My biggest call to courage yet…

Eighteen months ago, my husband Toby sat me down and said, "I want to sell my business soon. I’m ready to retire." He'd always planned to retire at 60, but at 57 he could see a way to make it happen earlier and he wanted to grab it with both hands. At the beginning of September, he did it. He is now, officially, fully retired.

I won't pretend that conversation didn't land like a small earthquake for me. I was not ready! His plan to retire at 60 had quietly shaped mine though. For forever, I’ve had that timeline in mind, and up until 18 months ago my reality was that I had another three years to build The Courageous Coach: the programme, the podcast, the community I'd poured myself into.

Three years is a decent runway for a young business, and I was still so incredibly dedicated to making it everything it could be. I knew I’d have big choices to make as Toby approached retirement – whether I retired too or whether I continued the fully-fledged Courageous Coach in some form.

Suddenly though, I didn’t have three more years. I had just eighteen months if I was going to retire with Toby too. The mini earthquake turned into months of overthinking and examining every option I had in front of me.

After a lot of thinking, a lot of resistance, and a good number of honest conversations, I've decided I am going to retire too, but in December 2027. I want Toby and I to step into this next chapter together, but he deserves some time and space to settle into retirement and shape what he wants it to look like, and I want to close my business, and the Courageous Coach particularly, with grace and integrity.

Working it through

I didn't work this through alone, and I don't think I could have. It took my supervisor and my supervision group, a mentor who's known me and my work for years, friends who know me well enough to ask me the hard questions, and a lot of conversations with Toby, not just about what we wanted our next chapter to look like, but the practical, unglamorous stuff too: money, logistics, shape of life.

It also took my own coach. I'm lucky enough to work with someone who simply gave me the space to explore, to ramble, to share whatever was sitting there, and then to move forward. Different people held different parts of this for me, and I don't think any one of them could have held all of it.

There was real resistance. When you love something, as I do my work, it's hard to let it go. Part of me kept asking: if I just pushed a bit harder, could I grow this faster? Could I make it work in time?

What shifted things wasn't a single decision. It was noticing. Over the past eighteen months I started paying close attention to the moments when I actually felt joy, not when I thought I should, but when it genuinely showed up. And while there were moments of joy in the work, most of my real joy was elsewhere: dog walks, stillness, the quiet company of a husband who is my soulmate, my garden, my home, helping our reactive dog Molly find her way to a calmer, happier life. The simple things.

I turned 50 this summer and gifted myself the whole month of August away from routine and my business. I realise now I was kind of test-driving retirement. And, it turns out, I rather like it!

What I've learned about identity

This year has been spacious in a way I chose deliberately: time away on the boat, weekends somewhere beautiful with Toby and the dogs, slowing down, reading, gardening, resting. And somewhere in the middle of that spaciousness, I realised something I wasn't expecting.

This isn't just how I want to spend a year. It's how I want to spend the next fifty.

I've also realised that being a coach, running my own business, was never actually who I am. Stepping away from it is genuinely very sad. But, it isn't hard because who I am has always been rooted somewhere else: being a wife and partner, a dog mum, someone with ageing parents and a growing sense that time is short.

I know for many people, career and identity are deeply woven together, and that's not wrong, it's just not true for me. When people ask what I'll say when someone asks what I do once I've "retired" (a word that still jars slightly; it's for old people, and I'm not old!), the honest answer is: I don't know. And there's real relief in that. I don't need a tidy one liner or an elevator pitch. I'll just say whatever feels honest in the moment.

This isn't failure

I want to be really clear about something. The Courageous Coach didn't fail. I still believe, completely, that this work matters, in coaching and far beyond it, for anyone trying to live and lead with more courage. It's simply not the work for me to keep doing now. Those are two different things, even if they don't always feel different at two in the morning.

This isn't a choice everyone can make

I want to name something honestly here. Not every fifty-year-old reading this, and certainly not every fifty-year-old coach with a private practice, is in a position to retire early. I'm aware of that, and it sits with me as I write this.

I don't want to call it luck, because luck suggests it simply fell into our laps, and it didn't. Toby and I have worked hard, for a long time, to be able to make this choice. I also don't want to pretend hard work is the whole story either. Timing, circumstance, and yes, privilege, all played their part, and I'd rather say that plainly than gloss over it.

Retirement for us will mean a simpler life, and a fair amount of rethinking what we actually need versus what we've simply grown used to. That simplifying feels like a relief to me, genuinely. But I know it looks different depending on where you're standing, and I didn't want to write this story as though everyone reading it has the same choice available to them.

What comes next, and what this last chapter holds

I'll keep doing the work I believe in most, through my BetterUp associate work delivering Dare to Lead™ coaching and facilitation, and through private coaching focused on courage, right through to December 2027.

The Courageous Coach programme itself, though, is coming to a close. January will bring the final programme, and I want it to end well. Next year I'm also planning an Emotional Agility programme for coaches, drawing on everything I learned training with Susan David, learning I want to pass on rather than keep to myself.

You can find out more about The Courageous Coach and the final programme at melissahague.com/courageous-coaches, and if the Emotional Agility programme has sparked your curiosity, I'd love to hear from you, drop me an email or a message on LinkedIn.

And in March, The Courageous Coach Gathering will be our farewell: a chance to properly thank and celebrate everyone who has been part of this journey, whether that's through the programme, the podcast, or simply being alongside me in this community.

To every coach who has done this work with me: thank you. Not just for doing the hard work of building courage and stepping into vulnerability, but for making the choice to step in at all. That choice, showing up, is the courageous act. You've made so much more possible for me than you probably know.

An invitation

If you're an independent coach reading this, whether we've worked together or not, I hope you find something of yourself in this story. Maybe it stirs something about your own next chapter. Maybe it brings up sadness that The Courageous Coach is ending, and if it does, that's alright. It's worth being curious about what that feeling is telling you.

A few questions I'd gently leave you with:

• What does joy actually look like for you? Not the version you think you should want, but the one that shows up when you're paying attention?

• If your work wasn't part of your identity, what would be left?

• Is there something you've always meant to do, with me or otherwise, that this might be your nudge to finally begin?

Whatever this story stirs up for you, I'd love to hear from you. Send me an email, or find me on LinkedIn, I read everything, and I'd genuinely love to know how it landed.

I'm choosing more joy and my next chapter with curiosity and an open heart. But I am so very grateful for all that has brought me to this moment.

I hope, wherever you are in your own story, you find room to choose joy too.

With real gratitude & love

Melissa