I’m Deb White, Next Step Strategist and entrepreneur.
This is what living by somebody else’s rules cost me.
She took my hands in the only one she could move since the stroke.
Looking deep into my eyes (we had the same blue eyes), she said, “Promise you’ll come back to see me.”
This was the woman who’d been by my side my entire life. The woman who, at 75, had taken two buses every day to visit me in the hospital after my car accident. My grandmother.
A few months later, on the other side of the world in Perth, my new home, I received a call from my best friend back in Canada. “I really think you need to get here as soon as possible.”
I went straight to my boss’s office and told her what was about to happen.
“No.”
“No? But—”
“It’s the end of the financial year,” she said. “Absolutely not.”
When my grandmother passed away, I wasn’t there. And for the rest of my life, I’ll have to live with the fact that I’d broken my promise to her, because of a job.
At first, I was devastated. Then angry. Then determined — determined to build a life where I was in control, where I could prioritise what truly matters.
Once I had realised that goal, I thought about all the other people out there, stuck in careers they hate. Sacrificing a part of themselves every day. Yearning, perhaps in secret, for the perfect moment to break free.
And so I created Next Step VIP — to show you there is no perfect moment. You just have to act. To take that next step.