I've been invisible too. It cost me everything.
I started in technology in 1994. I sold the systems that ran 90% of New Zealand's primary health market. I carried enterprise accounts at HP — Ministry of Health, Air New Zealand, Vodafone. I ran sales and marketing worldwide for a SaaS platform with 8,000 customers and two million users. Then I bet on myself and built two Salesforce companies to seven figures.
Both failed. Not on product — on cash flow. In 2019 I filed for personal bankruptcy at 45. After a career built in the arena, nothing left on paper. No title. No safety net. A network that suddenly went quiet. That's the part that doesn't make most LinkedIn profiles. It's the most important part of mine.
Here's what bankruptcy taught me: technical skill was never my problem. Visibility was. I'd spent a career being excellent where no decision-maker could see it.
So I rebuilt the one thing nobody had ever taught me — strategic visibility. Within two years I was back at executive level: enterprise roles at Spark, Head of IT Operations at Fidelity Life, technology partnerships across the Suncorp group. The offers came because I'd made my competence legible — not because I'd suddenly got smarter.
The same rebuild ran in my own life. Alcohol-free since 16 March 2023 — and the fitness journey I started that day has taken 20kg off and kept it off. Daily meditation, unbroken. The same systems thinking that built enterprise platforms, turned on myself.
Talent without visibility is wasted potential. I know — I wasted mine for most of a 30-year career.
Now I teach senior tech professionals the system I had to learn at rock bottom — so you don't have to lose everything to discover that competence isn't enough. Whether it's your next promotion or your own client base, the path is the same: get strategically visible to the people who decide. If I can do it from bankruptcy at 45, you can do it from wherever you're standing right now.
- 30+ years in enterprise technology — HP, SMX, Spark, Fidelity Life, Suncorp.
- Worldwide VP of Sales & Marketing for a SaaS platform — 8,000 customers, two million users.
- Built two Salesforce firms to seven figures, delivering for 14+ enterprise clients.
- Rebuilt from bankruptcy to executive offers in under two years — the system I now teach.