Someone who has
stood where you're standing.
Johnny Lambert.
I've spent more than 30 years inside corporate environments, across London, Dubai and Sydney, as an employee, a director, and then running my own business. I know the particular pressure of being the one accountable, and the habit of looking composed when you aren’t. Along the way I hit the same collisions Valiant is built for.
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My career didn’t run in a straight line.
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There was a restructure, a role that shrank, and a stretch where things levelled out while the people around me assumed I was still climbing, and I kept acting as if I was. Work wanted more just as home needed more. There was financial pressure. And then a cancer diagnosis that reframed more than I’d expected.
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What I learned is that the strategies that carry you through a career stop working when life shifts underneath them. I also learned that most men, me included, wait far too long to talk to anyone, because on the outside, we’re still holding it together.
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Valiant is built for the conversations I wish I’d had.
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Private, practical, with someone who understood the terrain, and early enough that I could make the choices rather than have them made for me.
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Why Fortitude Coach?
Fortitude is the strength to hold steady under pressure that doesn’t let up. It’s not about bouncing back from a bad week, which is where most talk of resilience lands. It’s about carrying a heavy load for months or years without losing yourself under it.
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That’s the work I do. I help men in demanding careers work out whether the pressure they’re under is still driving them forward or has started to wear them down, and what to do about it while the choice is still theirs.
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A life coach helps you set direction across your life. An executive or leadership coach helps you lead and perform better at work. A Fortitude Coach works on what sits underneath both: the load you’re carrying, what it’s costing you, and whether you can keep carrying it the way you are. The aim is to keep the man doing the work intact, at work and at home.
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The fortitude is yours, not mine. I help you find your own answers and build on them, through conversation rather than advice.
It’s coaching, not counselling or therapy, and it’s built on having stood where you’re standing.
How I work.
I work within Motivational Interviewing, an established and evidenced approach. You lead the conversation. My job is to help you hear your own reasoning clearly, not to hand you a plan.
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I'm an accredited Mental Health First Aider, so if what you're carrying needs more than coaching, I'll recognise it and help you find the right person to talk to.