Just when I thought my Careershifters dream was all over...

I had got to a cross-roads - if I was going to make a go of an online business, while giving my all to my current day job (which was becoming increasingly demanding), I would have to give up my involvement in Careershifters to make room for my own career change.

This wasn't the first time I'd had to take a step back from Careershifters, I'd already had to relegate it to a 'hobby' when I took on my current role in recruitment, but this time it really did feel final and it broke my heart - I had so wanted my dream of working full-time for Careershifters to come true, but it still didn't feel quite within our reach - it always seemed to be just around the corner, but that had been going on for 4 years and finally, I thought, enough was enough. I wanted a career that would give me the lifestyle I dreamed of and if Careershifters wasn't going to do it for me then I needed to move on and close a door on it once and for all.

But there is a certain magic around Careershifters and just as I was about to give up on my Careershifters dream, that magic seemed to get to work...

I'd bought a lot of what I'd learnt from the online business workshop back to the Careershifters team and it had had quite a profound affect on how we saw the Careershifters business. We began to explore old ideas for products and services we'd had in the past and had discarded. One of those ideas was for a 'Careershifters Guide'. It seemed to be exactly the kind of product that my online business workshop had been recommending as a starting point for a business.

We suddenly started getting excited about the idea of gathering together everything we'd learnt over the past 4 years about changing career successfully and turning it into a hands-on step by step guide to career change, complete with practical exercises and Neil's illustrations.

My dream had always been to write a book and to have the opportunity to write one on a subject that I am so passionate about...well, it was worth putting my own career change on hold for a little longer. Plus, this might finally make us enough money to pay me full time. Perhaps I was being over optimitstic as usual (it does tend to be my downfall) but I figured the experience in itself would be valuable enough.

And so we set ourselves a deadline. I arranged to take a week off work and use that holiday time to get a large part of the guide completed and would use my evenings and weekends to do the rest. I was fired up and excited. I had two months to write the Careershifters Guide. The challenge was on!