The Career You Build Is Not Always the Career That Fits

Fifteen years of business growth, one brutal realisation

Like Sophia Amoruso, who turned Nasty Gal into one of the defining business stories of her generation before walking away from it entirely, Holly Garber faced a career reckoning when Golightly PR, Sydney’s most respected PR agency, with clients including Adidas and ASOS, stopped making her heart sing. Here is what she learned when she said no more, and now lives the type of success that looks less impressive from the outside.

In January of 2020 I moved my PR agency, Golightly, into my dream office: a beautiful New York style space, with high ceilings and brick walls, flooded with natural light from windows that reached to the ceiling. Finally, I was in the office I had always wanted, after fifteen years of hopping between spaces that did the job but certainly did not inspire me or make me smile each time I entered. Settling in was a pleasure. Choosing new furniture a delight. I was excited to host media and clients in the space.

Within a few weeks I realised that the low-lying dissatisfaction I had with my business would not be solved by a new location. I had fiercely loved Golightly for so much of its life. Running an agency is inherently stressful, but even when running on minimal sleep, or juggling multiple shows at fashion week, or putting out client fires, I had always felt a deep appreciation and gratitude for Golightly and the opportunities and experiences it offered me. But over the previous two years that gratitude had been slowly replaced by resentment, and a hunger for new experiences and different horizons. Golightly took up so much space and I wanted to know what my days looked like in its absence.

Part of that leaching of enjoyment came from not feeling successful in the business, despite everything the numbers said. Clients including Adidas, ASOS and Ganni had trusted us with their most important moments. Fifteen years of strong client retention, staff retention and profit. And yet success was not something I felt. When people asked about the business or complimented it, I largely blushed and stammered out a deflection all the while wondering why they were saying that, thinking they must just be being nice and in no way trusting their words.

“Fifteen years of strong client retention, staff retention and profit. And yet success was not something I felt.”

In a lot of ways, the business had happened to me, flowing organically from one opportunity to another. I had worked hard, taken action, made things happen. But I had never quite recognised my own agency in it. And when I finally looked up and around me, I realised I had had enough. I was no longer interested in the main elements of the business. I did not want to be a publicist, nor work in the fashion industry. And I did not want many of the key elements of an agency model, an office, managing a team, the structure of ongoing retainer work. I wanted things to be different, really different.

When I started Golightly at 24, I was completely unconcerned about it not working out. I would just go and get a job. What I had not considered was what would happen if it did work, continued to work out, and I stopped enjoying it. The move crystallised knowledge I had been trying to deny for a long time. I was no longer motivated by the business.

I closed Golightly quickly, wrapping the business up within three months of making the decision. The reactions of other people were eye-opening. People who seemed personally offended that I had just closed the business and not attempted to sell it. Others who no longer seemed that interested in maintaining a relationship with me, or convinced that I had made a mistake I would regret. Meanwhile I had realised, in a way I would not have been able to articulate at the time, that I was never going to truly feel successful in Golightly. It was the wrong context, the wrong challenge, the wrong structure.

Just as you can outgrow a dream home, you can find that the business (or career) you loved right from the start is not the business you have five, ten or fifteen years later. And you are not the same person either. If you are lucky, your business is like a good marriage and you can grow and evolve together. The experience deepens and becomes richer, giving you what you need to remain engaged, challenged and in love. In my case, the trial separation clarified that a divorce was needed. The love was gone.

“Just as you can outgrow a dream home, you can find that the business you loved right from the start is not the business you have five, ten or fifteen years later.”

We see versions of this experience around us every day. The person who builds a successful business and makes big dramatic changes that from the outside can look disorientating and nonsensical. What is far less visible is the way these choices can make perfect sense on the inside. On her Substack, Sophia Amoruso, ex-Nasty Gal founder and leader of the now much-criticised Girlboss movement, writes about the big changes she has made recently, selling her dream home and moving countries, and the confusion that creates for other people. But what she communicates so beautifully is that what can look chaotic or nonsensical from the outside can make far more sense on the inside than the common trappings of success ever did.

Six years later, I can see something I never truly saw whilst in the business: it was successful. While I knew that objectively during its run, the signs of client retention, staff retention, profit and longevity were all there, I never truly felt it whilst the business ran. When people asked about it or commented on the success I always blushed and stammered out a deflection, wondering why they were saying that, thinking they must just be being nice.

These days, from the outside, I am less successful. Smaller business, less money, no New York style office. But I wake up most mornings with that fluttery what's next feeling I had completely forgotten was possible. That is not nothing. That is, it turns out, everything.