Hi, from Zoe

I’m Zoe aka employee number 6. Wow, that number means Sanctus is all getting a bit real now doesn’t it!

So what will I be doing for Sanctus?

I am joining Sanctus as the Partner Manager.

This means that I am responsible for looking after all our partners day to day and making sure they feel happy and properly cared for. My focus will be on booking in coaching appointments through to organising the partner breakfasts. Ensuring Sanctus works in true partnership with its partners for the next 100 years (even if I’m no longer here 😉).

Where have I come from?

I have just spent the last 9 years working in the Advertising industry.

I loved it. It was fast paced, hard work and creative. I learned a huge amount and I made some friends for life.

The phrase “Fake it till you make it” was used often. And then came this point where everyone was telling me that I had indeed “made it”. It was then that I realised I felt completely fake.

The superficial conversation in the lift “how was your weekend?” the only acceptable answer being “it was lovely thanks” spilled out into my personal life as well as my work. I was existing solely in that top layer of emotions at all times. I told everyone I was fine and then fed myself the same lie and believed it.

What was the catalyst for change?

At the end of last year, my extremally active 80-year-old grandmother was diagnosed with an aggressive terminal cancer and given only weeks to live. For those next few weeks, I helped look after her and worked remotely from her house in Suffolk. She loved me sitting beside her reading aloud one of her many travel diaries.

Safe to say that experience made me question out loud for the first time “what is it all for anyway?”

Exploration and meaningful connections were my answer to that question.

Exploration

Within 1 month of my grandmother passing, I had handed in my notice at work and booked a one-way ticket to South America.

I realise that I was in an incredibly privileged position to be able to do this. Don’t worry I am not about to sit here and recount the plot of Eat Pray Love to you.

What I will say is that in the silence of the Atacama desert and the chaos of La Paz markets I finally started listening to the questions that I’d been silencing in London for nearly a decade.

Am I happy?

What makes me happy?

How can I be happy?

Plot spoiler the clouds didn’t part and the wind didn’t whisper the answers to me in Spanish. These answers are still very much a work in progress.

But actually, all I needed was a little bit of headspace to just start asking those questions.

I will go into my trip in more detail in a separate blog post (stay tuned!) but I realised while I was away that my own mental health and a big part of my own happiness was dependant on meaningful connections with people. Exploration alone was not enough.

Meaningful connections

I got home in June and I was, for the first time in a long time, clear on what I wanted to do. I wanted to help others bring their ‘full selves’ to their personal life and their work life. To have meaningful connections with others and feel those real emotions. No longer existing in the safe top layer, protected by defensive platitudes and easy superficiality.

My research into companies who ticked these boxes led me to Sanctus.

As soon as I clicked on the Sanctus website and saw what they were about I knew this was exactly what I had been looking for.

The three key resonating factors for me were;

- Sanctus is built upon the basic principle that meaningful connections are through face to face contact. Not via an app or email.

- Sanctus are normalising the conversation around mental health and making it as relaxed to chat about as your physical health.

- I met George for a cup of tea and within 5 minutes of chatting with him, I was sold. His passion, the way he spoke about the business and his and James’s mission. I walked away from that first meeting and I knew instantly that I would be heartbroken if I didn’t get the role.

Luckily I did — so no hearts have broken thank goodness

What’s next?

I am so excited to get stuck into my role as Partner Manager at Sanctus. I am here for the marathon not the sprint and can’t wait to see how myself and the company grows.

I can say that exactly 1 year, tens of thousands of miles and 6 countries from my first realisation that I needed to make a change I am finally on the right road.

I hope to keep exploring the world and create a lot more travel diaries of my own but I know that it only matters if at the end of it someone with whom I have a meaningful connection wants to read those diaries back to me.