I help people answer the question that keeps them up at 2am on a Sunday night: is this it? What am I doing with my life? Can I get out of this?
I'm CEO of CareerFit, Talent Select, and Successful Succession, businesses that look after that question for individuals, managers, and family businesses. The Happy People Project is where the question itself lives, and where the framework I built to answer it for myself came from.
A few years ago I went through a genuinely difficult stretch. The business wasn't going the way I wanted, and things I used to enjoy stopped engaging me. I was later diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, which meant my blood sugar had been affecting my mood and energy for longer than anyone realised, including me.
I went back to the tools I knew: EO Forum exercises, frameworks from people I respected, the psychology I'd studied for years. Each one was useful and none of them was complete. So I built my own: HAPPY, five dimensions covering Highlights, Appreciation, Progress, People, and Your Contribution. I didn't build it as a product. I built it because I needed it.
To me, happiness boils down to progress towards purpose, whatever that purpose is for you. Not a single destination. A journey through key areas of life: celebrating achievements, embracing gratitude, building skills and habits, nurturing meaningful connections, and contributing to the world around you.
the HAPPY framework
At the core of everything I do is the HAPPY framework, a five-dimension model for understanding and designing a fulfilling work life:
- H - Highlights: the milestones, adventures, and achievements you want to experience
- A - Appreciation: recognising the value in the relationships, challenges, and moments that have shaped you
- P - Progress: knowing you are moving forward, building skills, forming habits, taking meaningful steps
- P - People: the relationships that support, inspire, and challenge you to grow
- Y - Your Contribution: the impact you want to make, in your work, your family, and the world around you
Together, the five dimensions reveal the golden threads, recurring themes across a person's highlights, values, and relationships, that point toward what really matters. From those threads, participants build a HAPPY Work Life MAP: a reverse-engineered plan from a chosen goal, one year, three years, five years, or beyond, back to the steps they can take today. The closing insight that anchors it all: happiness is progress towards purpose.
on stage
I've delivered keynotes, workshops, and facilitated conversations in 53 countries. My most requested talks include Why You HATE Your Job, Hiring The Right People, Build a Killer Family Business Without Killing Your Family, and What's Your Leadership Style? I'm also a sought-after MC and strategy facilitator, particularly within the Entrepreneurs' Organisation (EO).
one more thing
I'm, officially, a Disney Princess.