When I speak with people about coaching and about their Life Beyond Success, I often finish by saying “Your next 10 years start today”. It’s an acknowledgement that action is important. Well, on 30 September 2025, I marked ten years since leaving the corporate world. A decade of doing my own thing, of learning, adapting, and building a life and business on my own terms. My next 10 years certainly began that day.
Written by:
Justin Walton
Date:
October 9, 2025
When I speak with people about coaching and about their Life Beyond Success, I often finish by saying “Your next 10 years start today”. It’s an acknowledgement that action is important.
Well, on 30 September 2025, I marked ten years since leaving the corporate world. A decade of doing my own thing, of learning, adapting, and building a life and business on my own terms.
My next 10 years certainly began that day.
My early career was in tax and infrastructure. I started young, trained hard, and eventually became Group Head of Tax at a FTSE 250 company. It was high-pressure, high-reward, and full of opportunities to learn how business really works, and how people do too.
That foundation gave me skills I still rely on today including clarity under pressure, financial rigour, and an instinct for how to bring the best out of others.
However, after ten years in my last business, I wanted to build something of my own.
Starting my own business was exciting and terrifying in equal measure. Then life threw curveballs including losing my dad, my wife’s parents, and watching our children step into adulthood. Those experiences changed my perspective completely.
I realised success is not always about scale. It is about alignment and when it comes to work, doing work that reflects who you are and what you value.
That’s when I began to reshape everything. I built a property business, and as the pandemic ended, I turned back towards something that has energised me for some time.
Helping people grow. I trained formally as an Executive and Financial Coach and in doing so, rediscovered a real passion.
• Purpose evolves. What drives you at one moment in time may not do so in the next. Curiosity is key here, as well as a propensity to then act on what ignites a spark.
• You can’t plan everything. Life changes your priorities whether you like it or not.
• Freedom has a cost. Working for yourself means carrying responsibility too.
• Coaching is conversation with intent. Done well, it changes how people see themselves and their world.
• Alignment beats ambition, but both are important.
For me, the next decade isn’t about more but it is about better.
Better balance, better impact, better conversations.
If you’d like to talk about what your next ten years might look like, please drop me a line or come to Business Uncorked, the business social events I host in Southend-on-Sea where we can be curious about the future over a glass of wine and board of cheese.
Ten years on, I can say with certainty that leaving corporate life was on reflection the easy part.
Building a life that feels truly mine has been the real achievement.
My next 10 years start today, and I am positive about what they might bring.
Justin Walton is an Executive and Financial Coach, and Consultant working in Essex and London. He writes regularly on financial well-being and brings his lived experience and professional expertise together to benefit clients and partners.
Don’t hold onto what is holding you back.
My work sits at the intersection of leadership, finance and personal wellbeing, helping business owners, professionals and leaders align work, wealth and wellbeing so they can create lives that feel successful, not just look successful.
I am the founder of the Life Beyond Success platform and creator of ALIGN - Achieving Lasting Impact, Growth and Nexus ® ("ALIGN") methodology, a framework shaped by three decades of experience across professional services, business ownership and property investing, alongside formal training in executive and financial coaching.
