Five years ago, I'd have rearranged my entire month for this invitation.

A London conference, a big stage, a comfortable mid to high four-figure fee.

The kind of booking that used to feel like proof I'd arrived, and that I'd earned from all the presentations I'd given before this new request.

This time, I looked at their "must-have" date, though given at relatively short notice to me, and thought deeper about the logistics.

The flight or the long rail journey, the rescheduling of a pre-arranged international teleconference with my parents' carers, let alone the whole weekend of activities I'd have to forgo, and it all felt a bit different.

A little less like the prize I'd won for years, and a bit more like an obligation I no longer wanted.

So I said no.

It wasn't really about the six-hour train journey, each way.

It was that I'd spent twenty years building a career on being the person who showed up, wherever, whenever, however inconvenient, because that's what building a reputation from a small Scottish village required.

If people were going to remember me, I had to keep turning up in the rooms where the people who were hiring me actually were. Makes sense, right?

For a long time, that trade felt fair.

I got a lot of business out of it. Recognition. A career built entirely on merit and word of mouth; I actually had plenty of competition in London.

The talks I gave for nearly 20 years were memorable for their mix of dry wit and gallows humour, and the impact of my executive coaching led to more work via internal recommendations.

But there's a difference between building something and maintaining it, harder still when those clients are in London and Edinburgh, Boston and Manhattan.

And somewhere in the last five years, without noticing exactly when, I stopped needing to build.