Finding Understanding In The Great Unknown - Unravelling

Francois Malherbe’s CV isn’t a list of accolades, or on-the-job experiences. It’s not a machine gun rattling off the bullet points of his qualifications. Instead, the career coach – who uses adventures to help his clients find their true purpose – carries a portfolio of uncomfortable moments, times he’s faced the unknown and thrived.

- Kieran Legg

“I think my goal is to catalyse curiosity,” he tells me. “I believe without being curious, you’ll struggle to discover what you’re passionate about.” These are the trips that armed Francois with true mental grit and the insight he needed to pursue his true passion – and his roadmap for you to do the same.

Francois’ mindset first formed with an epiphany on a yacht somewhere off the coast of Spain. This was in 2010, and at the time Francois felt rudderless. He’d stuck doggedly to the script: finish school, go and study, and then... well, he was stuck at the “and then” part. Afraid to stand still for far too long, he travelled to Europe in the hopes that he could land a job on one of the many chartered yachts docked at the continent’s sunnier docks. Soon, he was out at sea. Working on a yacht is not glamorous. The sunbathing and cocktails are reserved for the wealthy elite with the funds to book one of these boats for a few weeks. For those working: “It’s 95% shit,” admits Francois. “But the other 5%, it’s so good, it makes up for the rest.”

But he says there was even a lesson in those gruelling tasks, like cleaning the anchor chain with a toothbrush. “You’re scrubbing away and blow drying each link so they don’t rust,” he says. “You start to learn real discipline.”

He spent every night sleeping on the ocean. In the dark, he felt untethered – he felt like he was unravelling, connecting with something deeper, uninterrupted by the noise of everyday life. One evening, sailing along the Spanish coast, a storm swirled into life above the vessel.