How personal strengths worked in Derek’s favour
In this episode I chat to my wonderful former client and all-round excellent human being, Derek Britton.
He and I originally worked together years ago when he was a marketeer at a B2B software firm that I was doing PR for, and then last year he became a coaching client after becoming a casualty of the ongoing tech industry layoffs.
With three decades of in-house experience across the marketing and sales enablement mix, Derek’s initial assumption was that he should seek a similar corporate role, but something was nagging at him about that idea. So, he hired me to help him think through what he really wanted.
It is now 12 months later, and Derek has just completed his first year running his own B2B tech marketing consultancy, and he’s come on to share his journey and learnings so far.
In this episode we discuss
- Derek’s career background and the types of roles he has worked in
- How Derek was laid off in 2023 when the tech sector went through a big shake up, what went through his mind at that point, and why he decided to get some career coaching before making his next move
- How Derek used his values and strengths to decide on the self-employment route, what services he could provide, and to whom
- 12 months in, Derek shares how his self-employment journey has gone so far and what he believes helped him to survive and thrive in that first year (stay tuned for the Three P’s!)
- How Derek is using the Three P’s to tackle his other big goal – to write and get a book published!
A bit more about Derek Britton

Derek is an experienced leader in B2B technology marketing, and runs his own marketing consultancy.
His career spans three decades, having directed product marketing, corporate brand, marketing communications, customer marketing, product management, and sales enablement.
A computer science graduate with a solid technology background, prolific content creation and a proven leadership ability, he is uniquely capable in helping technology go-to-market teams – as clients and colleagues – to deliver successful business outcomes. In his spare time, Derek is an aspiring author.
If you would like to know more about Derek or would like to connect with him, please do connect with him on LinkedIn.
There is a community with this show
If you enjoy this podcast show, then you will definitely enjoy being part of the Dream Chasers Unite community.
Come and meet, learn from and be inspired by awesome, like-minded people who are on their own Dream Chaser journeys (at various stages).
Find out what’s possible, by seeing what other people are doing to determine and go after their ideal careers and lives.
Curious about changing your career?
Book a call with me to chat about how I work with people just like you every day. Life shouldn’t be hard at work.
Finding what lights you up, brings you joy and gets you paid at the same time – well, that’s a eureka moment. Right?
Find out about my Career Transition Programme and book a call with me.
Ways to watch and listen
Listen on the go, on your mobile phone:
Click here to find the show on your favourite podcast app.
You can watch the episode in full colour here:
All full episodes are recorded in video as well, and are uploaded to the show’s playlist on my YouTube channel. (Click here to quickly subscribe to my channel to see future episodes).
If you want to watch with auto-generated captions – click the captions icon on the YouTube play bar menu at the bottom of the video.