Naomi Morgan

Before Any Of This

I spent ten years teaching, first in secondary schools and then at university level, before I built any of this.

On paper, it looked like a solid life. A steady salary, structure, a good pension. However, underneath it, I was sat in my classroom on a wet Friday afternoon, staring out at a brick wall with a pile of exam papers on my desk, thinking the same thought on repeat: there has to be more to life than this.

That night I went home and told my partner I was done. We didn't have a plan, a business idea or a safety net. Yet we decided to sell most of our possessions, handed our notices in at work and drove ourselves, and whatever we could fit into the car, to a small village in South Spain. We had no idea how we were going to make an income but we trusted ourselves to figure it out.

I'll be honest with you, the first few years were tough, at one point our total monthly income was 800 euros. I pulled pints for 6 euro an hour, took whatever work came my way. And somewhere in the middle of figuring it out, I went back to university and completed a Master's in Positive Psychology and Coaching Psychology, with distinction.

I trained as a coach, then spent five years training other coaches, working alongside hundreds of them. I built my own coaching business on the side, in the gaps, without a following, an email list or a website that actually worked properly. Last year was my first six-figure year.

None of it happened because I had it all figured out. It happened because I kept backing myself before I felt ready. I'm still doing that now.