Balancing ambition episode 1: full transcript

Read the full transcript of episode 1 of the Balancing ambition podcast below. To listen or watch this episode, click here.

Our host: Zoe Smith, AAT
Our guests: Career coach James Green, founder of Vox Partners and Ellis Harris-Boulter, founder of FieCo Accountancy & Marketing, AAT Tutor of the Year 2026.
Synopsis: A move away from traditional life stages and career paths mean it’s increasingly likely people have “squiggly” careers which don’t follow the linear ‘join a company and rise through the ranks’ progression. Our guests explore why this is happening, what advantages and challenges it brings and how to make the most of a squiggly career.  

Zoe: In our first episode, we’re going to be exploring the topic of careers without a straight line, or squiggly careers, as they’re often known. Careers don’t have to follow one expected pathway. Not everyone moves from education into one job, one industry, with one long term plan. We now have more choices, more opportunities and more flexibility. Some people change direction completely. Others take sideways steps or discover their strengths later on. And often those experiences become their biggest advantage. Our career path should be as unique as we are as individuals.

Before we dive in. AAT is all about supporting ambition. So, we’re going to be asking each of our guests to share one ambition with us. Something that you are looking to do or achieve in the next 12 months?

James: I think the main one for me is we’re in year two of our business. So double revenue. Simple. And do some sort of crazy long run, potentially.

Ellis: I could also say double revenue. But no, you know what, I think finding a work-life balance. The last few years has not had that at all and I’m getting there.

And I suppose linked into that I do martial arts, kung fu. So I’d like to grade to the next level too. Maybe achieving a work-life balance will help that happen.

Zoe: So, back to the topic for today, which is about succeeding without that straight career path. Why do you think that sort of traditional career path of starting as a junior and then going up the career ladder, staying with one organisation until you get your gold pocket watch, why is that not quite as relevant today?

Ellis: I think for me, being that company person is nowhere near as popular. And I think to be honest, it’s a nature of the fact that finding new work and finding new professions is easier than ever with the career progression tools that you have.

But also staying with one employer unfortunately has become less and less rewarding as well because you receive fewer pay rises and things like that.

Whereas if you jump around, you do, I think in my experience at least, tend to see greater career progression.

James: It’s interesting. I think there’s a massive challenge in terms of the way businesses reward talent. It used to be that loyalty paid.

You see it in my role all the time, people who tend to be slightly under their market rate are the people who’ve been in their organisation for ten years. Not always, but quite a lot of time. So there’s that side of it.

And I think the other piece is the rise in social media has given rise to an incredibly entrepreneurial generation. I’m a millennial with a foot in both the analogue and the digital, and I think our generation was probably the start of this but didn’t get exposed in the same way that people are to social media and the ability to make money at 15 years old and 12 years old.

I think what that does to your brain, in terms of your appetite for risk is transformational. I didn’t start a business until I was 38, 39. And that fear piece that you have to get over to be able to do that, was a really significant jump. But if you’ve done that early on in your career, in life, I think that’s a bit easier and you start to see that there is opportunity everywhere.

And also the human condition is squiggly. I’m not the same person I was five, six years ago, let alone 20 years ago. Why would I do the same thing?

Ellis: I think that’s a good point. On the idea behind social media unlocking that growth for younger and younger generations.

I’m Gen Z, and I remember when I was growing up, the big two careers everyone wanted to be was a footballer or win The X Factor and be a singer.

That was, that was all I saw. Whereas now, actually, if I’m on TikTok, you’ve got people that are, you know, 18, 19, 20 starting businesses and actually really succeeding with them and promoting their journey.

People can achieve the same thing. There’s no reason why they can’t also do that.

Zoe: So do you think then, that actually what defines a successful career has really changed in recent years then?

Ellis: I think so. I think for me, a successful career is being somewhere that you feel valued and that you really enjoy going to work.

Nobody wants to go to work dreading it and spend, you know, more than half of their life somewhere that they don’t actually enjoy.

So I think a successful career perhaps, maybe used to mean getting to be the CEO or a CFO in accountancy type of thing.

Whereas now I think a successful career is actually feeling fulfilled. And a lot of the time, I think especially younger people are driven by the idea of a challenge or a social… something other than just career.

They want to drive forward, have an impact on the world or something that they truly believe in.

And I think that’s my definition of a successful career.

Zoe: And I think also coming back to your ambition about having that work-life balance, it seems so much more important to people now, and they want to make sure that they’re getting some kind of satisfaction from their job. Don’t they? Like you said, and making sure they have time for the other elements that they want to achieve on a personal level.

James: I think success and ambition has always been a deeply personal thing, but the rat race in the binary way that it has been, you know, the Industrial Revolution version of the rat race that we’ve lived through for most of the last 100 years or so, doesn’t allow for people to have that kind of personal ambition for themselves.

I think people have felt like ‘I have to fit into these boxes’. ‘This is what will define success for me’. I think the fact that the world is changing and AI – talk about the impact on young people, very tough time to be coming into the job market as a young person. Yes, partly because of AI. It kind of forces us to rethink what a career is and what it looks like, which allows more room for personal ambition.

It might be that you want to go and work every minute under the sun and become a CEO.

That’s a tough job. I don’t want to do that. I want some freedom to spend time with my kids.

And I want to be able to earn enough to be able to do the things I want to do with my family and build security.

But there are different ways to be able to do that now.

I think it feels more achievable to find your own route than it once was.

Zoe: So what would you say then is one of the biggest advantages of having that more squiggly career and going out for achieving what it is that you want to do in your own route?

James: Diversification of skill sets is so valuable, in everything. So, take if you’re hiring a corporate affairs director, which is the space that we often work in. You’re no longer looking for somebody who is, just does media relations. You’re looking for someone who has five or six different skill sets and can talk to the exec and be the lens through which the external world shines through into your business.

That takes a huge amount of understanding of different people and different ways of working, and by doing different things, you become a master of many different things.

And I think that’s really important when we started our business, suddenly instead of just being a headhunter, I was doing ten different things.

I’m a marketeer and building websites. I’m a terrible accountant. And all these other pieces. And the strings I’ve added to that bow will impact my career in ways I don’t even know yet. I don’t even know at this point. And I think that’s really exciting.

Ellis: I mean, I don’t think I could say it better than that, to be fair.

I think it is the skill sets that you gain.

It’s not just necessarily the technical skills as well. Running your own business. I’ve experienced, you put on every hat under the sun and you’ve got to do it all. But also, it’s the soft skills as well that are also just as important.

Just like you say, talking to senior people, you’ve got to be able to do that. Is necessarily just, you know, perhaps starting in one own company and just staying there all the way through and having that kind of linear career. Do you gain all those skills necessarily?

It depends whether you push yourself out your comfort zone, I suppose, and anyone could get those skills.

But I think jumping around and doing different things will give you more unique skills that you can apply to your next roles.

Zoe: So, trying to be balanced about this, what’s maybe one of the drawbacks or disadvantages of a squiggly career compared to something where it’s much more straight line?

Ellis: It’s an interesting one, because I suppose I have had a bit of a squiggly career. So I’m thinking, well, what is it that what is it that isn’t so good about it? Because I’ve really enjoyed what I’ve kind of done.

I think the drawback is potentially if you’re not careful, then, you know, employers will think, well, actually, are you the right person because, you know, from the way you’ve been moving about, you’re going to be with us for maybe three years and then you’ll disappear or something like that, which I don’t think is, is necessarily, that’s the purpose of having a squiggly career.

I think, people, they look for where they feel valued and, and, you know, where they can grow.

And if there’s opportunity for growth it’s not necessarily going to be jumping about, but so I think maybe there’s that risk around that.

And then I suppose another bigger area of risk I’d say is uncertainty.

So I really struggle with uncertainty. I like to know exactly what I’m doing and that’s the antithesis of having a squiggly career.

Because if I just wanted to get a 9 to 5 and just work all the way through, then I would have a lot more certainty.

Zoe: And I do think we probably do need to recognise the fact that actually it’s not one size fits all, is it for everybody. And so, for some people, even the way that our accountancy apprenticeships are designed, we have our accounts finance assistant, into assistant accountant, into a professional accounting technician. It’s a step and that’s the way that it goes.

And for some people that’s the steps they want to take. It’s then going to help them to become qualified accountants.

That’s what they know they want to do.

That’s where they want to be. It’s a comfort place for them to be, just to follow that path.

But then for other people, the opportunity to be able to do more, to take them in different directions, to build up those skills. So, it is a case of what works for you, isn’t it?

But it’s nice that people have the opportunity to be able to.

Both are acceptable. Both are great things for people to be able to do.

And like you said, there are lots of advantages to having different directions that your career can go in.

Ellis: I would just say as well, I’m talking from an enormous point of privilege.

I have a partner who earns well, and he supports me in what I do.

I don’t have children. I’m quite free to, I could, you know, go and find another job without worrying, oh, you know, am I going to be able to pay the mortgage type thing.

You know, I’m very privileged in talking about squiggly careers, but it’s not going to be as easy an option as that for someone with more dependents and more things to consider.

So yeah, you’re absolutely right.

James: You started your business when you were relatively young. Did you, have you found that you’ve needed to actively seek out mentorship and senior people?

Because I think that’s always a really big challenge. We forget how important it is to learn from people with 20 years’ experience.

The world’s gone very. It’s all about being young. But you can’t buy experience.

And I think that’s such an important thing to be able to tap into.

Ellis: You’re absolutely right. I made critical errors when I started my business.

We all do. And particularly, I wouldn’t repeat them, particularly. You know, pricing was the one thing that I did wrong.

And it’s still causing, you know, negative growth in the longer term because of that.

And so I think I should have sought more mentorship when I started. And to be fair, I say that, I should probably do it now too.

Zoe: It’s never too late. Yes. But one thing Ellis has done, from personal experience, he’s become a mentor, and he’s helped out my daughter and my son-in-law to set up their business and helped them to avoid some of the mistakes that you made.

So that’s been great that you’ve taken on that. Another role that you’ve done.

When employers are looking at people that have had lots of different experience and a variety of different experiences, what is it you think that makes them kind of stand out?

Or is there anything that they may feel differently when they’re looking at someone who has moved around a lot?

James: Unfortunately, I don’t think the world has changed, particularly when it comes to hiring attitudes.

So there is, there’s an education piece around the way people hire and appoint.

And we’re still stuck, I think, in the large part, in a space where people want to see five years here, ten years there.

The joy of working with a head-hunter is they bring life to the candidates.

That’s kind of our job. And you’re able to help people understand why those experiences might benefit them as an organisation.

You know, one of the things that frustrates me is when somebody is stuck in, ‘I need someone from this specific sector’.

Then they’ll just do the things you’ve always done. How does that change things for you?

So I think there is still a bit of an education piece.

And you look at the market over the last three years, which has been pretty depressed.

Not the worst market we’ve seen ever, but it’s been a very long, drawn out dip.

And you’ve got a huge number of people who’ve been out of work and have been forced into squiggly careers, in a weird way.

And actually, the experiences that they’ve gained in that period will be really valuable to the next person to hire them on a permanent basis.

But it’s on us and on hiring managers and on HR teams to actually find ways of articulating that.

I don’t think the world is nailing that at the moment. Honestly.

Zoe: Still a little bit more work to do with helping people to see.

James: Yeah, I mean, you’ve got you’ve got business leaders who grew up in a world where, you know, get on the phones, I’ve got a Rolodex, everything is this, this kind of offline approach to the world.

Then you’ve got this group in the middle who are becoming the next group of leaders who had a foot in both camps.

And I think they’re all trying to come to grips with what is going on with Gen Z and what’s going on at the other end.

And there’s this failure to understand why people are approaching their careers in a different way to the way I did 30, 40 years ago.

And I don’t think that’s new. I think that’s probably happened to every generation.

But there’s an education there, I think.

Zoe: Now, in our AAT community, with our students, we have people of all ages, all different backgrounds. And some people do start studying an AAT qualification quite late in life. What would you say to somebody who felt that actually they were too far down their career path, too late in life, to start to retrain as an accountant or a bookkeeper?

Ellis: I mean, for me, I can advocate for this 100% because my mum, who now works with my business, she started an AAT level two apprenticeships at 47 years old after 20 years in the NHS.

And she’s an inspiration to me because she, you know, did all that time and then decided actually, I am ready for something new.

And I had that very strange moment of being her son, her boss and her tutor, which was a very strange time.

I think she sees the rewards of doing that now. She didn’t want to go into a long-term study, but she’s really, I think, glad that she did the level two.

I think it’s never too late. A lot of people assume that apprenticeships are just for people under 25 or whatever, but not for everyone.

And I think that no matter where you’re at, it is never too late to change career.

Zoe: Wonderful. And I hope some of our listeners will also be inspired by your mum in the same way that you have, because I think that’s a fantastic example.

What would you say though, is the most common mistake that career switchers can make when they’re applying for those new roles?

James: I think you have to accept that you’re going back to school. No one enjoys the first three years of their career. It’s hard.

I remember just learning to show up and to write an email that’s a business appropriate email and do all of this.

And then you’re trying to understand the space that you’re going into.

You’re going to have to put in the hours. So, if you’re going to switch careers, accept that you’re not the person in this career that you are in your previous career.

And be realistic with yourself about it. You’ll probably accelerate quicker than you would have done if you were a grad. But you do have to be kind of humble enough, I think, with yourself to go back to school, essentially.

Zoe: I think that’s really good advice to remember about being humble. As a general rule, we should all be a bit more humble.

Ellis: I think being open to learning.

I mean, if you are career changing, I think you’re already in that headspace, to be fair, because, you know, if you weren’t open to learning, you’d just stick to what you were doing.

So I think being open to trying new things and, you know, advancing. There’s so many opportunities just beyond your career.

If you want to, you know, become carbon literate and things like that, then employers are often really supportive to actually allow you to grow in those ways as well.

So it’s not just necessarily going to be a whole career change, but maybe actually just growing within your existing career.

There’s more opportunities that you can take advantage of if you’re open to that learning.

James: You often see when people want to make a change in their career, they press the nuclear button and ‘I’m going to leave my firm, I’m going to do this, I’m going to do that’.

Why wouldn’t you take a firm that already knows you and challenge them to help you develop into a different space?

Start where you already have a certain amount of capital. And so often you see people just walk away from something, when actually have you even asked if there’s an opportunity to do something different?

Lots of businesses will give you opportunities to go and do different things.

Zoe: I think that’s a fantastic piece of advice and actually you’ve got nothing to lose, because if you’re going to go anyway by speaking to them, seeing if there’s something there, they know you, they’re more likely to support you.

Yeah, I think that’s something that probably can really resonate with our listeners.

Thank you. Now, when people do go, because you were talking about from a recruitment side of things, that sometimes not all employers are seeing the benefits of people that are changing careers or maybe have had a gap.

They’ve taken time out to go travelling or they’ve taken time out to look after their families.

How is it best to kind of explain that career gap on your CV, in an interview setting?

James: Be honest and tell a good story. Yeah. And do something.

I think firstly, if somebody doesn’t understand you taking time out to support your family, they’re not the right firm for you.

So that’s that, that’s let’s not worry about them. Yeah. The travelling thing, I think, you know, if you’re two years into your career and you need a career break, there’s a question to be asked there.

So you have to think about the consequences of that. If it’s someone who’s ten years down the line, I think that’s easier.

Yeah. But I think generally it’s having a good story to tell.

And it’s, if you’ve been forced out of work which lots of people have in the last three years, with redundancy, do something, whether that’s learning a new skill. And it could be, it could be learning to paint, it could be doing karate or jujitsu, it could be anything. Or it could be volunteering within your skill set for a charity.

Have something that you’ve been doing rather than just kind of sitting and waiting for the right thing to come along.

I think showing that you’re proactive, particularly if you can then change career, is probably the thing that people can look for more than anything else.

Zoe: So have a bit of an explanation of what you’ve done, what you’ve achieved in that time still.

James: Doesn’t have to be huge achievements. It’s just, I didn’t spend my entire time worrying and wallowing in pity or, you know, worrying about this kind of next move.

I was actually out there doing something as well.

Ellis: I was just thinking the idea of pulling lessons from, you know, if you are going travelling, what have you achieved whilst you’re travelling.

Have you learned to appreciate different cultures and have you learned to grow new skills in networking and things like that?

There’s always pluses you can take from that. But I really like the idea that you’ve said of actually, you know, pulling out, doing something during that time.

And I think a lot of people that are ambitious in their career, and naturally listening to podcasts like this, will probably be thinking, oh, what could I do right now when I’m not doing anything at the moment?

Zoe: Any advice from you, James, about people not putting pressure on themselves?

James: Yeah. I think you’ve got to let go of the things you can’t control.

It’s easy advice to give. Harder to take. But it’s such an important skill to learn.

We’ve talked about this before. Before we sat down. I think it’s particularly difficult in people who have studied for a profession. Because the whole idea is that you are kind of mapping out a future that has a certain degree of certainty to it.

But the world is full of uncertainty and having an open orientation because you’re not necessarily overly planning what’s coming next will open up opportunities that you could never even have kind of dreamed of. And thought of.

It’s a hard thing to do, but it’s such a useful skill.

Just do what you’re doing now and do it really well. Everything else will kind of take care of itself.

When I think about us in the business that we’re building, we’re 18 months in, what are my ambitions for five years? I don’t know. I don’t know, build a great business.

And what will be, will be. Build the foundations of your career and have an open orientation, and good things will come your way.

It’s a bit of a twee answer, I suppose, but it, it works.

Zoe: And I don’t think what we’re saying here is about the fact that actually studying for your AAT qualification is saying you’re not going to go on to become an accountant or to use that, but you might just move into a different industry.

Sometimes our students would come in and they’re like, I want to work for the top four.

That’s where I want to be. That’s what I want to do.

But actually once they had opportunities, they, because of their love of football, they want to work in the finance team within a football club. Or people that have, you know, got a great interest in, in Formula One.

We had people go in and working for Red Bull. So they were in the finance team within Red Bull.

So it’s about knowing that you can move industries with the skills that you’ve created as well, rather than it being ‘practice is where I want to be’.

‘I’m going to be a tax accountant’. I don’t think many people say at the age of ten, I’m going to be a tax accountant.

But, you know, it’s about being open and seeing where those skills take you.

Zoe: So we’ve come to a myth busting opportunity. I’m going to say statement. And I’d like you to tell me whether you think that it’s a myth or reality. Ready?

So, do employers mind gaps on the CV, myth or reality?

James: Reality. No matter how much you try and take bias out of a process, human beings will put it in there in one way, shape or form, and they need to be educated in the right way.

So you do have to be conscious of it. You can’t ignore the reality of how people are going to respond to a gap, unfortunately.

Zoe: So because that is the case, what is the approach then? Just remind us, that listeners are going to have to do when they do have a gap. What approach do they need to take?

James: Tell a great story. Be proactive.

Zoe: Put it in your cover letter can’t you? Talk about what you learned, what you did in that time, what you achieved.

So next myth or reality. Changing industries means completely starting over. Myth or reality?

Ellis: Myth.

James: Myth.

Zoe: Okay, so it points to what you were saying before, doesn’t it? About the fact that actually you’re not completely starting from scratch because you’ve already built up so many of your skills.

And promotions should always be upwards? Myth or reality?

Ellis: Myth.

James: Huge myth. Ask Theresa May. That’s a myth.

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