A Plan for Late Winter and Early Spring.
Setting the course for Work Your Own Way, and some of the stops we'll pass on the way.
Welcome! I’ve had a plan behind the scenes of Work Your Own Way so far, but haven’t had the space to share it. So, here’s what we’re focused on this year, with more detail on what we’ve been doing and what’s coming up in this first season of 2025.
Note to paid subscribers: This post is visible to all subscribers, free and paid. You’ll be able to follow the links below as you’re already a paid subscriber. This post serves as a one stop shop with links to our exercises and activity as we go along, so I’ll probably point you to it quite often! It’s a handy guide to what we’ve done so far, and what we’re doing next. I’ll update with new links as new content is available to you.
What’s the plan?
This year, our paid membership is focused on:
Getting clear on who you are - getting to know yourself really well. mostly who you are at work, but I’m sure we’ll learn about ourselves outside of that too.
We’ll explore the key strands in Work Your Own Way’s alignment model.
Who you are.
What you do.
And what difference you want to make.
This is something we’ll come back to time and again over the year. You can see the alignment model in the section on what work is on the about page.
In the paid membership, we’ll do this through our Book Club and through prompts and activities I’ll set. Some of these will be based on the book, and others will be complementary - drawing on my toolkit from all the one to one work I’ve done over the years.
Getting clear on what your work is.
We’ll spend some time looking at your current job description, and updating it based on what you actually do.
Telling more accurate, inspiring stories about yourself.
By following the exercises in the Book Club in Q1, we’re going to play with different stories we can use to answer the question, “What do you do?”
We’ll write or ‘script’ one or more stories about ourselves and practice saying them out loud (or put them into practice in some written content such as your about page or LinkedIn bio).
Showing up in your CV, portfolio, and online.
Turning what we’re learning about ourselves into visible, tangible ‘objects’. Objects are helpful placemarkers, way finding tools, and signs to show other people.
Connecting with each other.
One of the main things we discovered in the listening exercise back in November is just how lonely it can feel working away on your personal and professional development (and, perhaps, your ‘career’) on your own. So a big part of community calls is going to be you talking to and supporting each other. Getting to know other people whilst getting to know yourself better.
And, by the way, I talk about ‘this year’ rather than ‘this substack’ because we’re on a journey together this year, with a clear focus. We are co-designing this journey together, so that it meets your needs. Next year, what you need might change, and then what you bring to the co-design process will change. So that journey might shift, and we might have a different focus. So, for now, I’m bringing content based on what you tell me that you need now, and my sense of what you need based on my experience.
All the free activity around here will be related to these core activities, and you’re most likely to be able to interact with that in notes in the substack app.
What’s on this season (late winter and early Spring)?
Book club We’re already started with our first book club and it’s not too late to join in.
I’ve chosen our first book based on what people shared in the first shaping session on 15th November, last year.
That book is Tell Me About Yourself by Holley Murchison.
As a free subscriber, grab a copy of the book and read along, working through the activities.
As a paid subscriber, you’ll have the opportunity to share your progress on the activities and get posts where I walk through or answer questions on some of the exercises. Joining live calls gives you the opportunity to work through the exercises with your peers.
Live calls There is a live call for paying subscribers on google meet every month.
As a paid member, you’ll get an invite to this community call straight to your email inbox.
These live calls are currently one Friday a month at 10am UK time. I appreciate these doesn’t work for other parts of the world, depending on your timezone.
If you’d like to join Work Your Own Way calls from a different timezone, join on a 7 day trial and drop me a message to let me know which timezone you’re in.
The exact dates and times for live calls that are currently planned are listed below.
Q1 - Quarter 1 includes January, February and March.
The £ symbol indicates where some content will be behind the paywall.
January
£ Introduce yourself - Come say hi, and let us know who you are. It’s never too late for this step, whenever you join us. We’re focusing our introductions on where we call home, what work is, and something else about you. Because it’s not just all work around here.
£ On the podcast - Embrace the journey: A reflective audio experience for closing the year. Take 30 minutes to acknowledge your journey to this point and create space for what's to come.
Book club starts - We’ve started reading or listening to our Book Club Book. And we’re working through the exercises in the book. It’s only 110 pages so some of us might make it all the way through this month. As a free subscriber you’re welcome to grab a copy of the book too! That book is Tell Me About Yourself by Holley Murchison.
£ Paying members will make a start on the first activities from the book and share their progress in comments and threads. We’ll also chat about it on community calls.
£ Community call - Friday 31st at 10am GMT - Community call. Bring your progress on one of the prompts, and one of the Book Club exercises.
Catch up on the exercises we did from the Book Club book on the community call.
Catch up with the homework after the community call - the next exercise from the Book Club book, with some reflection on your style.
February
£ Community call - Friday 14th February at 10am GMT. We’ll get specific about the scenario and audience we want to focus on when we introduce ourselves, and we’ll reframe the question we’re answering.
£ Book club continues - We’ll script our first version of the story about ourselves and share it in the group.
£ Evidence audit - There’s a whole host of evidence you can draw on that speaks to each of the strands in the Work Your Own Way alignment model. I’ll be sharing tips and prompts on what to collect (and how) in posts for paying subscribers. We’ll start with having an audit of your job description.
£ Your work space - I’ll share some tips on setting up your own space to keep everything together. This will give you your own invaluable resource hub for the rest of the year, and beyond - all focused on you and your work.
March
£ Community call - Friday 28th March at 10am GMT.
£ Book club continues - We’ll create a second draft of our story and support each other to practice in the real world.
We’ll turn our story into a specific use case that supports our work profile. For example -
What you say when you meet a new team member.
What you say when you introduce yourself.
Part of the ‘about’ page on your website.
Your LinkedIn bio.
A CV summary paragraph.
£ Evidence audit continues.
Reminder: This is your space.
As I mentioned on the about page, joining Work Your Own Way means joining a team. This means we’ll shape the membership and community together, learning from one another and figuring things out as we go.
This means you will have the opportunity to contribute ideas and co-create elements of the programme along with your peers - your fellow members.
At the moment I’m using what I learned in the first shaping session I hosted in November 2024. This was so rich and gave me a lot of the context and the content for the plan so far.
I’ll also ask in the paid membership on posts and calls, send surveys, and host another shaping session. You can contribute as much or as little as you like. I’ll use contributions to inform what I post here, the tasks and activities I suggest, and new books for the book club.
If you’re a free member, you can interact with and respond to my notes. You may need to use the app to see these.
A reminder on membership levels.
If you haven’t upgraded yet, you can join Work Your Own Way as a monthly, annual, or founding subscriber.
Please consider joining as an annual or founding member. Monthly subscriptions remain available as the most affordable option, spreading payments through the year.
Annual subscribers get access to everything in the substack, and save £40 on the total yearly costs. Follow along with exercises in audio, video, and text posts and get invites to our monthly community calls. Share your progress in comments on posts. Bring your specific challenges to community calls for the opportunity for some group coaching.
Stripe takes a cut of every transaction made through substack, including a transaction fee. This means that when you choose an annual membership over a monthly membership more of your money gets direct to me.
If you can afford this option over the monthly option, please go for it. It makes a huge difference to me.
Founding subscribers get the same access as other subscribers, with the added bonus of two one to one calls with me. This is also the option to choose if you can afford it and you want to support this work.
Bonus, one to one calls with Lou - These two calls can be taken when you choose to, over the next twelve months.
At the moment calls are on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings, UK time, between 9am and 1pm.
Each call is up to 60 minutes.
You can bring the activities you’re working on from within the community and get a sounding board. We can work on anything you’re stuck on. I can help you dig deeper and get more clarity than working on your own.
The exact timing depends on my availability and your schedule, and I do have certain limits on my capacity because of my chronic illness.
Supporting the work - This is such a vital part of what creators like me need when showing up on a platform like this. Especially when we’re just getting started.
Part of You Can Hub’s mission is to give you the tools, environment and community for you to connect with your courage and create the change you want to see in your own life.
My own personal mission is to democratise professional transformation, by sharing my skills, expertise and approach in a way that’s affordable.
Work of this kind needs founding members to invest in the work in these early days when we’re still gaining traction and also need some space to play with different models for maximum inclusion.
If you want to support the work without joining as a founding member, you can also make a donation to Work Your Own Way’s back office non-profit, The You Can Hub, here.
Monthly subscribers will get access to all of the content on substack and to the monthly live community calls. That includes content that I’ve already posted.
I chose £20 per month as a monthly price to keep it as affordable as possible, whilst also considering the value of my own time in creating the content and experience.
There is a 7 day free trial so you can come in and have a look at the paid content before making a decision about whether to come join us.
If for any reason you can’t afford a specific month, you can pause your subscription. Stuff happens, there are unforeseen expenses or unexpected spanners in the works, and so you can create that break in your subscription without having to leave.
Please note that live calls aren’t recorded at this time as standard. It is up to the people who come to a specific live call whether we record them or not. I will always make sure any activities we do in the live call are also provided by other types of post, so you can still follow along.