What Becomes Possible When the Old Structure Ends?

Burnout didn’t arrive for me as a dramatic collapse. It arrived quietly, through an email.

It was late September, early October, when I received the notice that Kajabi Experts was going away. And the feeling wasn’t panic at first. It was numbness. Like the floor had dropped out beneath something I didn’t realise I’d been standing on. 

For years, Kajabi Experts had been a source of safety. I didn’t have to be on job marketplaces. I didn’t have to compete loudly or pitch myself aggressively. Clients reached out because they needed help, not because I convinced them. My work spoke for itself. I didn’t need to perform my credibility or build a portfolio to prove what I already knew I could do.

That mattered to me more than I realised.

I’ve never loved hard pitching or shouting to be chosen. My approach has always been invitational. Quiet. Relational. I’m very good at helping other people articulate their vision, connect the dots, and build something coherent from it. Doing that for oneself has always been harder. When you’re the visionary inside your own business, there’s no natural mirror. No one to bounce ideas off who understands both the emotional weight and the real-world constraints.

And when that container disappeared, all of that came rushing in at once.

By November, Kajabi Experts officially shut down. Everyone migrated to Contra. Suddenly I was inside a much larger pool, subject to opaque algorithms and AI-driven search systems deciding who gets seen and who doesn’t. There was no way to say, “Choose me because I’ve care so much about your business!” No clear path to signal depth over noise. Just waiting, hoping, trusting systems I couldn’t see or influence.

Intellectually, I knew this wasn’t something I could complain about. It had been a free platform. It was never meant to be permanent. But emotionally, it forced me to face something I hadn’t prepared for: how much of my sense of stability had been tied to a structure I didn’t own.

I had felt safe. And then that safety was removed.

As the year wound down, projects paused. Some retainers slowed. Clients went on holiday. And suddenly, there was space — not the restorative kind, but the kind where your own thoughts get very loud.

I remember thinking, Did I waste the year? The last time I had checked, it felt like it was still July. I had plans. Momentum. Fire. A clear sense that I was going to own 2025.

And then it was December.

Anxiety crept in alongside the pressure to hold everything together — emotionally, financially, and as a parent. Christmas has never really been about me. It’s about making sure my kids don’t feel the absence or instability I grew up with. This year, though, I chose something different. We stayed home. No presents. No performance. We ordered fries and Chinese takeaway and watched Loot before our Apple TV subscription expired.

And the surprising thing was: they didn’t mind. They were happy. Lighter, even.

Somewhere in that quiet space — between being overwhelmed and being honest — I rebuilt my Digital Systems Architect site. I launched it. And then I realised it didn’t sit right. It was too cold. Too masculine. Too polished in a way that didn’t reflect how I actually work or what I care about.

So I tore it down and rebuilt it again.

SEO rules aside. Best practices aside. I chose to keep the brand real. Emotional, even. Because at that point, pretending to be anything else felt like another form of burnout.

And that was the moment I realised: I couldn’t keep doing things the same way.

I didn’t know what would replace the structure I had relied on. I only knew it was time to stop expecting safety from something I didn’t own.

This wasn’t the beginning of a reinvention. It was the beginning of a reckoning — with how I wanted my work to feel, and what I was no longer willing to carry alone.

Looking back, this was the moment everything quietly started to shift.

Building connections without shouting “hire me” is what kept me from completely unraveling. The client relationships I had already nurtured became anchors during this period.

They reminded me that my work was never really about chasing deliverables. It was — and still is — about caring for people’s businesses as if they were my own, and letting real relationships carry the work forward.

Because the right people don’t return only because of what you built for them. They return because of how you held their work while it was in your care — as if it were your own.