So why is it still just a thought?
You give it serious consideration. Usually between finishing work and falling asleep.
Then this week’s urgent thing comes first. Another quarter. Another calibration cycle. Another vesting date.
And everyone you could talk to has a stake in your answer.
Your manager has priorities for you. Your team needs you steady. Your peers are the people you’re measured against. At home, the consequences land on people you love.
None of them is lying to you. They just can’t be neutral.
You’ve done everything right. That might be exactly the problem.
For years, you had a scoreboard. Get the promotion. Increase scope. Build the team. Hit the number. Earn more. Keep your options open.
And you got very good at it.
You learnt what gets rewarded. When to speak. How to sound credible. Which parts of yourself to bring to work, and which to leave at home.
Somewhere along the way, the question shifted from what do I want? to what’s the smartest move?
Some of that made you a better leader. Some of it is now getting in your way. Being the person with the answers makes it hard to let your team find their own. Being dependable means everyone else’s priorities fill your week. Being measured turns into never saying anything you haven’t rehearsed three times.
The promotion might be exactly what you want. It might also be the most sensible-sounding answer to a different question. From inside the scoreboard, it’s very hard to tell which.
So this is the work we do together.
We start with what you want. The ambition, the change, the thing you keep coming back to. We give it a full hearing before anyone asks whether it’s sensible.
We look at what achieving it would take, what’s getting in the way, and what matters about it to you.
Then we put it to work.
Have the conversation about the bigger role. Give someone responsibility you’d usually keep. Test the idea you’ve dismissed three times.
When something stops you, we work on that too. The assumption you’ve never questioned. The reaction you can’t explain. The thing you know you need to say but keep finding a reason not to.
Your ambition might be the same, with a clearer way forward. It might have changed. Either way, you leave able to say it out loud, with steps already taken, and the next one in your calendar.
I’ve worked through my own version of these questions too. It took me ten years and two burnouts.
That’s why I care about what you do with the next six weeks.
Richard Russell
What’s changed for others
Names and details changed. The outcomes aren’t.
A chief of staff at a PE-backed tech startup chose the role she really wanted, on her own terms, and a month in her CEO called her his best hire.
A senior leader at a Big Tech company turned years of career indecision into clarity, and chose to build a new area for the company that he cared about.
A non-profit managing director, three years into a job search that kept stalling, rebuilt her confidence and told her story on stage to 200 people.
An AI governance lead stopped taking organisational setbacks personally, left the role on her own terms, and found what really drives her.
A senior executive at a European sustainability think tank, on employer-sponsored coaching, had reached the top of his ladder and felt adrift. He named a goal worth chasing.
A senior commercial leader facing a step up she worried was beyond her stopped grinding to prove herself and decided how she wanted to lead.
A senior technology leader went from “what’s next? I have no idea” after a hard exit to launching his own product brand, which is gaining real traction.
A technology leader who kept getting promoted, then pushed out, saw the pattern behind it, and started a Fortune 500 role that fits how he works.
The ambition you keep putting off. The decision you keep circling. The way you want work and life to feel.
Give it twenty minutes out loud.
You leave knowing your next step, even if it isn’t working with me.
A 20-minute Clarity Call. Free and confidential.
Find out what’s been holding you back
Free 5-minute quiz
The What’s Next Map
Find the habits that have been holding you back, what they’re costing you, and small steps to try this week.
5 minutes · no email
Frequently asked questions
Will this work for me?
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I'm not in a company "everyone has heard of". Can you help me?
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Who is this not for?
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Is this confidential?
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Are you going to tell me to quit my job?
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Is this therapy?
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Can’t I just ask ChatGPT?
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I’ve just stepped up into a bigger role. Is this for me?
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What if it doesn't work for me?
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Can my company pay?
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Know someone this would help?
Here’s a line you can paste:
Richard runs six weeks of coaching for people working out what they really want from their work next.
Here's the page: https://richardrussell.co/coaching/whats-next
Who am I?
Six years at Google, then two at Amazon, where I led a 100-person organisation. For the last decade I’ve coached hundreds of founders and senior executives across Europe and the US, many of them working out what they want next, and taking steps to get it.
My own version of the question was leaving consulting for coaching, and building this programme. You don’t have to take as long as I did.
Not quite what you’re looking for?
Is your next move building or running your own company?
Is your next move a big change where you already are?
Find the easy stuff strangely hard?
Not sure this is the right one for you?