Finding The Seamless Connection: From scattered work identities to integrated business
Rachel Connor | Issue 006: Connection is an Act of Resistance | Sept 30th, 2025
You can’t build an authentic business while pretending to be different people at work.
This revelation hit when juggling a coaching practice with consultancy on an academic arts project. This truth sounds obvious. But until then I hadn’t grasped how closely integrity is bound up with connection—connection with those I serve and to myself.
I’ve watched other professionals struggle with this same issue. Perhaps you have a traditional job and, after hours, nurture dreams of a new business. Or you’re an entrepreneur assuming personas like theatre masks with different clients.
You feel scattered, frazzled, hollow.
Here’s the haunting question: what if the armour you think protects your professional credibility is strangling not just your business but your capacity to connect?
The fragmentation trap
We’re trained to compartmentalise from our earliest days. Education is carved into multiple subjects; corporate life into departmental kingdoms. While this brings focus and efficiency, we lose sight of how our individual thread weaves with others.
As business owners, we’ve absorbed this blueprint without questioning. It’s safer to think in silos. One moment you’re the CEO wrestling strategy and systems; the next, you’re in service mode with your clients.
But it costs us dearly.
We stretch ourselves gossamer-thin. We leak energy trying to maintain multiple identities and make micro-decisions about which self to inhabit. This fragmentation suffocates our capacity to think generatively and to create.
The irony cuts deep. Didn’t you create this business because you dreamed of work as purpose-led, creative expression? Yet you’ve imported the soul-crushing prison of your former professional life.
My integration journey
For six months, I felt overwhelmed and exhausted, living a split life: consultant on an academic arts programme and a coach building my own practice. Two identities; two electronic devices; constant context-switching.
The awakening, when it arrived, was profound yet simple: in both roles, I serve creative professionals.
In consultancy, I focus on research aims and measurable outcomes. In coaching, I work with those building courage in their self-expression to address inner obstacles and identify tangible steps to complete their creative projects.
When I stopped treating these as separate universes and started weaving interconnections, everything transformed. Not just my work. Me.
I streamlined my systems. Flow and coherence replaced friction. Paradoxically, I accomplished more while feeling less scattered.
But there’s been a deeper shift that transcends sheer logistics. I draw on the deep inner work I bring to coaching to serve my consultancy clients. And the focus on goals and consistency I use in my consultancy work has sharpened my coaching with clearer implementation strategies.
Both are necessary, everywhere.
The consultant part of me realises that my coaching intuition isn’t unprofessional: it makes my strategy breathe and feel alive. And what’s clear is that, in my support of creative professionals navigating creativity challenges, I can shapeshift. I can choose the appropriate language and tools according to the context. In doing so, there’s an inner expansion in which I become more fully myself.
The integration audit
If you resonate with this feeling of disconnection, there are concrete steps you can take:
Step back and examine your core: what drives your day job, your business, your choices? Ask yourself: what are you here for, who do you serve? Uncover the motivation beneath the motion.
Map the overlaps: whether juggling business tasks (client service and marketing, administration and creativity) or separate work streams, identify the intersections. Where do your worlds collide unexpectedly?
Align your systems and language: how can you bring creativity to your accounting? Can vocabulary from one field innovate in another? What systems—hardware, software, time management—will create more seamless flow?
For me, weaving coaching wisdom into consulting work remains a daily practice. But that’s the point: it’s practice—a movement towards wholeness.
The vision: what’s possible
Imagine Monday morning arriving without the exhausting persona-switching. No more borders between your values, no more treating your day job and side business as though they were strangers.
When your work comes more into integrity, something electric happens. There’s an end to the energy leak that comes with code-switching. You arrive with full presence and connection—and suddenly every client receives your wisdom, authentic insight and integrated brilliance. And you discover your corporate experience isn’t professional baggage: it’s currency for your credibility.
I’m not saying we should dissolve into bland uniformity. It’s about discovering the luminous thread weaving through your work and following it with fierce intention. About showing up whole, knowing authenticity is your superpower.
The professional world trained you to be fragmented. Your business hungers for something more whole, more true.
Stop performing different versions of yourself at work. Start weaving the connections. Your sacred business—and your unified life—is on the other side of that courageous choice.
This essay was featured in Issue 006: Connection as an Act of Resistance Read the Full Publication
Rachel Connor is a contributing writer for The Sacred Business Writer’s Collective focused on helping creative professionals overcome barriers to authentic self-expression. You can follow her on Substack here.
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