Why I Left Corporate Training to Become a Life Design Coach

I was sitting in a conference room, wrapping up another corporate training session, when a participant named Patty lingered behind. (I’ll never forget her because she had these really cool aqua glasses and fire engine red hair). She thanked me for the content I left, then hesitated before asking, “But how do I figure out if this is even the right career for me anymore?”

I gave her a pretty standard response — something about applying today’s skills to her current role, staying focused on professional development. But as she walked away, I felt it in the pit of my stomach: I’d just given her a surface answer to a soul-deep question. She didn’t need better skills. She needed to reimagine her entire path.

And I couldn’t help her with that — not in my current role, anyway.

That moment stayed with me. It wasn’t the first time someone had asked a bigger question than my training curriculum could answer, and it wouldn’t be the last. I started realizing that the most meaningful conversations were happening in the margins — before sessions started, during breaks, after everyone else had left. The real work people needed wasn’t about skills development. It was about life design or redesign.

Leaving corporate training wasn’t a dramatic exit or a lightning-bolt decision. It was a slow progression of getting honest about what kind of work felt right for me at this stage in my life. This post is the story of how I went from training corporate employees to coaching mid-career professionals through complete life redesigns — and why that shift changed everything.

Corporate training wasn’t just a career choice — it was practically in my DNA. Growing up immersed in the world of corporate learning, pursuing it professionally felt inevitable. After earning my Master of Science in Organization Development & Leadership, I built a thriving practice specializing in soft skills development for government, education, and nonprofit sectors.

And I was good at it. More than that — I loved it.

My approach was anything but typical corporate training. I designed high-intensity, gamified learning experiences that broke complex concepts into digestible pieces and kept participants engaged. I brought marketing principles into L&D, creating branded experiences that felt less like mandatory training and more like dynamic events. I thrived on meeting new people, hearing their stories, and experimenting with tools and techniques that kept energy high in the room.

The positive feedback fueled me. Watching participants step outside their comfort zones, seeing breakthroughs happen in real time — this was my creative outlet, and I had the freedom to make it uniquely mine.

But slowly, something shifted.

The work that once energized me started feeling… incomplete. I was helping people develop soft skills, sure, but increasingly I found myself in conversations that went deeper — conversations about dissatisfaction, misalignment, and the courage it takes to reimagine your entire career. Those weren’t training moments. They were transformation moments. And my role didn’t allow me to go there.

I started asking myself: Did I want to keep building programs for groups, or was I being called to guide individuals through something far more personal? Was it time to reconnect with what I really wanted — not just to train people, but to help them redesign their lives?

That question wouldn’t let me go.

I tried career coaching first — it made sense given my background. But it felt too narrow, too focused on resumes and job transitions without addressing the whole person navigating the change. Then I explored educational tutoring for children, which I genuinely loved, but I found myself missing those strategic, complex conversations that come with guiding adults through major life decisions. Business consulting seemed like a natural fit next — I enjoyed the strategy work, but it felt transactional. I was solving problems, not facilitating transformation.

Each attempt taught me something important. I was learning what I valued: depth over quick fixes, whole-life integration over single-issue solutions, meaningful transformation over checking boxes. But I was also learning something else — something I hadn’t expected.

I was going through the life design process myself. (Who would have thought?!)

Without realizing it, I was experimenting, prototyping different paths, testing what fit. Some things worked. Some didn’t. And that required a level of honesty with myself I hadn’t anticipated.

This wasn’t about finding the “perfect” path — there’s no such thing. It was about finding what felt true. And that’s a choice only I could make for myself, just like it’s a choice each of my clients will eventually have to make for themselves.

You know that feeling when you put on a favorite sweater fresh from the dryer on a cold day? That immediate sense of comfort, of everything settling into place exactly as it should?

That’s how life design coaching feels to me. It’s just the right fit.

I’m deeply grateful for every detour that led me here. Corporate training gave me an incredible foundation — teaching me how people learn, grow, and develop. I didn’t have to abandon everything I’d built; instead, I got to bring the best parts with me. The skills I developed there — understanding human behavior, designing learning experiences, creating environments where people feel safe to take risks — directly inform how I coach now.

But life design coaching offered something corporate training couldn’t: the space to go deeper.

Life design isn’t something you can automate, scale, or package efficiently. It requires genuine human connection, personalized guidance, and the willingness to sit with someone in the messy middle of reinvention. It demands that I show up fully present for each person’s unique journey, not deliver a one-size-fits-all program.

This work brought together everything I’d been searching for — the strategic planning I loved from my training background, the depth and personalization I craved, and the opportunity to help mid-career professionals redesign not just their careers, but their entire lives.

Finally, I wasn’t just teaching skills. I was facilitating real transformation.

If you’ve read this far, there’s a reason for that. Maybe you feel as if you’re in the same boat as I once was, showing up for a career that used to fit but doesn’t anymore. Maybe you feel like you’re spinning your wheels.

Here’s what I’ve learned: that pull toward change isn’t something to ignore or rationalize away. It’s information. And getting honest about what you really want — even when it’s uncomfortable, even when the path isn’t clear — is where the real journey to finding what you want truly begins.

You don’t need permission to explore what’s next. You just need to start.