This episode is a little different.
I’m sharing a very honest update on why I’ve decided to pause the podcast and step away from The Ambitious Introvert® as a brand – at least in its current form.
Nothing has gone wrong, I haven’t fallen out of love with the work, and this isn’t me burning everything down and walking away!
Instead, I’ve outgrown what I built, and pretending otherwise would mean forcing something that no longer fits.
So in this episode, I’m talking openly about what’s changing, why now, and how I’m thinking about what comes next.
In this episode, I share:
- Why the podcast itself isn’t the problem, but the brand has become a constraint
- How my work has evolved beyond “business coaching for introverts”
- The tension between podcasts as creative outlets, lead generation tools, and sponsored platforms
- Why clarity matters more than consistency when you’re entering a new chapter
- What’s changing, what’s staying the same, and what I’m taking forward into what comes next
- Why I’m choosing a pause rather than forcing a rushed relaunch
- How you can stay connected and be part of shaping the next iteration of the show
The entire back catalogue will remain available, and when the podcast returns under a new name, it will be on this same feed, so:
👉 Make sure you’re subscribed or following the podcast so you don’t miss the relaunch.
👉 You can also stay in the loop by joining the newsletter at www.theambitiousintrovert.com/newsletter.
If you’ve listened to this show and found value, resonance, or perspective over the years, thank you! This isn’t goodbye. It’s a pause, and a transition into something new.
And if you have thoughts on what you’d love to hear in the next chapter, I’d genuinely LOVE your input. You can email me at hello@theambitiousintrovert.com or connect with me on LinkedIn or Instagram.
ELP x
FINAL EPISODE: Why I’m Pausing the Podcast (and What’s Next)
So, this will be the final ever episode of the Ambitious Introvert Podcast, which feels incredibly surreal to say, especially because if you had asked me even probably two months ago if I would be pausing the podcast, I would have said, no, are you crazy? I love my podcast, which I still do love my podcast. However, over the last probably six weeks, I had a massive realisation as I was looking ahead to 2026 and what I want to do with the business, and something had kind of been niggling at me this year when it came to producing content for this show and for any social media and email content, which I had really struggled with this year. And part of it is because I think the work that I do has evolved and changed and shifted so much in the last, I’ve been in business seven years, I’ve had this brand for five and a half years, that it doesn’t necessarily fit into a neat box anymore, which when I very first niched down to Ambitious Introverts, it was so specific.
It was business coaching for ambitious introverts who are online service providers, I mean, boom. But over time that has changed and shifted. I don’t really consider what I do to be business coaching, even though the majority of my clients are entrepreneurs and we talk about business.
Them being introverts is probably actually not the main reason that we work together when I look at it now. You know, a lot of the work we do is not talking about or focussing on their introversion. Yeah, we focus on, you know, their energy and the way they think and building a sustainable business, but there’s so much more to it.
And so where it doesn’t fit into that neat box, it can feel a little meandering when it comes to creating content. And that’s not a bad thing necessarily. But the other thing with a podcast is there are all these opposing forces and there are so many directions and focusses that you can take.
You can build a podcast that is designed as lead generation for your business. That is why I started this podcast five and a half years ago and it has served that purpose beautifully. Also, a podcast is quite a creative outlet for me.
It’s quite indulgent that I just get to invite interesting people and have a chat with them. So there’s that aspect, but they might not necessarily compliment each other. When I invite someone on the show, hopefully you listen and you enjoy it, but that doesn’t necessarily make you want to invest in a programme of mine in my business.
I’ve also dabbled around with sponsors on the podcast this year, but again, sponsors want something very different. Sponsors want you to be ranking on Spotify and Apple podcasts. They care about how many people tune in.
They care less about how many people stay listening to the podcast, whereas I want people to listen all the way through to get the value from it. And then podcasts can be a nurture tool. It can be a way for people to know, like, and trust me.
And all of these different kind of opposing things are like, you should have a short podcast, you should have a long podcast, you need to be selling your offer, you shouldn’t be selling your offer. And it’s really a minefield. There’s no wrong way of doing it, right? But definitely when the focus isn’t clear, it can be really tempting to try and touch on all of those things.
And then of course, you’ve got half a foot in doing everything kind of okay, but not particularly well. That is how I felt in the podcast this year. And so when I sat down to get some clarity and get some direction, ready for 2026, and think about, who do I want to be interviewing? What do I want to be talking about? What do I want to be sharing with you guys? What’s important? What gives the biggest indication of the type of work that I do? How can I translate that into content that is both valuable for people listening that want to go away and take what I’ve said and run with it, but how is it also compelling to people that are looking to invest in support? And you know, I obviously want them to choose me if that’s the right fit for them.
So as I sat down thinking about this, I had an absolute moment of clarity that I’m going to close down The Ambitious Introvert. I am closing down the brand. And the ironic thing is, when I came up with the brand, it happened in exactly the same manner.
It was just an instant. I had been trying for a couple of months to niche down and think about who I wanted to be talking to and all this, and I just wasn’t getting any clarity. And instantly, I just sat there and went, oh, it’s Ambitious Introverts.
And it was exactly the same thing. I just went, I’ve outgrown the brand. The brand is the problem.
So the podcast is not the issue. The issue is that everything the podcast is built around is actually not right for me where I am in life and business right now. And I’m, I don’t have all the answers.
I definitely don’t have all the answers about what is coming next. But the podcast is going on to a pause. I’m taking a hiatus.
I will be back. I have zero doubt in that. I can’t tell you a time frame.
I don’t know what the episodes will look like, the format. Will it be solo? Will it be guests? Because I actually just don’t know. And in an ideal world, I would have loved to have had all of that sorted, ready to release an episode next week or in two weeks time with the new show and keep going.
Because it’s been quite a source of pride for me that I have kept this show going for five and a half years. And that’s not an insignificant task, especially when I was doing weekly, especially when you consider every episode costs hundreds of dollars or pounds to produce, to edit, to market, to host, all of these things. And given some of the health issues that I had a couple of years ago when I cut down to every two weeks, like I’m quite amazed that I’ve managed to keep it going.
You have to also remember that before I launched this podcast, the single biggest issue that I struggled with in my business was consistency. And doing this podcast kind of cured that and made me consistent as I could be. So I have a lot of identity tied into that.
But also in my gut, I knew the right thing to do is to take a pause. Because like I said, I’m recording this on the 21st of December. I don’t know what I’m going to do next.
I know that it is going to be some form of coaching, the same as I do now, probably not that different. My, you know, I have long-term clients that obviously stay with me. They, you know, so nothing really changes in the day-to-day of my business.
But how I work has changed a lot. Who I am has changed a lot. The coaching industry and the online business space and even the startup business space and bricks and mortar and all of these other areas that I support clients in have all changed so much in the last five and a half years.
And I need to take some time to really distil what is it about the person that works with me that makes me the right coach for them. Because I don’t think anymore it’s just that they’re an introvert. I think there is more to it and I haven’t been able to really kind of distil down what it is.
And I’m also looking at how I work with people. What is it? What is it that gets results for clients? Why do clients stay for a long time? Why do clients enjoy working with me and how do they get the transformation? Because it’s not pure coaching. And again I used to pride myself on the fact back in the day that I was a pure coach.
I wasn’t a mentor. I wasn’t a strategist. I was a coach.
Well now because I have a tonne of experience I definitely mentor clients. And there is definitely a consulting aspect to it as well. And there’s definitely an advisory aspect.
And the works at this intersection of all of these different things that I’ve never really stopped to think about. And it feels so good to do. And it feels so natural and comfortable especially with these clients that have been with me for a long time.
But if you ask me to describe it I actually can’t right now. I need to take some time and work out what it is. And of course as you know if you’re a business owner when you’re trying to market something that is kind of vague and a little bit broad it does not work.
That is why the first iteration of this brand from the get-go like grew so quickly because it was immediately obvious who it was for and it was immediately obvious what I helped them with. And so I have decided to take some time. Like I said I don’t know how much time it’s gonna be.
I hope it won’t be too long and I hope that you don’t all go and find new favourite podcasts and forget all about me. Which is why I said at the beginning please please make sure that you follow or subscribe or sign up to the newsletter theambitiousintrovert.com slash newsletter. The link is in the show notes.
Because that is how you will hear. Because when I when I relaunch it will have a different name. If you just type in the ambitious introvert it’s not going to be there anymore.
So I will be leaving the back catalogue up and available. Nothing is going to change and when I re-release it will be on this same feed. Which is why if you are subscribed or you’re following whenever I release something new whatever it’s called you will get notified of it.
So please please take 10 seconds to do that when this episode finishes. But yeah I really kind of grappled with that but it felt like the right thing to do. So I’m taking a hiatus.
I am doing some work with a strategist around my business, around my offers, around my messaging and I’m working with a phenomenal phenomenal podcast consultant for three months at the start of 2026. Which I’m super excited about to look at what has been good with the ambitious introvert and what I’ve done well and what I can carry and take from that into whatever comes next. I truly believe that if you have listened to this show and found value in it, resonated with anything that I’ve said or felt seen and understood then you will in whatever I do next.
It’s not going to be a huge departure. I just realised that the introvert brand used to be so empowering and limitless for me. It gave me this kind of lens to run anything through that I wanted to talk about and share about and I loved that and I’m so grateful for that.
However what I’d realised this year is rather than that lens it has felt like a little bit of a constriction and I’ve had pitches from guests where I couldn’t make the connection and there would be a great guest talking about a great topic that I know people would get value from but there is not a direct through line to introversion and when you have a brand that is so specific on one thing, you have to honour that. You have to stick with that and and so as I say it became a little bit of a constraint and I started to almost resent like oh I can’t do this because I can’t tie it back to introversion and that’s when I realised that the conversation I wanted to be having wasn’t necessarily about introversion. I’ve had so many people over the last couple of years, especially people that I’ve met through the public speaker space or other you know coaches say oh you should write a book like I would read what you wrote people would you know introverts love a book all of this and I agree with that and something deep down was like I don’t want to write a book about introversion because maybe I knew that that’s not where I’m going to be taking my business and my brand in the long term.
I say in the long term I’ve been doing it for five and a half years which is an incredibly long time and I am incredibly grateful for. I know people that you know change kind of lanes and topics and brands much more frequently than that so I do feel like you know it has been a long time but I also feel like it’s just come to a natural end and I there’s no like oh my god I’m so sick of introverts and I hate them because obviously I adore all my clients. I adore everyone that I’ve met through thisbusiness.
I am still a huge introvert but that aspect and facet of my personality is maybe not as prominent and at the forefront to me now as it was when I launched the brand where I’d probably only known about it for a few years and I was still experimenting and finding my own way um whereas now I you know it’s just part of who I am and it’s so integrated that I kind of don’t think about it in many ways and so I think this is a perfect timing with year’s end and a perfect opportunity for me to retreat as we’re still in winter here in the UK.
We’re about to go into the the coldest darkest month of January and what I really want to do is go away and come back with absolute clarity about the business, about the customer, about the offer and about this show which has been such a huge huge part of everything that I’ve built in the business and to make sure that I have got the most dialled in cohesive valuable episodes that I can bring that are aligned with whatever I want to achieve with it.
Whether that is audience growth whether that is to nurture people to be amazing clients whether that is for sponsorship you know all of these things so I really truly believe the right thing for me to do is go away and get that right before I come back and not half-ass it just so that I can get it out you know next week and that brings up a lot like I say it brings up like oh people will just forget about me and they you know they won’t want to listen anymore because they’ll go and find another podcast am I missing out on potential clients by pausing the podcast maybe maybe I am but also I think that it’s really important to honour what we believe is right and and trust ourselves and even though on paper sometimes things might look like they’re not the best idea they might feel a little bit scary there is something in having that deep wisdom and that deep knowing that everything will be okay because you are trusting yourself and because you know that you need to figure it out before you can share it with with other people and so that is it for the ambitious introvert podcast if whether you’ve been here for a few episodes whether you’ve been here since episode one back in October 2020
I am so grateful that you have listened I truly appreciate you know everyone everyone that tunes in I really hope that you have both enjoyed and found value in anything that I’ve shared and as I say the entire back catalogue is going to be live so everything is still available to go back and listen to and what I would really truly love more than anything your input so if you’re listening to this and you think you know yeah I want to you know be a part of what comes next I want to have a say because I really love podcasts that are like this or I really hate it when people do this then let me know drop me an email hello at theambitiousintrovert.com or just pop onto the website and you can then click through and connect with me on Instagram or LinkedIn I would love to hear what kind of format and episodes you feel would serve you best in 2026 and just what you would enjoy and like to hear because I feel like I’m starting with this blank slate which is very exciting but also I’ve got this opportunity to create something that is exactly what you guys want to hear that can be the most beneficial thing for you at this time so please please please feel free to reach out with any feedback and I would love to connect with you.
But, in the meantime this is not goodbye as I say this is a pause this is a hiatus it is yes it’s the end of the show under this guise and under this name and under this brandum but this is uh just a metamorphosis and I will be back in hopefully not too long with hopefully something that is even better and more aligned with where I am in life and business right now so thank you once again I hope you have a wonderful wonderful start to 2026 please please please follow subscribe or sign up to the newsletter so you don’t miss any updates and I’m sending you all the best for the new year and I’ll talk to you very soon.
