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What Burning Out in Corporate America Can Teach You About Reinvention (and Building Portals).

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In 2015, after 27 years in Human Resources, I hit the kind of burnout that makes you stare at your office plant, wondering if it’s figured out something you haven’t. I was convinced my Ficus was thriving thanks to its strict “no meeting Friday” policy.

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I didn’t know what I wanted next, just that it wasn’t another budget review, engagement survey, or board compensation meeting that felt more like hostage negotiations than strategy.

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So I did what many execs do: I Googled “career coach” and hoped for clarity. What I got was a parade of well-meaning generalists who thought “executive transition” meant selling everything and living in a van named Purpose. With a goat.

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No one quite got it.

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So I called friends who’d already made the leap. Their stories were strikingly similar. Like they’d been handed some secret playbook. That’s when it hit me: maybe there was a playbook. It just hadn’t been written yet.

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So we wrote it. That’s how Executive Transition Coaching (eTc) was born.

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We built a portal, because “portal” sounds better than “website” and feels a little like time travel. We coached virtually before it was trendy. In 2016, we realized our method worked for execs who wanted to stay in the game, just play a different position. In 2018, we added mentoring. In 2019, we built an app. In 2023, we went full SaaS. And in 2025, we added AI Insights, because even great coaches deserve a little machine learning backup.

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Leadership lesson? If you can’t find the thing you need, build it. And if you’re really burnt out, build it with a portal, a Ficus, and a few friends who already found the way.

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We're still building...