Like Clarkson, I decided to reinvent myself in midlife

Ten years ago, Grant Feller watched his salary plummet to less than his teen daughter's nannying job. With no income and no clients, here's how he went from panic to six figures

In a few months, more veteran politicians than ever will be out of a job. Almost 70 Conservative MPs, boasting a combined 1,000 years of parliamentary experience, will voluntarily quit and even more will be brutally kicked out. And I feel sorry for them. Really. It’s tough to start again.

Ten years ago, my annual salary was £8,000, less than my teenage daughter brought in from her nannying job. It was barely enough to pay the bills – and with a sizable mortgage, two cars, school fees and all the luxuries of a comfortable middleclass lifestyle, there were a lot of outgoings.

Blame it on my midlife crisis – in retrospect the best thing that ever happened to me. Because instead of doing all the stupid hedonistic things middle-aged men do as they try to reinvent themselves, I did something equally stupid. I decided to reinvent my career from a standing start, abandoning an office job in journalism to see what else there was out there. If Arnold Schwarzenegger could make a dramatic career change at 56, why couldn’t I? And if Jeremy Clarkson can go from petrolhead to Cotswolds farmer, anything is possible, surely?

Today, with a business bringing in close to £300,000 a year, I look back on that relatively tiny sum with immense pride. I own a global training company that provides businesses with strategies that enable data-obsessed teams to “translate” complex material into simple stories that not even ChatGPT can match. Yet.

Back then, I had nothing. No clients, no income, no real clue what I was going to do, where I was headed or how I’d get there. Just a mad idea that there was something else.