€0 earned from the work that is fully, unapologetically mine. Here's what I'd tell you about that over a wine.

On dimensions of self, immigration, independence, and why the gap between meaning and money might be the most honest place you have ever stood.

Key takeout: Your purpose is not waiting somewhere outside your current life. It is probably already at work inside it, just unrecognised, just waiting for you to look at it differently.

If we were sitting at a wine bar, firstly - lovely, delightful, and if we were talking about purpose - also delightful, here is what I would contribute based on my experiences of seeking it, and finding it. And why earning €0 from the work that feels most like me has been, in equal measure, the hardest and the most clarifying thing I have ever done.

For the most part, I actually believe that for a lot of people, the most useful thing is not to leave the organisation - there is a lot to be gained by staying - but to understand yourself well enough that the organisation starts to make more sense. That the dissatisfaction you might be feeling isn't always a sign that you are in the wrong place. It might be a sign that you have not yet seen what you are actually bringing to the place you are already in.

But I am getting ahead of myself.

Let me start where I think it is more useful to start, which is with you, not me.

Your purpose is probably not some obscure undiscovered thing.

On my purpose-finding-journey, which was approximately 7-8 years, I had read the above line many times. And lo and behold, it's got some truth.

Your purpose is more likely already threaded through everything you are doing right now. Tapping you on the shoulder, waiting patiently to be seen. Showing up in the gaps between everything else, wearing whatever clothes the current chapter of your life has put on it. Parenthood, career, wayward side-quest.

They are big clues. Big signs. Hidden in the obvious. They are what you do that bring meaning to your life.

I call these dimensions of self. Not values, not strengths, not a personality type on a slide - although all these are very relevant and helpful. They are the parts of you without which you are not quite whole. The things that run as a constant across every chapter of your life looking slightly differently, whether or not you have ever had language for them. The things that can probably sustain you through challenges more than you realise.

To give you an example, mine are three-fold, all interconnected:

Walking. Writing. Gathering.

I will tell you more about how I found them and what they actually mean in next week's article. But for now what I want you to know is this - they were not born when I left corporate. They were there the entire time I was in it, but I didn't know it and for me, it did take leaving to land them.

They were there in the strategy work and the brand building and the leadership and the teams I gathered around ideas that mattered. My career did not give me my dimensions, but it did give them a context to operate in, without me ever realising that was what was happening.

And I think the same is probably true for you.

But here is the part I really want to tell you about.

The €0.

I am a hard-working, career-focussed Australian woman. I am fiercely independent. Financial self-sufficiency is not a nice-to-have for me - it is a core part of how I have always understood myself.

I spent twenty years building my own income, my own professional identity, my own sense of capability in the world. It has afforded me choice, time, connection, meaning and it has been a great privilege that I have worked hard for.

So when I tell you I have earned nothing from the work that is fully, unapologetically mine, I am not saying it lightly. I sit with that tension regularly and honestly, and it's difficult for me.

The reason the income has been slower than I would like is frustratingly circumstantial. I am navigating a truly unfortunate immigration situation in Germany that has created real constraints on how and where I can work and earn. I have been waiting years for permission from the authorities to be self-employed, despite being married to a German. The workshops I run, are priced to cover the costs of the session. My 1:1 work, speaking and mentoring is all covering basic costs. My savings, and my husband, who has unwavering belief in me, supports us and I am working with lawyers in an attempt to remedy this situation.

But it is frustrating in a way that is hard to fully articulate, particularly for someone who is passionate about what they do, is hard working, full of energy and ideas and a genuine desire to contribute.

But it is also temporary.

And it has, in its own strange way, stripped things back to what is true.

When the usual routes are blocked you find ways to work with what you have, and what you keep choosing to do in those conditions tells you everything.

There is a question people ask about purpose which I think is a great one - what would you do if you never had to worry about money again? How would you spend your time?

I have been living the reverse. What would you still do if you had none?

And the answer, it turns out, is this. All of it. Every week, without fail, for longer than most people sustain things that actually pay them. And it's these dimensions that sustain me through it, because when I nurture them, they nurture everything else.

For example, walking when I am stuck or lost or frustrated - big walks, like a Camino or 13km walks around Stuttgart. Writing when I need to remember who I am. Gathering people together, in rooms and online, even when I cannot charge for it, because the gathering itself reminds me what I am here to do.

And then the magic, that last point - gathering, has brought me something I did not see coming.

What Gathering gave back.

A few months ago I ran my second small workshop. A group of successful, warm, entrepreneurial women, a room that felt like a safe space from the get-go. We spent the morning reflecting on 2025 and thinking about what they actually wanted from 2026. I facilitated. I listened. I did what I do.

One of the women who attended was Carina. A few days later she wrote a post on LinkedIn about me, my work and the situation I'm facing here. She described the workshop, the immigration situation I am navigating, and wrote publicly about what she saw in that room.

She said I have a gift she rarely sees, a warmth and a power. She said the workshop stayed with her for days. And then she wrote something I appreciated so much - she can advance Germany - if they would let her.

She was writing as someone who had sat in a room I created, experienced something that moved her, and then gone out into the world and advocated for me because of it. That is the impact of doing something meaningful, in this case for me - gathering. That is what it does when you let it. It comes back to you in ways you could not have planned or manufactured or predicted.

Carina also wrote to me later to say her goals for 2026 had never felt so clear or so easy to form when the time came to set them. That the workshop had given her something she was still drawing on. That mattered to me more than I can easily say, not because it validated the work, but because it reminded me why the work exists in the first place.

A friend from Australia also emailed me around that time. Successful, capable, an impressive career. She was between roles and trying to make the most of the space. She wrote that while she had created room for passion projects, they were not paying the mortgage, and it was hard to feel the gift of time when the financial reality was not aligned with the unfolding she could sense happening in her.

I wrote back and said: I have so much to say about purpose and making money in association with it. It has been hard. I feel you.

I did not have a tidy answer for her. I still do not.

But that gap has intel. The gap between what is coming alive in you and what is currently paying for your life. That gap is not a sign that you are doing it wrong. It might be the most honest place you have ever stood.

It has been for me.

What I want you to take away from all of this.

Those delightful Pinot Noir's at the wine bar have probably kicked in and now it's time to head home. Here's what I want you to remember from our time together today.

Not my story. My story is the frame. What I want you to take away is the question underneath it.

What are the dimensions of you that keep showing up regardless? Not the job title, not the role, not the version of you that performs well in meetings. The actual you. The parts that were there at twelve and are still there now. The things you would do even if nobody was watching and nobody was paying.

If you don't know this, pop your snorkel on and hop down to your underside to start having a look at what lives beneath the surface. There are clues - the books you read, what you spend your free-time thinking about, what you enjoy doing on holiday. Then cross-check this against any workplace or leadership assessments you have - your performance reviews, read objectively are a goldmine for this.

Because here is what I know from sitting inside this particular chapter of my life, with its constraints and its clarity and its €0 and its gathering that keeps giving back even when I cannot charge for it - those dimensions do not lie. They are the most honest information you have about yourself.

And they are probably already at work in your life right now, inside the organisation, inside the career, inside the Friday afternoon meeting you are sitting in while reading this.

You do not need to leave to find them. You just need to see them and then decide what they mean to you at this chapter of life.

And if you want help doing that — making the invisible visible, finding what is already true about you and giving it language — that is exactly what I do.

Walk. Write. Gather. Now it's time to get paid for it.

Alice