Tom, 35

“The plot twist was that I did not have to quit. The Stuck Map put me in "clear but stalled" - I knew what I wanted, I just assumed nobody would let me have it here.”

Tom booked his consultation the week after his CPA renewal, with the specific energy of a man looking for permission to quit. Senior accountant at a distribution company, eight years in, competent, bored to the point of dread.

The Stuck Map placed him in the quadrant he least expected: Clear but Stalled. High clarity - he lit up describing the modeling and analysis slivers of his job - and low energy, because he had privately concluded that becoming an analyst meant resigning, retraining, and taking a pay cut he could not afford. So he had filed the whole idea under impossible and gone back to closing the books.

The Clarity Sprint tested the assumption instead of obeying it. His employer had a growing FP&A team, a tuition-support policy nobody used, and - as one warm conversation with the FP&A director revealed - a bias toward hiring analysts who already understood the company's messy data. Which described Tom exactly.

The engagement flipped to Step-Up Coaching with Jordan: building the internal case rather than the external search. His CliftonStrengths debrief gave him language for what he was selling; a small volunteered project - automating a reporting pack the analysts hated - gave him evidence. The promotion case one-pager went to his manager and the FP&A director in the same week.

It took two months of patience and one uncomfortable compensation conversation, rehearsed twice. The internal transfer came with the title, the work, and - because Priya's rehearsal had him hold the line on market data - an $11,500 raise.

Total elapsed time from "I am ready to resign" to the new desk: six months. Distance moved: four floors.