Hi, I'm Sam
and I'm unashamedly an introvert.
It's taken me a long time to feel this way.
For as long as I can remember, I have struggled with my self-confidence. Struggled to feel ‘enough’.
I never really felt like I belonged anywhere; I didn’t fit in.
Bullied throughout my formative years, I was challenged by friendships and believing others would accept me for me. I’d people-please, and put others first, in an attempt to be liked, or accepted, but that only further chipped away at my already low self-esteem, stole my time and left me feeling isolated and stuck.
I didn’t understand my worth, and I definitely couldn’t communicate it; I was a high-achiever yet a slave to Imposter Syndrome and limiting beliefs.
My life changed when I began making more authentic choices – and so can yours. If I can do this you can too and you’re not alone. You’ve come to the right place: welcome home!
A little more about me...
1. I'm a HSP
That's a 'highly sensitive person', which means I feel everything deeply and I can get over-stimulated by light, noise and people. It also means I care. A lot. Combined with being a Meyers-Briggs INFJ personality type, one of my main drivers is to help others.
2. I battle anxiety daily
Some days are better than others, and I've become a master at finding strategies that work to manage overthinking as well as my mental health. This was the main driving force in me finding a way to work part-time for full-time income a decade ago, as I found permanent, full-time, employment so depleting and damaging to my mental health.
3. Resilience is my superpower!
I've experienced more than my fair share of challenges in life, including bereavement, redundancy and high-threat situations but discovered a way to ensure that, no matter what happens, I can turn any situation into a positive: mindset is everything.
4. I build communities
Even though I have often felt alone in life, I have been bringing people together for many years - and I LOVE it! At university I founded a rock/ metal society that still runs today; in 2016 I began an initiative, This is Kizomba, to dispel misconceptions about a dance I loved, which attracted global attention; whilst working on #IamRemarkable I helped grow the LinkedIn community from under 5 to over 30k members and, most recently, I have founded This is Me as a safe space to encourage growth.
Things I love:
Travel
I love love love to travel; I do so as often as I can. I'm an avid solo traveller and aspiring Digital Nomad.
Learning
I've always loved to read and grasp any opportunity to learn something new. I also collect experiences!
Connecting
I enjoy meaningful conversations and am passionate about a dance called kizomba - a dance of musicality and connection.
I've worked with some of the world's leading brands
I’ve been facilitating training, speaking and providing learning consultancy since 2012 and have worked with some incredible brands (only some of which are pictured). Some of my favourite projects include:
HSBC
Transforming the mindsets of HSBC employees, so that they could develop resilience and embrace change, during the banks' biggest internal change in over 100 years.
McCann Worldgroup
Empowering employees at McCann Worldgroup to improve their presentation skills and be able to speak publicly with confidence.
Teaching young business owners how to innovate, and use the principles of Design Thinking, as part of a project with Facebook to develop future workforce skills in 300,000 young people across six European countries.
Training over 5000 individuals from more than 800 companies, and across 169 countries around the world, to be able to facilitate Google's #IamRemarkable workshop - an initiative which aims to empower those from underrepresented groups to be able to talk about their accomplishments.
I’ve worked with audiences as diverse as high school students and teachers, to leaders at the Ministry of Justice, and I am equally comfortable facilitating online as I am face-to-face.
I’m also an ICF qualified coach, working mainly with introverted leaders, and a keynote speaker.
I haven't had a job for 12 years.
I was miserable as an employee: for the first few years of my working life I kept quitting permanent roles after a year.
Working a 9 to 5 just wasn’t for me.
I never really felt like I fit in anywhere – and I tried teaching, corporate office life and a university.
Office and classroom environments were over-stimulating, making it hard to concentrate. I was constantly exhausted and battling high anxiety. I’d come home on a Friday evening and fall asleep before I could even make dinner, and Sundays were filled with dread.
So, when I got made redundant I took a leap into the unknown and went freelance.
It was one of the best decisions I EVER made!
Not saying it’s been easy, but for over a decade now I’ve worked part-time for what used to be my full-time income. My mental health has been much easier to manage but, most importantly, I have been truly living and not existing.
How I can help you:
Discover how to escape the 9 to 5 and start living the life you WANT to live, as well as how to reclaim your time, energy and confidence.
Speaking opportunities
I’m a passionate storyteller who has been described as ‘dynamic’ and ‘inspirational’; I mainly talk around the topics of: introversion, including introverted leadership, authentic confidence for introverts, Imposter Syndrome and DEIB.
As featured by:
Watch Sam’s interview with Liza Wisner and Megan Ysassi after her nomination as the PowerUpHero Agent of Change’s Hero of Empowerment. Find out more about PowerUpHero here.
Sam talks to Juliet Morris about her own journey as an introvert in an episode of ‘Conversations with Quiet Leaders’.
Listen to Sam talking about how to reclaim life through authentic choices with Tina from WHYLD podcast. Find out more about WHYLD here.
In this conversation with Philip Brady, on his Everyday Heroes podcast, Sam talks about the superpowers that introverts hold.
