"What Next?" Finding Your Golden Thread

After the death of corporate articles took off, my inbox filled with variations of the same question: if the old path is broken, what now?

Charlie Rogers and I have been friends for about two years, we met through his community “undefinables”. When I hit a wall with my career about ten months ago, I asked him to coach me through it. One of the first things we worked on was what he calls the "Golden Thread" - the through-line that connects your many interests into an internal compass that can guide you through life. This statement became the foundation for everything else we built over those eight months.

Charlie's been coaching people through career transitions for years. The pattern that he’s seen is that there are talented people with many interests (who he calls undefinables) who can’t work out how any of it connects. The conventional advice says pick one thing and go all in. But that means abandoning parts of yourself.

When we started working together, I was stuck. I'd done the usual soul-searching exercises. Listed hobbies, tried to find my "passion." But I kept hitting walls: who'd actually pay me for this? Which bits did I genuinely enjoy versus thinking I should enjoy them? What was I actually good at versus what I wished I was good at?

As someone who's always been extremely curious with loads of interests, music, sports, philosophy, business… I couldn't work out how they all made sense together. Everything felt random and disconnected.

Charlie asked different questions. When did time disappear at work? What themes kept showing up in my life? What did people ask me for help with, even when I hadn't offered?

We worked through three parts of my thread:

First was identifying who I naturally wanted to help. This took ages to clarify. I knew I enjoyed helping ambitious twenty-somethings work through big life and career decisions. Eventually we got more specific: people who'd achieved what they thought they wanted but still felt something was missing. People trying to live intentionally but struggling with the gap between who they were and what they did for work.

Second was understanding what shift I helped create. I realised I helped people who felt stuck by too many options start taking small actions to figure things out. Moving from analysis paralysis to actual experiments.

Third was seeing how my different experiences and skills all served this same purpose. My writing, the community building work, various business attempts - they all helped people navigate uncertainty and find clarity through action.

The first version of my thread was rough: helping intentional people navigate career change through sharing real examples, building frameworks, and running experiments. It wasn't perfect, but it gave me direction.

Over the next eight months, we refined it constantly. Each iteration got clearer. Charlie kept reminding me the thread should feel slightly too broad at first - too specific and you'll outgrow it quickly.

In July I left my job without much else lined up. I had no side income or other clients. Just savings and this thread to follow...I felt panicked and excited in equal measure. The pressure was real but so was the hope that I was finally moving toward something that made sense. Some days dread, some days possibility.

Two months after finishing with Charlie, TrueNorth exists because of that thread. We've talked to hundreds of graduates. They're asking deeper questions than how to write a CV. They want to understand what work would actually energise them, how to make decisions when every option seems equally valid, how to trust themselves when everyone else seems certain.

Charlie's perspective: most people want their thread to be a job title. But your thread explains why you do what you do and how you can say “Hell Yes” to what matters and “Hell No” to what doesn’t. It's a compass that helps you make decisions, rather than a label that feels like a destination.

If you're feeling that gap between who you are and what you do for work, maybe it's worth exploring beyond surface-level career advice. Start noticing what conversations you naturally lean into. What problems annoy you enough that you want to solve them. What you talk about when nobody's asking.

The thread isn't some mystical calling waiting to be discovered. It's already visible in how you spend your time, what you talk about, who you help. You just haven't recognised the pattern yet.

If you want to explore your own Golden Thread, check out Charlie’s article on it here.