About Carla
I’m Carla. And I’ve been where you are, for longer than I’d like to admit.
I’m 59, still working in a demanding corporate job, and building The After Five Shift alongside everything else that matters.
So I won’t pretend I’m standing on the other side with a perfect blueprint in my hand. I’m in it too.
A little while ago, I was going through my Google Drive and found files from over a decade ago. Old plans. Half-written notes. Business ideas. Things I had started, parked, renamed, revived, and quietly abandoned.
At first, I felt that familiar sting.
Look at all this time. Look at all these unfinished things. Look at how long I’ve been circling the same desire.
Then I looked more closely.
Those files were not proof that I had failed. They were proof that the desire had never really left me. Underneath the folders and drafts was a woman who kept trying to find her way back to something of her own.
That is why I understand this so deeply.
For women like us, the issue is rarely lack of skill. We have lived, worked, led, organised, solved problems, supported teams, held families and carried whole seasons of life on our backs.
We are not short on capability.
What we are often short on is permission. Giving ourselves permission, to be clear.
Permission to want something beyond the role we are already playing. Permission to launch before it is perfect. Permission to earn from our own ideas. Permission to stop treating our experience as background noise and start treating it as material.
There is a belief many of us carry: that it’s too late now; that the moment has passed; that starting something of our own is for younger women, louder women, freer women.
I don’t believe that anymore.
I believe everything has its season. Some things take years underground before they are ready to break the surface.
The years behind you are not wasted. They are compost. They are evidence.
That is why I created The After Five Shift.
The name holds both parts of the work.
There is the after-five part: building something alongside the job, the responsibilities, and the life you already have.
And there is the deeper shift: moving from seeing yourself only as someone who works for other people, to seeing yourself as someone who can own, create, sell and lead something of her own.
That is the shift that changes everything.
The After Five Shift exists because I needed a space that spoke to women like me. Women who are capable, thoughtful and ready for more, but tired of hype, hustle and advice that ignores the life they are already carrying.
This is about building something honest, practical, and yours.
What I offer here is peer-to-peer support, clear tools, grounded strategy and straight-talking encouragement from someone walking the road too.
I am still building this one step at a time.
And if something in you recognises this, maybe the shift has already started.
When you’re ready, the free checklist is a good place to start. It takes less than 10 minutes and it will tell you something true.