Midlife MavericksTwo midlife rebels, six children, fifty years of trading floor between us.
It was 5 p.m. on a Friday and I was about to step into a Zoom.
It was a brutal break of my own rules. Fridays are sacred, unless it’s urgent business. This wasn’t.
But Martijn insisted. And when Martijn insists, you listen.
At first it was strange.
Two strangers on a screen.
Until a week ago we didn’t even know the other existed.
But Martijn, a mutual friend we both respect, insisted we should meet.
And there was K.
Strong. Sharp. Fierce. Absolutely magnificent.
What followed was an unexpected conversation between two midlife rebels who’d spent their careers in a man’s world. Two women, one Zoom, six children and fifty years of trading floor between us.
K had just turned 40 when the firm dangled a bigger title and “even more money” in front of her.
She told them she wanted more time for herself. They heard “more money.”
On the day they thought she was going to accept a glittering promotion, she resigned.
No plan. She just left.
Me.
I was 40, eight months pregnant, very sick, and bored out of my mind.
A former client called. “Can you help set up a fund?”
As long as I could do it from bed with a laptop, sure.
I wasn’t planning to start a business. But the clients kept coming and here we are.
We both love writing and we write obsessively. We love over-the-top shoes. We’ve travelled the whole world with work. We spent two decades in a man’s world.
And we decided enough.
We wanted to own our calendars and our time.
So we both walked out of big corporate to end up running a “portfolio career.” A mix of different activities, with a thread connecting them: our own interests.
Consulting. Coaching. Advisory. Writing. The occasional podcast. And whatever else comes that’s interesting.
All stacked deliberately, without needing to pick one box or one department.
You don’t build it all at once. Step by step.
But if you’ve spent 15 or 20 years solving problems in big companies, don’t tell me you don’t have the capacity to do the same.
I don’t buy it.
Neither I nor K can picture going back to the life we had ten years ago.
The problem with freedom and flexibility. Once you taste them, you never forget.
Being able to go to lunch with a friend and stay there the whole afternoon. Choosing a project because we’re interested. Saying no to a client because they’re not aligned.
None of this has a price tag.
It’s a freedom we bought one step at a time, building it as time went by.
Nobody taught us how to have or raise our children. They let us leave the hospital with a newborn and zero training.
And we did it anyway.
Nobody taught us how to leave corporate and build this. But we did.
If that isn’t courage, I don’t know what is.
Comment below. Who’s the K in your life, the woman whose conversation rerouted yours? I read every response.
This article was first published in Portuguese in my weekly column Oh pá, não me lixem! for Executiva.
