What if I don't even know what I actually want to do next?

Illustrative — not a real business

This is one of the most common starting points we see, not an unusual one — plenty of capable, accomplished people reach a point where they know their current path is not right but have no clear sense of what would be. The discovery phase of coaching is built for exactly this: structured exercises examining your values, the specific parts of past roles that energized versus drained you, your genuine strengths as distinct from what you have simply gotten good at out of necessity, and often a values or interest assessment as a starting data point rather than a final answer. This phase typically runs two to four sessions over three to six weeks, shorter than the overall search that follows it, and its output is not a single perfect answer but usually two or three genuinely promising directions worth exploring further, often through informational interviews with people already in those paths. Once that clarity exists, it becomes the foundation for everything after — the resume, the target list, the interview narrative all follow from actually knowing what you are aiming at, which is why we do not skip this step even for clients eager to jump straight to applying.