About Our Approach
I've spent the past ten years talking with accomplished professionals who are frustrated by their work—the time it takes away from families, toxic environments, burnout, even illness brought on by chronic stress. And I've come to believe something: we don't have to sacrifice our entire lives to earn a living.
What if the prestigious title, the corner office, the impressive trajectory, the "right" career path—what if these are MacGuffins? Things that seemed like they should matter, that society told you to pursue, that looked significant from the outside.
You've achieved your goals.
But do they feel like what you wanted?
Meanwhile, what about the real plot—deep relationships, creative expression, meaningful impact, time for what matters, alignment between your values and your daily life? Has that been set aside?
I've spent the past ten years talking with accomplished professionals who are frustrated by their work—the time it takes away from families, toxic environments, burnout, even illness brought on by chronic stress. And I've come to believe something: we don't have to sacrifice our entire lives to earn a living.
What if the prestigious title, the corner office, the impressive trajectory, the "right" career path—what if these are MacGuffins? Things that seemed like they should matter, that society told you to pursue, that looked significant from the outside.
You've achieved them. But do they feel like what you actually wanted?
Meanwhile, what about the real plot—deep relationships, creative expression, meaningful impact, time for what matters, alignment between your values and your daily life? Has that been set aside?
Here's what I know: when you have decades of experience and expertise, you can find satisfaction at work and maintain healthy boundaries. You can pivot not only what you do, but how you work—earning more by working more strategically. This phase of life is about being selective in the type of work you do and how much time you invest in doing it.
MacGuffin House helps you explore what you've been chasing and what would actually make your life deeply satisfying. Together, we redesign your work to serve that real plot, then develop the positioning and visibility to build a sustainable practice around it.
This is why the work integrates both life redesign and strategic positioning. Clarity about what you're actually optimizing for has to come before the positioning work. And redesigning your life means reimagining how your expertise shows up in the world.
Many of our clients are deep specialists, solopreneurs, and career-transitioning professionals who know what makes them unhappy, understand their core values, and are ready to question whether they've been pursuing the right goals
Our founder & lead coach, Tara James, has spent my career at the intersection of narrative strategy and human transformation.
For years, I helped executives, experts, and organizations shape how they're understood—developing messaging, building visibility, crafting stories that position them as authorities. I was good at it. But I kept noticing a pattern: the most transformational work happened when we addressed not just how someone communicated their value, but what they were building their life around in the first place.
Too many accomplished people were succeeding at the wrong things. They had credibility, expertise, achievements—and a growing sense that something fundamental wasn't working.
I created MacGuffin House to work at the root of that question: What if we could help professionals redesign their work around what actually matters to them, then build the positioning and visibility to make it real?
I work with people who've proven they can achieve things, but who are ready to ask whether those were the right things to achieve.
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