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Portfolio Career Design Program™

Your career may be successful – and still too small for who you have become.

Turn your experience, interests and ambition into two or three credible professional directions – then test the strongest one in the real world, before you make any major commitment.
12 weeks
4–6 hours a week
Starts 15 September
From €1,985
Built around a full-time role. You don't need to quit.

Cohort 01 · 2026

Designed, not drifted into.

What you walk away with

Twelve weeks from now, three things exist that do not exist today.

01. Two or three credible directions
Professional directions built from your track record, your reputation and real market potential – not from a personality test, and not from panic.
02. One or two validated directions
Taken out of your head and into the world, so you know what holds up, what needs to change, and what is genuinely worth pursuing.
03. A practical 90-day implementation plan
What to pursue, what to test next and where your time goes in the ninety days after the programme ends – sized for someone who still has a demanding full-time role.

Before you go further

This is deliberately not for everyone.

This is for you if
  • You have built a strong career and now want options, not an exit
  • You want to build alongside what already works, not instead of it
  • You have ideas but no structure for choosing between them
  • You have no clear idea yet, but no longer want your future resting on one role, one employer or one income stream
  • You would rather prepare now than react when the market decides
This is not for you if
  • You are content for one employer to hold your entire future
  • You are not willing to protect four to six hours a week
  • You are looking for another job rather than another option
  • You expect complete clarity before you are willing to act
  • You believe the right opportunity arrives without being built

WHY CAPABLE PEOPLE STAY STUCK

ou do not have an idea problem. You have an architecture problem.

You already have experience, ideas and ambition. But without a way to connect them, evaluate them and test them, every new possibility creates more noise.
01. Value without visibility
What you are genuinely good at is obvious inside your organisation and invisible everywhere else.
02. Options without a filter
Five plausible directions feel the same on paper, so none of them ever gets chosen.
03. Ambition without a safe test
Every way of finding out whether an idea works appears to require risking what already works.

How the program works

Twelve weeks from now, three things exist that do not exist today.

Weeks 1–4
What you actually have
Your experience, reputation and interests, mapped as assets rather than as a job history.
Weeks 5–8
What fits
Two or three credible directions built and filtered – so you stop weighing everything at once.
Weeks 9–12
What holds up
The strongest direction tested outside your own head, and a 90-day plan you can act on.
“We start together. And we finish together.”

What changes through the programme

Twelve weeks measured in what becomes true for you.

Not a syllabus. A sequence of things you will be able to say about your own career, in this order, because each one has to be true before the next one is possible.
01

“I know what I actually have.”

Not your CV. The assets underneath it – what you are genuinely good at, who trusts you, and where your name already carries weight. Most people are surprised by this one, and it is the reason nothing built on a job title ever holds.

02

“I know what fits me.”

Two or three directions that fit your life, your risk tolerance and who you have become – not the ones that sound impressive at a dinner party. The relief here is usually about what you can now stop considering.

03

“I know what is worth testing.”

One direction, chosen on evidence rather than enthusiasm. This is the point at which the endless weighing stops – and for most people that shift is bigger than anything that comes after it.

04

“I know what holds up.”

Because you took it outside your own head and found out. What survived contact with reality, what needs to change, and what quietly died – which is just as valuable and far cheaper to learn now.

05

“I know what I am doing next.”

A plan for the next ninety days that you wrote, that fits the life you actually have, and that you no longer need anyone’s permission to begin.

And what stays changed after the twelve weeks

The plan runs out. The way you think about your career does not. You stop treating one role as the only container for everything you are, you stop waiting for permission that was never coming, and you keep the method – so the next time something shifts, you are not starting from a blank page.

How the programme holds you

Four to six hours a week, and you know exactly when.

The reason people finish this is not willpower. It is that six things pull in the same direction every week, whether you feel like it or not. The weekly session is mine – the Career Partners Institute team and the invited specialists work around it, not instead of it.
A cohort with an end date
A fixed finish date does what good intentions do not. The structure exists to prevent passive consumption and quiet disappearance.
A community that normalises ambition
You work alongside experienced people building their next chapter. Wanting more stops being something you explain and becomes the room you are in.
Peer masterminds and weekly review
The same small group for twelve weeks, and one piece of real work reviewed every week. Not marked – challenged. They know your situation by week three and stop being polite by week five.
Hot seats
Time when the group’s full attention, and mine, is on your case and nobody else’s. Watching someone else take the seat turns out to teach almost as much.
Invited experts, twice a month
Beyond the Career Partners Institute team behind the process: two specialists a month on finance, legal, LinkedIn and whatever this cohort is actually running into. Some are permanent, some we bring in because someone asked.
A platform that keeps the thread
Your work, the resources and a clear next step between live sessions — so momentum never depends on remembering where you left off.
Live session
Mondays 18:00 / Tuesdays 08:00
alternating week to week
The slot alternates so a standing commitment never costs you every session — and everything is recorded either way.
17:00 / 07:00 London · Dublin · Lisbon · 19:00 / 09:00 Athens · Helsinki · Bucharest · sessions are scheduled for European time zones.
Where AI fits
A workspace, not a shortcut
included for the twelve weeks
Everything here runs on people — your cohort, your mastermind group, weekly feedback, hot seat sessions and the CPI team behind them. None of that is automated, and none of it will be.
You also get your own AI workspace for the twelve weeks, included. One place where the work actually lives, instead of scattered across documents and your own head — and it takes the grind: sorting, synthesising, the research that used to take a week. Because it all sits in one place, nothing quietly disappears between sessions. That is part of why the accountability holds.

What people say

They did not need another job. They needed another way to use what they had.

From consultant to tourism entrepreneur
“After years in consulting, I thought my next step had to be another senior corporate role. Ania helped me connect things I had never considered putting together: my international experience, my network, and a lifelong love of fly-fishing. That became a real business — curated fishing trips to Canada — which I could test alongside the career I already had. I no longer felt I had to choose between security and freedom.”
William,
Boston Consulting Group, UK
Two new ways to use twenty years
“I didn’t have to leave twenty years of banking behind, or move into another banking role. I am now using that experience in two very different ways: an advisory offer for entrepreneurs and family businesses, and a small NGO where I can help limited resources go further. I would never have connected those two paths on my own.”
Michael M.,
Banque Privée Edmond de Rothschild
From another list of ideas to a live test
“I came to one of our sessions with yet another list of ideas and reasons why none of them was quite ready. Ania is very direct. She doesn’t let you hide behind endless thinking — she asks the questions that make you choose, and then makes sure you follow through. A few weeks later I was no longer discussing what I might do. I was testing it.”
Claudio C.J.,
Director, UBS Wealth Management
Case study
Monica
A Chief Operating Officer who designed a career holding both her executive role and a coaching and wellbeing venture – without leaving either behind.
Case study
Thomas
A Senior Manager at PwC who built creative work alongside his corporate career, and found the two strengthened one another.
Case study
Peter
A lawyer at BP who built an external reputation and industry visibility that no longer depended on a single employer.
29
years in career transition
20,000+
professionals supported
47
countries
2009
Portfolio Psychology™ since

Who leads the programme

A work psychologist and a six-time founder.

This is not a framework borrowed from a book. It was shaped over three decades of sitting with people at the exact point you are at now – and by building six businesses of my own, which is a different kind of education entirely.
I lead every cohort myself, with the Career Partners Institute team – the mentors and consultants I work with across markets – supporting the process behind it.
– Ania Schmidt
“My role is to help you see what you may not see alone, decide what is worth pursuing, and keep moving until an idea becomes evidence.”

Join the programme

One cohort. Twelve weeks. Starts 15 September.

Both options include everything. The only difference is how you pay.
€1,985 for the September cohort. €2,200 from November. €2,450 from 2027.
Every place includes
  • Twelve weeks of live sessions, workshops and co-working
  • At least two hot seats — the room’s full attention on your case
  • Twelve months of platform access
  • Your own mastermind group for the full twelve weeks
  • Two invited specialists a month on finance, legal, LinkedIn and AI
  • Your own AI workspace for the twelve weeks
  • Weekly assignments with feedback from me and from your peers
  • All recordings, during the cohort and for the twelve months after
  • Option to upgrade to the Implementation Program within 30 days
Pay in full
€1,985
One payment · best value
€315 less than paying in two instalments.
Pay in full
Payment plan
2
X
€1,150
Second payment 31 days after the cohort starts
Nothing else to pay. Same programme, same access.
Your safety is guaranteed

Fourteen days, no questions asked

If within fourteen days of your cohort's start date you decide this is not for you, you receive a full refund. No questions. No justification needed.

Full conditions in the program terms.

Finish guarantee

Attend at least eight of the twelve live sessions and submit all twelve weekly assignments. If you finish without a validated direction and a 90-day plan, your place in the next cohort is free.

Wrong timing for September? Join the list for the 10 November cohort – you'll hear about it first.

Before you decide

Questions people ask at this point.

This is not open-ended coaching. It is a structured design and validation process with a defined beginning and end, guided by a work psychologist with twenty-nine years in career transition. You are not paying for conversations. You are paying for a method, a cohort and a deadline.

A guided process. There is structured material, but the change happens in the live sessions, the masterminds, the weekly feedback and the accountability. Nobody has ever built a portfolio career by watching videos.

No. Many participants arrive with nothing more than the intuition that they are capable of more. The first four weeks exist precisely to turn that intuition into something you can work with.

Yes — that is the entire design. The programme is built for experienced professionals who are still employed and want options without destabilising what already works.

Four to six. Designing your next chapter is not a second job — most of those hours are thinking you already do at eleven at night, except here it goes somewhere.

Twelve weeks, with a fixed start and finish date. Cohorts run in three-month cycles because a deadline is what moves people to finish. You keep access to the platform and all materials for twelve months after your cohort ends.

Because the structure does not let you drift quietly. Fixed dates, a cohort that starts and finishes together, weekly assignments with feedback, hot seats where the whole room is on your case, and a group that notices when you go quiet.

It takes you from having no clear direction to having one you have tested, and a plan for the next ninety days. The building itself is yours to do — with the plan, the method, and the Implementation Program afterwards if you want it. Anyone who tells you a twelve-week group programme will launch a business for you is selling you something else.

Absolutely. €1,985 for the September cohort, €2,200 from November, and €2,450 from 2027. I would rather tell you now than let you find out later.

No. This is not a course about AI and it will not teach you to use AI in a business. Nothing about the programme is automated either — the sessions, the feedback, the mastermind groups and the hot seats with me are all human, and they are what you are paying for. What you do get is your own AI workspace for the twelve weeks, included in the fee — one place where your audit, your options and your notes from real conversations all live, rather than scattered across documents. It takes the slow mechanical work: sorting, synthesising, researching. You will be shown where it helps, and you can ignore all of it and still finish.

Yes. You take a hot seat at least twice across the twelve weeks — time when the group’s attention, and mine, is entirely on your situation and nobody else’s. Most people tell me the surprise is the other half of it: watching someone else in the seat and realising the problem they are describing is also yours. Between those, you have me in the weekly live session, in the Q&A, and on the work you hand in.

Shorter programs tend to be tactical – build an offer, price it, sell it. That works well when you already know what you are selling. Twelve weeks exists because the harder question comes first: what is actually worth building, given who you have become and what you are not willing to give up. That question is psychological before it is commercial, and it does not resolve in six weeks. If you already know your direction and want execution help, a shorter programme may serve you better and I will say so.

Yes. Book a fifteen-minute call and I will tell you honestly whether this fits — including when it does not. I would rather you skip a cohort than join the wrong one. Book a 15-minute call.

No. The entire point of Portfolio Career Design is to build options alongside your role, not instead of it. You are not starting over – you are building on everything you have already built.

You already have what this is built from.
Twelve weeks from now you can have two or three credible directions, one of them tested in the real world, and a plan you can act on.
Next cohort starts 15 September

Still weighing it up? Book a 15-minute call.

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