The first ten years
determine the slope of
everything that follows.
The skills that actually drive career trajectory — how you make your impact visible, how you position yourself, how you lead through uncertainty — took a decade in front-office banking to figure out. Not because they’re complicated. Because nobody tells you.
This is those ten skills. Each one takes one sitting to install. The whole system compounds across a decade.
Ten questions. Three minutes.
Your highest-leverage constraint, identified.
The first ten years of your career determine the slope of everything that follows.
Most people figure out the ten skills that drive it somewhere around year eight or nine — after the invisible years, the wrong positioning, the rooms they couldn’t get into, the promotions that went to someone who understood the game better.
This is those ten skills. Built from a decade in front-office banking. Pressure-tested inside modern companies. Packaged so you can install each one in a single sitting — and use what you built in real work the same week.
One payment. Permanent access. The map at the start, not the end.
Built inside a high-pressure career.
Not from the sidelines.
Sixteen years in front-office sales and trading — from 2010 to today, across JP Morgan, Deutsche Bank, and Credit Suisse. The kind of environment where the feedback is fast, the stakes are real, and the people who understand how careers actually work get ahead of everyone else very quickly.
The skills in this system are what I wish I’d had in year one. Some I figured out early and they compounded. Some I figured out late — and I know exactly what those years cost. The First Ten exists so you don’t spend a decade learning what could take an afternoon.
That is module 04. It takes one afternoon. It should not have taken three years.
So does not having them.
The person who figures out how to make their impact visible at year two builds a decade of record. The person who figures it out at year eight spends three years re-entering rooms they were already qualified to be in.
The person who gets positioning right early doesn’t spend five years doing excellent work that doesn’t attach their name to anything.
The gap between the career that compounds and the career that plateaus is rarely talent. It is almost always one of ten specific skills that nobody named early enough.
AI is making technical skills a commodity.
It just moved the timeline.
The skills that were always the real differentiators are now the only ones that reliably determine who gets ahead. AI can do a version of your technical work. It cannot build the conviction to defend it in a room that doesn’t want to believe you. It cannot make the identity shift from expert to leader. It cannot choose to stop waiting for permission.
These ten skills live entirely on the human side of that line. The diagnostic identifies which one you’re missing first.
Most career frustration
is a misread blockage.
People call it confidence, motivation, politics, or burnout. Usually the real issue is more specific — and more fixable. The diagnostic is built to tell the difference quickly.
You deliver. People trust you. But when decisions get made, your name is not attached to the value you created.
- You get praise in private and silence in bigger rooms
- People repeat your thinking without repeating your name
- You keep hoping output alone will solve a narrative problem
→ Module 04: Due Process
This is not a discipline problem. It is an operating problem — no coherent score, no protected route through the noise, no system that compounds.
- Everything is urgent and none of it adds up
- You know the right move and still do something else first
- The quarter feels full but strategically empty
→ Module 03: The Score Protocol
You have the skill. But your relationship to visibility, self-advocacy, or hierarchy keeps cutting the signal before it lands.
- You explain your work well but not your value
- You feel uneasy taking up space around more political operators
- You keep calling a positioning problem a confidence problem
→ Module 05: The Positioning Brief
You are no longer being judged only on your own output. The problem is identity, delegation, and leadership under pressure — not competence.
- You are carrying work your team should now own
- Important conversations happen around you instead of through you
- You feel newly senior and strangely provisional at the same time
→ Module 10: The Leadership Translation
The signals were there for months. You called it a busy period. The problem isn't resilience — it's that nobody taught you to read your own early warning system.
- You keep waiting to feel better before addressing the thing making you worse
- Your threshold for what counts as a problem keeps rising
- You're performing fine and feeling increasingly hollow
→ Module 07: Early Warning
You communicate well. But something happens in high-stakes conversations — a decision gets made before it's announced, a room shifts and you don't know why.
- You leave important meetings unsure what actually happened
- You find out what people really thought after, not during
- You prepare for the conversation people have, not the one they're having
→ Module 08: Room Intelligence
The choices made sense at the time. But something accumulated — a role accepted for the wrong reasons, a direction you never quite chose, a definition of progress that was never yours.
- You can't say clearly what you're building toward
- You perform well and feel increasingly unconvinced by it
- Your yes and no decisions are getting harder, not easier
→ Module 01: Foundations
New company, new industry, new level. Your skills are intact. But you're operating in a language you haven't fully learned yet — and the gap is costing you credibility you haven't lost.
- You're doing good work that isn't landing the way it used to
- The unwritten rules feel like they're being enforced against you
- You're six months in and still feel like you're catching up
→ Module 02: Transition
Ten diagnostic modules.
One operating system.
Each module starts with the wound — the thing nobody named. Each ends with an artifact: a working document you take into your actual career, not a worksheet you file and forget.
01Foundations+The Audit
“Everyone has had something to say about your career. Everyone except you.”
Mirror
Core statement + commitment document
02Transition+The Translation
“You didn’t lose your skill. You crossed a border. And borders have no welcome signs.”
Immigration
Fluency map + 30-day itinerary
03Execution+The Score Protocol
“You know what you should be doing. You’re not doing it. The reason has nothing to do with discipline.”
Heist briefing
Operational plan + accountability structure
04Impact+Due Process
“You did the work. Nobody entered it into the record.”
Courtroom
Evidence brief + visibility protocol
05Positioning+The Positioning Brief
“You decided long ago that the people who get ahead aren’t quite like you. You’ve been half right ever since.”
Re-examination
Positioning brief + stakeholder map
06Confidence+The Evidence File
“At some point, you stopped trusting yourself. This builds the forensic case for why you should.”
Investigation
Evidence file + verdict statement
07Resilience+Signal Map
“You’ve been treating pain as a test of character. What if it was trying to tell you something?”
Early warning system
Personal signal map + protocol
08Communication+The Conversation Debrief
“You’ve spent your career learning how to speak clearly. Nobody taught you how to hear what isn’t being said.”
Room intelligence
Communication diagnostic + simulation
09Ownership+The Ownership Audit
“You keep waiting for permission. The permission was never coming.”
The clinic
Posture assessment + rewrite protocol
10Leadership+The Leadership Translation
“They gave you a team. They didn’t give you instructions.”
Identity work
Leadership identity statement + delegation plan
Not content.
Working documents.
Every module produces an artifact — a document you return to in real work. Not a certificate. Not a reflection journal. A tool that changes how you operate the following Monday.
Three steps. No wandering.
Take the 3-minute diagnostic. It identifies your highest-leverage constraint — the one thing blocking everything else.
Complete the module the diagnostic routes you to. Each one takes one focused sitting and produces a working artifact.
Use the artifact in real work the same week. Not theory. Not reflection. Application.
Another year of competence.
Another year of invisibility.
Or you find the one constraint that’s capping everything else — and you remove it.
Find your constraint →“Working through these courses made me feel like I owned something worth building.”
“Module 5 gave me the confidence to navigate the political maze whilst continuing to like myself.”
Pricing
The diagnostic is free. Buy only the module you need — or install the full operating system. All 10 modules are available now.
10 questions. 3 minutes. Identifies your highest-leverage constraint and routes you to the right module.
Take the diagnostic →Go deep on the one constraint the diagnostic reveals. Complete the journey, produce the artifact, apply it immediately.
Get started — £49The complete operating system. All 10 modules, all 10 artifacts. A career medicine cabinet you return to for years.
Unlock full access — £249Questions
Why is it called The First Ten?
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Is this a course?
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What makes this different from coaching or a business book?
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How long does a module take?
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What if the diagnostic sends me to the wrong module?
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Do I need to be senior already?
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Can I do more than one module?
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Do I get lifetime access?
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You’ve read this far because
something here is true.
The diagnostic takes 3 minutes. It identifies the one constraint that’s blocking everything else. Then it routes you to the module that fixes it.
Take the diagnostic — it’s free →