I met Annie Ross on a paddleboard in the River Thames. At the time, she was “on her way out” of banking, although still confronting a lot of fears around what that could mean. Having realised that she wanted to do something different, she set herself a challenge of 52 sporting challenges in 52 weeks – and our paddleboarding weekend was one of those challenges.

The ‘Exerk Yourself’ challenge turned out to have a positive effect on Annie’s work, giving her job purpose during a time when she didn’t want to make any drastic changes. It also made her new project fun rather than having the pressure to start earning money and turn it into a business right away. Eventually, though, it also gave her the platform and the confidence to take the leap and focus on setting up her own business.

As Annie says, she’s now “obsessed with helping people get active”. I love her message that you don’t have to climb Mount Everest or take five months off to travel across the Americas. You can build adventure and fun into daily life. There’s also an element of bringing people together and using these activities to create a sense of freedom and purpose outside of whatever’s happening in your life, for example, when you’re considering a big career or lifestyle change.

Read on or watch the full interview below to find out about the thought process that Annie takes herself through whenever she has doubts, and the total flexibility that her work allows her these days.

Leaving a corporate job behind to follow your passion: From teaching to photography

Having been working at Deutsche Bank for five years, Annie initially set up Exerk to spend more time doing what she really enjoyed, which was staying active. Organising a year of 52 sporting challenges in 52 weeks alongside her full-time job gave her the confidence and the platform to eventually hand in her notice. Today, she’s building this into a more structured programme for corporate women who struggle to find the time to be active.

1) At what moment did you decide it was time for a change?

The final trigger was that I was offered a job via a contact that I’d made from a press launch, having been writing as a fitness columnist for the Evening Standard, who had picked up my blogs. I met this guy who, a couple of coffees later, said, “Let’s look into you working for us.” That gave me the confidence that I could get a job outside of banking – this was at a big sports company. I handed my notice in off the back of that being a possibility. While I was working out my notice, I finally realised that I didn’t want to go and work for this sports company because it was effectively just another office job.

I let myself have no plans for a whole two weeks(!). Then a friend of mine suggested a company called Impact Marathon Series, who were launching marathons around the world. It was this perfect combination of having freed up my time, wanting to speak more Spanish, loving organising sports events and bringing people together – and someone who was willing to fly me out to Columbia to do it!

London Marathon 2016 — Annie running the London Marathon in 2016

So I ended up in Columbia two weeks after I quit Deutsche Bank, on my own for six months organising a marathon. It ended up not happening sadly, but all the work was put in and it was amazing. I did Columbia and Nepal with them, race directing Nepal and project managing Columbia, and there is nothing I would rather have done for my first seven months out of banking. It involved travelling, working, and engaging with people in a really different way, in a different country doing a different job. That gives you confidence by chucking you into different situations as you realise that if you can work in three different countries in the same year, one in banking, one project managing, and one race directing, you can probably do a few other things as well!

2) What was the biggest challenge you faced in making the change?

After the Impact Marathon Series work, I used my Evening Standard column to travel for a bit and write travel reviews. It was a natural decision after that to come home and be with my friends, my network, and create a business – calling a day on that nomad living in South America. Since then, it’s been weird, because you come back and everyone says, “Oh my God, you’re back! You must be back for a reason” – and the answer is, “Yes, but I don’t know what that reason is yet.”

There has been a lot of excitement but also not knowing who you are anymore. Before, it was, “I work at Deutsche Bank, I did this, I did that” – not knowing what I was doing now made me feel really fidgety and anxious. Not having a purpose was really difficult for me. Every three weeks, I’d get really excited about another idea, I’d go full on into it and I’d meet with HR companies from big banks to talk about their corporate wellness stuff, for example… and then something would happen, and I’d just go off the boil a bit. Then I’d pick up the next idea and run with that.

That was tiring for me and it was tiring for other people. It took time to step back and stop putting pressure on myself, to give myself the space to commit. I signed up to a marketing seminar, and it all kind of unravelled like a big knot that was there in my mind and my heart, and gave me a clearer path to what I’m working on now.

It’s weird as you’re only answerable to yourself, especially for someone like me who expects a lot and puts a lot of pressure on myself. There were days when I felt like Deutsche Bank had been a really easy lifestyle, in comparison! So that says a lot about how low I felt at various points.

You have to stop yourself every now and again when you find yourself on the Guardian jobs website! I still have those days when I think, “Let me just see what’s out there, just in case.”

3) Where did you get the support you needed to make it happen?

I went through the process of asking myself, “Should I go and get a job? Should I just go back into banking and make life all rosy and salaried again?” So you sit down and you ask yourself questions: “Is it because you want money?” In my case, “No, my insecurities are not around money.” Then I would ask, “Is it because I’m lonely and I want to work in a team again?” “No, because I can engineer that into my life.” “Is it because I want to be learning in a different way, being put on education courses by the company or just learning from other more experienced people in the team structure?” And again, “No, I’m doing enough courses, I’m doing really interesting things, I can say yes to anything I get invited to at the moment if it fits in with the strategy…” So I was able to rule that out.

I’m also a big believer in the power of people. I have no qualms about sending off an email to any company or person that I think looks interesting. That has led me down some awesome and has been my number one thing in that respect. It can seem like there’s a lot that I’ve done on my own, but behind that you’ll find other people’s advice, ideas or even just a chat over the phone.

4) What’s the best part of your lifestyle today?

Total flexibility. It’s up to you to fill your time, which is a beautiful thing. In the corporate world, our time is filled by other people, our diaries are manipulated by our bosses, by our team assistants, by our colleagues, by our friends in the evenings… One of the main reasons that I wanted to step back from London was that to meet up with a friend, we were looking four weeks ahead! Now, flexibility means that I can give more time to friends, more than just between the hours of 7 pm and 9 pm one night every four weeks. I can say, “Hey! I’ll pop by and see your new baby,” for example.

I do have to be careful so that I set limits on the amount of work I do. And, although I said the power of people was the biggest support for me, there is also the problem that you can be too “yes-y” – you can end up having all these calls all day that interrupt your concentration just for the sake of having a call. I am very easily swayed so if someone comes over here with a really good idea, I will spend half the day considering that, before pulling myself back on track.

There’s a book that I love called The Art of Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown. Life is about trade-offs, and if you want to build something new into your life, you have to get rid of the fluff. Every now and again, you just need to take out the stuff that isn’t working for you anymore, get rid of it, and work out what you really want to be successful and happy. Otherwise, everyone else will chuck their old laundry at you!

5) What one piece of advice would you give to someone who is considering making a big career or lifestyle change?

The thing I’m trying to tell myself – I don’t know if it’s advice – is to take life less seriously. I think if you’re anything like me, you put a lot of pressure on making the most of each moment and all that media around us reinforces that that’s the way we should be living. But if you’re naturally someone who does that, it can mean that you don’t actually enjoy those things. You want to enjoy the ride!

Hopefully, that’s a nice reminder to people who are moving out of the corporate world and into the other side of things, which is more volatile, can be just as stressful, and is more rewarding but in very different ways. You just need to enjoy it and be curious: “Oh, this is a new way of having a conversation, or of being paid – interesting!” And then you can reflect on that later. But overall: take life less seriously!

Since we spoke in the interview, Annie has continued to evolve her project and made the decision to launch her programmes under the existing umbrella of Exerk. You can read more about her programmes to help you build an active lifestyle “that can survive life’s twists and turns” on her website and follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Happy faces following an afternoon of paddling in the rain [Photo credit: Dave Cornthwaite]

As I write this, water is hitting the windowpane as a steady drizzle continues on a dreary Monday afternoon. I’m going to be spending the whole day indoors. Rewind to Saturday and as that same rain was falling I was on the other side of the windowpane, standing on an inflatable board completely exposed in the middle of the Thames along with 18 other mad adventurers. The drizzle turned into heavy rain, heavy rain turned into heavier rain. We continued our paddle strokes towards our final destination of the day, the campsite where we’d be spending the night; and all the time we had big stupid grins on our faces.

The weekend was organised by Dave Cornthwaite, the “yes man” who I met at a conference in Berlin a few weeks ago, as part of his #summerseries of little adventures in the UK. He is a bit of a stand-up paddle boarding (SUP) aficionado, having already paddled the length of the Mississippi as well as round the Caribbean island of Martinique. (Me, I was a bit more wobbly! But you do learn quickly…) The sport is an offshoot of surfing originating in Hawaii, Hoe he’e nalu. This weekend Dave was joined by Annie Ross and a gang of her “Exerk” followers, as part of her quest this year to do 52 sporting challenges in 52 weeks. We all met up on Friday night at a campsite just outside Oxford where we would spend the night before heading down the river to eventually end up at Goring, 24 miles downstream, on Sunday afternoon.

SUP pumps — Together with Wes and Greg who had also arrived early, we used the extra time to pump all the top-of-the-range Origin paddle boards full of air – yes, they’re inflatable! – and to unpack the new life jackets bought for the weekend. [Photo credit: Dave Cornthwaite]

As one of the first to arrive on Friday afternoon, I set up my little sleeping area with my sleeping bag and mat enclosed in a bivvy bag (a “bivouac sack” that acts as a waterproof shelter when you don’t have space to carry a tent or when you simply want to be that bit closer to nature when you’re wild camping). I had used it once before on a warm and dry September’s evening on an island adventure last year; this time, I made it to 5am when the splash of rain on my face woke me up. I tightened the drawstrings of the bivvy bag so that only a small gap remained around my face and I could still breathe… I think I dozed off a little but I can’t say I felt particularly well rested when the alarm rang at 7am and I got up to get ready for the first day of paddling!

Waiting for the lock — Having had to get out and carry our paddle boards and bags at the first few locks, we enjoyed being allowed to paddle through the rest of the locks on Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning. More happy faces! [Photo credit: Dave Cornthwaite]

The best thing about adventures like this, hands down, is the people you meet. You greet each other with a hug and within minutes you’re chatting as if you’ve known each other forever. I always find that the type of person who’s willing to go on a random adventure, not knowing anyone else on the trip and in this case never having paddle boarded before, is my type of person! Warm, positive, open to new experiences, and without exception doing something incredibly interesting with their life. Paddle boarding also lends itself perfectly to getting to know each other: as you’re making your way down the river, your pace naturally varies so that you’ll be talking to one person and then drifting towards someone else for another conversation. Plus, you have nothing else to do! No phone, no camera (I definitely wasn’t going to risk either falling into the water), no TV, no distractions to take you away from basic human interaction.

Be Happy — Says it all… [Photo credit: Dave Cornthwaite]

…which leads me to the second best thing about this particular adventure: the feeling of getting into a steady rhythm, dipping your paddle into the water at the front of the board and pulling it smoothly back through the water before lifting it, returning it to the front and repeating the movement. The stillness was beautiful, the only sounds the clucking of the water, the wind in the trees, the birds up ahead. The rain on that first afternoon only added to the experience: where we’d usually be spending the whole day indoors, probably hunched over a computer or maybe lounging on the sofa in front of the TV, instead we were out in the elements with a lovely group of people. Pure joy. And it’s amazing how little you actually need when it comes down to it: I had no coffee in the morning and yet I was wide awake; no phone or camera, so I could enjoy the experience more fully than if I was constantly trying to capture the moment in that perfect Instagram shot; and I had none of the usual stuff that I’d have crammed into my handbag in my everyday life.

SUP down the Thames — We even had some sunshine on the Sunday! Annie of Exerk is pictured in the foreground. [Photo credit: Dave Cornthwaite]

That being said, after an afternoon of getting soaked in the thunderstorm – having only just dried off after falling in earlier that day – I was shivering as we arrived at the campsite for our second night’s sleep. A 20p coin was all it took for a hot shower to bring me back to feeling human again and we were soon enjoying good food and more good conversation at the local pub; we even managed to sit outdoors later in the night. All that fresh air and exercise will take its toll, though, and we were in bed by 11pm. I couldn’t quite face the idea of another wet and vulnerable night in my bivvy bag (I’m not a real adventurer! Boohoo!) and was relieved to be offered a spot in a three-man tent. A glorious night of eight hours sleep later and I awoke refreshed and ready for another day on the river…

My arms were sore as we started to paddle; soon, though, I was back into the rhythm again and I felt like I could have gone on forever. When we suddenly arrived at Goring where we were ending our journey I felt sad that it was all over, my mood deflating along with the paddle boards; and when I woke up on Monday morning I was disappointed not to be getting back on that board. The spirit of the adventure lives on, though, in all the friend requests on Facebook, the photos that are being shared and, of course, the memories. And there’ll be a new adventure soon, that’s for sure!

Dave is continuing his #summerseries over the coming weeks. Find out about the upcoming activities and join him on one of them here.

You can also join Annie on one of her weekly sporting challenges here.

Fearless Fridays: From banking to promoting an active lifestyle