MAKE A LIFE, NOT JUST A LIVING

You did everything you were supposed to do.

You worked hard. Built the career. Took on more responsibility. Said yes to the opportunities. Earned the promotions, salary, and recognition.

You became someone other people would probably describe as successful.

And somewhere along the way, you started wondering:

Is this really it?

Make a Life, Not Just a Living is for high-achieving mid-career women who want successful careers and full lives.

Women who are ambitious and care deeply about their work, but are starting to question whether the way they have been working, or the version of success they have been chasing, is actually working for them anymore.

I don’t believe the answer is to stop caring about your career.

I think we need to care differently.

Because a successful career and a successful life are not necessarily the same thing.

And your career can matter without being the measure of your entire life.

WHAT WE TALK ABOUT HERE

There are four big conversations underneath almost everything I write, coach on, and talk about.

• Working Differently - Burnout, boundaries, overdelivering, perfectionism, and sustainable ambition.

• Identity & Achievement - Ambition, validation, golden handcuffs, and separating who you are from what you achieve.

• Defining Success for Yourself - Shoulds, timelines, career decisions, defining enough, and figuring out what you actually want.

• Building a Life Bigger Than Work - Relationships, health, freedom, community, experiences, and enjoying the life you’re working so hard to create.

HI, I’M SAMANTHA 👋🏽

I spent 15 years building a successful career in Big Pharma.

I chased the promotions, recognition, awards, bigger opportunities, and all the other markers I thought would tell me I was doing well.

And for a long time, they did.

Until I started asking myself a question I couldn’t un-ask:

Is this it?

I didn’t hate my career.

I wasn’t secretly dreaming of doing nothing.

And I didn’t suddenly become less ambitious.

I just started questioning whether constantly achieving more was the same thing as actually having more of the life I wanted.

Eventually, I left corporate, sold most of what I owned, and moved from Canada to Dubai.

Not because I think everyone should quit their job or move across the world.

My life isn’t the prescription.

It’s one example of what can become possible when you stop assuming the life you’ve built is the only life available to you.

I’m still ambitious.

I still love working.

I still like accomplishing hard things.

I’m just much more interested now in being intentional about what all that ambition is for.

That’s the conversation we’re having here.

I DON’T BELIEVE IN WORK-LIFE BALANCE

I believe in intentional imbalance.

There will be seasons when work asks more of you.

Maybe you’re pursuing a promotion.

Building something.

Launching something.

Working toward a goal you have consciously decided matters to you.

Great.

Hard work isn’t the problem.

Hard work should be intentional, not perpetual.

I want you to strive when you choose to strive.

And then accomplish something.

Recover.

Celebrate it.

Enjoy what you’ve built.

And consciously decide what you want next.

Rather than immediately moving the finish line because there is always something else you could be doing.

That’s what I mean by intentional ambition.

YOU’RE INVITED TO JOIN INTENTIONAL AMBITION COLLECTIVE

For women who want to stop living on autopilot and get more intentional about what they’re working toward, what they’re making it mean, and what they actually want their lives to look like.

Inside the Collective, we go beyond reading about these ideas and actually work with them.

Ask Samantha
Submit an anonymous question for coaching. Each week, I’ll choose one question and coach on it in writing, audio, or video so we can all learn from the conversation.

Live Coaching + Q&A
Bring what you’re working through and get coached live alongside other members.

Trainings + Workshops
Deeper teaching on work, ambition, identity, success, decisions, boundaries, and building a life bigger than your career.

The Library
A growing archive of coaching, trainings, tools, and replays you can return to whenever you need them.

Join the Membership! →

WOMAN IN PROGRESS 🎙️

Prefer to listen?

Woman in Progress is my podcast about what it actually means to intentionally build a successful life.

We talk about work, ambition, identity, relationships, health, burnout, career decisions, and everything that comes with figuring out what you actually want when the version of success you’ve spent years chasing stops feeling like enough.

Listen to Woman in Progress →

WORK WITH ME 1:1

Want help figuring out what’s actually going on?

I work 1:1 with high-achieving mid-career women who know something about work isn’t working anymore, but aren’t sure what needs to change.

We’ll figure out what’s actually making work feel so heavy, what you want instead, and what needs to change so you can build a successful career without sacrificing the rest of your life to have it.

Apply for Coaching →